Creating art is one of the most loving, healing things we can do for ourselves. It is a refuge in challenging times as well as uplifting times. So long as we approach our creative time in a spirit of love, play, permission, and partnership with a field of life larger than we are. So long as we remember to enjoy it as the gift that it is and enter into it with curiosity and openness. So long as we make one vital agreement with ourselves before we create each time. I’ll share that agreement below.

But first, I want to address the physical space in which you create.

One way you can support yourself in making your creative play a gift to yourself is by taking the time to make your creative space a sanctuary, a soothing, nurturing, inspiring place to make your art. Your space doesn’t need to be large or fancy. The changes you make need not be expensive. But they can make a difference in creating a true oasis where your muse feels encouraged to come out and play, where you feel inspired and can relax into that precious state known as flow, where we lose all sense of time and self-consciousness and are deliciously absorbed in the process of creation, rather than obsessing over the results.

Here are some suggestions to help you make your creative space a sanctuary. Take the ones that appeal to you and also invent your own.

Clearing the Space

Many of us use our kitchen tables or desks for our creative work. If that’s you and you don’t have a dedicated space just for art, one thing that can be very helpful to enticing your muse is to take five minutes before you begin creating to clear the space as best you can. Remove the dishes and old newspapers from the table and wipe it down. Stack the bills and papers on your desk to one side or put them on the floor. Open the space for creating and remove distractions.

If you do have a dedicated studio, sometimes a few minutes of clean-up or preparing your tools and materials is a perfect ritual to begin your creative time.

This will make your creative space feel more inviting and also signal to your muse, your inner creative spark, that it’s time to make some art.

Also, if at all possible, keep your phone in a different room or turn it off altogether. Tell the people in your home not to bother you. Shut out the possibility of distractions and disruptions.

Beautifying and Enlivening Your Creative Space

The furniture, objects, colors, and images you include in your creative space matter. Is the space fun, inspiring, beautiful? In short, does it stimulate your muse? Or is it boring, lifeless, overwhelming, distracting, or worse, ugly?

How can you bring more beauty and inspiration into your creative space? What objects or talismans might enliven your muse?  Does she want it playful and colorful or for it to have a Zen elegance and austerity?

Is it time to paint the walls a new color or paint clouds on the ceiling? Get a colorful throw rug? Or put some new art on the walls? My desk has many special, small objects on it, as well as inspiring quotes and a rotating selection of images on cards. It feels bright, spacious, fun, and beautiful. But it does get cluttered with work-related things easily, so I usually take a few minutes to clear it before I start making art there.

Perhaps you might even want to make an altar to your muse with special objects that inspire her.

You don’t have to revamp your space all at once, but taking time to make it the way you truly like it is a wonderful gift to your muse.

Sounds

Playing quiet music, music that inspires you, or sounds that nurture you (recordings of oceans, wind in the trees, birds) is one way to carve out space for your creativity apart from the daily concerns and noises of the outer world. Kristin Tweedale of the Crafty Ass Female podcast—shoutout to her for inspiring this post with one of her own podcast episodes—loves her noise-canceling headphones, which allow her to shut out the outside world and listen to music she loves.

I rarely listen to music while creating, especially while writing, but I do use ear muffs designed to protect your hearing when using power tools. They are a godsend when my husband is home and listening to music in the other room or talking on the phone. They muffle the outside noise in a wonderfully helpful way. Just putting them on helps me feel I am in a special, secluded space, and it helps me concentrate. You can get a pair of these for less than $20.

Smells

Are the smells in your creative space pleasing and soothing to you? Essential oils and a diffuser are a wonderful way to bring scents into the space. Perhaps it’s just some fresh air you crave and can open the window at least a little. Find what smells invite, soothe, and nurture you.

Ritual

Having a simple ritual to begin your creative time is a wonderful way to let your muse know that it’s time for making art. It helps your consciousness shift out of the mundane mode into an open, receptive state.

A simple ritual that also helps you relax is excellent because we need to be relaxed and to feel safe to create our best work.

Taking three deep breaths is one very simple ritual you might try. You might do some yoga stretches or even go for a run—it’s great to enliven and relax the body before creating. Perhaps you turn on some special twinkle lights or other special lighting. Or, like someone entering an Aikido studio, you might bow upon entering. I like to light a candle, say a short prayer, and ring a bell. Sometimes I also wash my hands in a special bowl.

What helps you relax, shift gears from your ordinary tasks into a creative, receptive state, and feel safe?

Creating the Inner Space to Make Art

Creativity needs safety to flow. One key way to provide that sense of safety and invitation is to make an agreement with yourself every time before you begin that you will not judge the work. You agree to suspend judgment and simply invite what comes to come. You adopt an open attitude of permission, curiosity, and playfulness. You are willing to make mistakes and messes and bloopers.

Even when engaged in the refinement or editing process, you don’t judge your art. You cultivate discernment, not judgment. Judgment shuts the whole creative process down. It’s death to creativity. So make a promise to yourself to not judge the work, and if you catch yourself judging it—we’re all human!—stop yourself, apologize, suspend judgment, open yourself to surprise. Often, in the moment of creating, we have no accurate sense of whether the work we’re making is any good or not anyway. Some time and distance is needed to gain perspective and see what’s there.

Treat your muse lovingly. Be encouraging, as you would with a small child. And take some time to make your creative space a sanctuary. Your muse will thank you.

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When students ask me what’s the secret to making time for what they long to do, I always answer first with this: Schedule it!

I’m such a huge fan of scheduling regular time for your art or whatever gives your life meaning. When you want to make progress toward your big, scary dreams, or your little, delightful dreams, scheduling time for it is the best way to make it happen. Or, when you want o make time for whatever you love to do.

Because if you don’t schedule it, it doesn’t tend to happen. Have you noticed? Everything else seems to come first.

One summer, many years ago, I found myself without much teaching work because some planned classes didn’t fill. Although I’m sure I panicked about the lack of income, I also made a wonderful choice right then, a fateful choice.

I decided to set aside the kind of creative schedule I had wanted for years, or at least something near to it. I blocked out two hours on weekday mornings, four days a week, for what I call studio time. (My ideal schedule would be 3-4 hours 5 days a week, but this was as close a cousin as I could get and still earn a living.)

I’ve kept that schedule all these years, protecting the time zealously. I would refuse to schedule classes, meetings, or appointments during those sacred hours (sometimes against great pressure to do so). I would refuse to give up that time to others’ needs or my own distractions.

What a huge blessing that has been!

My studio time is my absolute favorite time of the day and week. It makes my life feel more meaningful, beautiful, fulfilling, and fun. And I make real progress on my creative projects, dreams, and goals.

When I got diagnosed with cancer last September, I gave up that studio time to the whirlwind of doctor’s appointments, phone calls, symptoms, and details. And I haven’t had it since.

As soon as I gave up my regular schedule, I stopped making art. Granted, I was going through a very tough time. But that time would have felt better, and less overwhelming, if I’d carved out even tiny amounts of time for creativity.

After the first horrible months of my healing journey, I began to salvage bits of time for art—like when I took on a 30-day challenge to fill one index card a day with some kind of art. Or when I had to write a new poem for the Ekphrastic Fantastic show I was invited to participate in. I started scheduling occasional creative play dates with friends. And I signed up to get Sketchbox delivered to my door once a month. (The photo above is from one of my first Sketchboxes, including the paintings I made following their tutorials and the art supplies they sent.)

But I didn’t save creative time on a schedule. To be fair, I couldn’t, due to the nature of my symptoms and the many healing treatments and appointments weekly. My life was a chaotic, unpredictable tornado.

Now that I have made huge progress in healing, I find myself missing my creative time so much. My life in the mornings, my best creative time, is still topsy-turvy. It’s when my body is most likely to act up with symptoms. And, having given up my precious schedule for so long, my morning routine with my husband has spilled over into that precious time I once had.

Lately, I’ve been writing on my weekly to-do list things like “Creative Time 5x” or, less ambitiously, “Creative Time 3x”, hoping for at least 15 minutes out of the day to make some kind of art. But guess what? If I don’t schedule it, it most often doesn’t happen. That’s what I’ve been telling my students for years, and it’s true!

I long to get my beloved creative schedule back. It’s going to take refiguring the morning routine with my husband, a lot of commitment, and also patience and flexibility as I continue to navigate the healing process.

I’m daunted by having to start from square one again. In so many ways. I’m having to re-invent myself, my life, and my work to fit with the new me that is rising from the ashes of this intense healing journey. And I’m navigating a painfully slow recovery process from major surgery two months ago.

But what a gift to get to do that! And I know I need this regular studio time like I need air to breathe. And I know it’s up to me to make it happen.

It starts with a decision, followed by commitment. And getting back on the horse every time I fall off. And it’s so worth it.

Is there something you long to do that you don’t get around to? You might try this to get started.

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I’ve come across this term “making marks” quite a few times recently as I’ve been dabbling more in the world of two-dimensional visual art.

I’ve told you about my occasional forays this year into illustrated journaling, which has provided a fun and helpful entry point on some days and breaks up some of my usual journal writing habits.

And I shared that I took on my own 30-day, index-card-a-day challenge in March which was fun and gave me daily bursts of creative play in a doable way. Plus, I wound up with this interesting, colorful stack of cards at the end.

Most recently, I’ve discovered Sketchbox. For $25 a month, they send me a sampling of art materials and a short instructional video on how to use them. Oh my gosh, it’s like having a birthday every month. Super fun!

But back to our topic today: Making marks. I love this idea that what we’re up to as 2-D visual artists is simply making marks on a page or canvas. It demystifies the process and makes it less intimidating.

Anyone can make a mark. Then, how about trying a different kind of mark or seeing how many different kind of marks you can make with one pen, pencil, crayon, oil pastel, brush?

I think of Georgia O’Keefe saying her aim in making art was “to fill space in a beautiful way.” Or maybe just in a pleasing way. Or a fun way. Or an exploratory way.

If I’m just making marks, I can try anything, be simple, experiment. I’m not trying to reproduce a tree or bird necessarily, though I might try that. I’m not trying to make ART. I’m just making marks.

And that leads me to get curious about what kinds of marks I want to make. Big splashy ones or lots of dark lines or scratchy little marks or loop-de-loops. Making marks invites me to be less self-conscious about my belief that “I can’t draw” or that things should look a certain way.

And then I realize that all art is making marks. Whether I’m painting or playing music or dancing or sculpting or making a film or writing a poem. I’m making marks in some medium.

And I’m making my mark upon the world. Not in a grandiose way but in the way an animal might mark a tree or stone to say “I was here. I made this. I felt this. I thought this. I encountered this. I dreamed this.”

So, maybe just trying making some marks today. Any kind. And see where they lead.

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The Sierra Poetry Festival was spectacular. The power and beauty of this offering blows me away.

People pour their hearts and souls openly and with great care and artistry into words, sharing vulnerably their wisdom, their fears and failings, their faith and hope, their longings and grief, their wonder and questions. It’s a rare and special thing in our world.

I realize that I have a deep need—I think we all do—to be a part of something larger than myself and to make a contribution to the world. Helping to produce the Sierra Poetry Festival each year gives me that. As part of the most remarkable group of passionate volunteers, we give our time and energy to make this beautiful, astonishing day for others.

I’m longing for more of that in my life, more meaning and purpose, being a part of collaborative projects to bring beauty and wonder, hope and magic, art and connection into the world.

My teaching here at Brilliant Playground gave me a ton of that. Since I’ve been on this health journey for 7 months, I’ve had to cut way back on my teaching. And I feel the loss deeply.

Since I left the community based in indigenous wisdom traditions that I was a part of for 22 years, I have missed many things, including the deeper connection and fulfillment it gave me.

It’s not satisfying to be only consumed with my own little concerns or even my art, though art certainly helps me reach beyond myself and connect with things larger than me in the making and the sharing of it.

But I think there’s this fundamental need for each of us to participate and contribute to our world, to be a part of collective efforts to make the world a more beautiful, loving, just, wise place.

I think that fundamental need gets twisted in some people who are already twisted by trauma, and it becomes totalitarianism or racism or other horrifying, misguided movements.

Part of what all this has me realize is I have to look for opportunities to give, to collaborate toward the common good, and then, I have to dive in and welcome them.

Of course, I have to take care of my energy, especially these days. But I can be too cautious and rob myself of what these things give me. They nourish something deep within that can’t be nourished any other way.

Do you have something like that in your life now? Tell me about it. Or tell me what these musings bring up for you.

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I’ve been thinking about how artists need to train like warriors. Or like athletes. Or like monks. I was inspired by one of Steven Pressfield’s excellent posts (https://stevenpressfield.com/2021/12/training-turning-pro/).

If we want to become the best artists we can be, we have to commit to the path of training, practice, and performance the way a spiritual warrior does.

I think of the Shaolin monks and their rigorous daily regimes, training in kung-fu, meditation, and Buddhist philosophy until body and mind are so highly skilled that they can accomplish extraordinary feats.

As artists, we need intense commitment and diligence. The fire to develop our skills. The will to create the inner and outer conditions most conducive to inspiration and to the hard and beautiful work of creation. And radical honesty about our strengths and weaknesses.

We need to gift ourselves the mentorship, classes, peer groups, and feedback that will foster our best work. We need to actively work to grow our creative abilities and not rest on our laurels.

Although cultivating a spirit of play, openness, and experimentation is vitally important in a thriving creative life, here I wish to focus on this aspect of training like a warrior. Why?

Because I see how easy it is for me to enter my studio with little plan of how I will use the time and wind up frittering away those precious hours. Letting myself mess around and discover happy accidents in my work (the source of much great art) is a key part of the process of creation. But I can also lose my way, and, in the process, lose my energy and joy for my art too.

I see how easy it is for me to let years go by, making new work, but never really growing as an artist. Churning out drafts of poems and not perfecting them. Having too little to show for my efforts because I lack a plan. I keep relying on my strengths and ignoring my blind spots. Or I dabble in this and that without gaining mastery or completing projects. This doesn’t feel good.

When I read Steven Pressfield’s post, a light bulb went on in me. I realized: If you wish to be as great as you can be in your art form (which I do), then training like a warrior will be essential.

The path of mastery requires focus, a plan (even though life is always full of surprises!), healthy habits, and determination.  We need a way to track our progress and stay on course.

A professional basketball player doesn’t go to practice and just dribble and shoot at random, based on whatever she feels like doing that day. She has a coach, a regimen, goals, and measurements of success. She studies other athletes and learns from them. She chooses what she eats, reads, watches, and does with her spare time carefully to support her being in the best shape, mentally and physically, to perform at her utmost.

That may sound rigid, but it needn’t be. It is vital to keep the joy and play alive in the process. One of the best basketballs teams of the past ten years, the Golden State Warriors, have joy as their guiding ethos.

So, even these intense training regimens can be a source of delight and grant a wind of positive purpose and rich meaning to our lives. If we want to truly grow as artists and give our best gifts to the world, then we need to adopt a similar approach to the professional athlete or the spiritual warrior.

Our whole lives can be structured to support our flourishing creatively. To give us time, energy, and space to create our best work. To bring in inspiration, ideas, new experiences, and new learning to nourish us. To study the lives and works of other artists carefully and deeply.

We can pay attention to what fosters our best art, and feed our souls with that. We can give ourselves assignments—or receive them from teachers or peers we trust—that stretch us to grow in new directions. We can train our bodies and minds to be in service to our art, and work to limit the negative thoughts, behaviors, and habits that would hinder that.

In our training, we practice to master the skills of our art form. We are willing to work hard and be uncomfortable at times. We also know we need to cultivate joy in the process, in order to keep going, and because our love and joy must infuse what we do for it to truly shine. And because we want to enjoy our lives.

We set goals and make plans to reach them. We know where we are headed and how we will use our creative time and our lives to best advantage.

We train like spiritual warriors, in deep devotion to our art.

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Making art is inconvenient. We have to carve out time for it. We have to carve out space for it. We have to spend our hard-earned money on it.

We have to rearrange our schedules, ask for time off from work, and beg out of gatherings with friends and family at times. We have to give up distractions and addictions and some of the time we could otherwise spend just lolling about.

We have to go out on a limb and do things that terrify us and put ourselves out in ways that make us feel vulnerable. We have to bare our souls, express our truths, share our visions with a world that doesn’t always appreciate them.

But it’s worth it.

Because it makes our lives full of meaning, delight, wonder, play, and expression. It brings us joy and a sense of being “on purpose” in our lives.

Making art is also inconvenient because it tells the truth. It shows us how we’re feeling. It reveals what we need to look at and what we’re neglecting. It tells us what we love and what we can’t tolerate. It shows us how rich and deep and beautiful life can be and what isn’t working now.

Making space for art in our lives can cause us to long for more, to dream of better, to not be satisfied with the status quo. It awakens our souls and calls us to who we truly are.

But, inconvenient as it is, where would we be without art? Without the beauty, wonder, imagination, and truth that it brings. Life would be awfully bland without music and dancing, poetry and painting, sculpture and films, and all of the gorgeous arts and crafts.

We need art to enlarge our minds, expand our hearts, and uplift our souls. To carve visions of a more beautiful, loving world, and remind us of what really matters, and what’s possible.

So yes, it’s inconvenient. Like most of the good things in life. Like meaningful relationships and inner growth and big dreams.

And we need it.

So, I urge you to make time and space for art in your life. Let it inconvenience you. Spend some money on it. Ask for time off for it. Cancel that engagement you didn’t want to go to anyway. Give up a meaningless distraction. So that your life can grow and bloom in the most astonishing ways.

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When I was in my senior year of college, a group of ten improvising musicians miraculously came together. We called ourselves the Relentless Compassion Orchestra.

Many nights a week, we would meet to improvise and create pieces together. In an old barn on the Bennington campus, we would play for hours, making all kinds of strange and wonderful sounds.

We recorded these sessions on a portable tape recorder. Then, we’d huddle around, listening and pausing to replay the best moments. “What were you doing there on the clarinet?” We’d try to capture the textures and progressions, so we could create scores for future performances.

There was such creative chemistry that we gathered a small cult following. People would come to hear us rehearse. Dancers would show up to move to the exotic sounds we made. It was an ecstatic experience.

Such collaborations bring out the unique genius in everyone and allow art to be made that’s far greater than the sum of the individual parts. But collaboration is not the only need we have for creative community as artists.

When I finally started meeting regularly with other writers and hiring mentors to get feedback on my work, I began to evolve much more quickly. When I started volunteering to help put on the Sierra Poetry Festival, I met many poets from around the world and developed a sense of being part of the larger movement. When I invited fans to join me on Patreon and was able to share my works-in-progress in a safe, supportive environment, my art felt more meaningful and my focus on my projects became sharper.

As artists, we often hear about the need for solitude. For artists who work alone, we do need ample time to tune into ourselves and make our art, uninterrupted.

But equally important is the need for community with other creative people who you can openly share your process and projects with and receive honest, compassionate feedback and encouragement.

You need companions you can be vulnerable with and feel seen, heard, and understood by. You need dialogue that keeps you inspired, opens you to new ideas, and helps you believe in your creations. You need reflections of what is most powerful in your art and suggestions to help you grow. You need people who have discovered solutions to the steps that you’re struggling with.

You may also thrive from collaboration with artists in other art forms. It can be so fertile to the imagination to talk or work with those working in different media. Visual artist Inma Femenia works with engineers, architects, and even opticians, among others, to create her three-dimensional, installation pieces. When I spent a month at the Vermont Studio Center as a writer, talking to the visual artists and seeing their work was what most stimulated my creativity.

It’s all too easy in modern life to isolate ourselves, to lack meaningful exchange with other soulful people about our art. Trying to go it alone is a common mistake, especially for introverts or independent and busy people. But, human beings are designed to live in community. We are tribal creatures, not lone wolves. Our creativity needs the support of others to grow.

When looking for creative community, be sure to find supportive souls. Otherwise, you may get discouragement from others who’ve squelched their creativity, are competitive in their art, or simply don’t appreciate your aesthetic or know how to give useful feedback. On the other hand, when you do find a creative connection with others, your art can blossom in exceptional ways.

I’ve spent years living in a small rural town in Northern California. Too often I’ve fallen into isolation in my art. Either I didn’t find artists I resonated with, or I didn’t make it a priority to get together with those I know, or I’m reluctant to spend money and time on classes and conferences.

This mistake has cost me years of slower development in my art. It’s also cost me dearly in the growth of my creative career because of a lack of connections.

So, I urge you to make creative community a priority. Get to know and be in dialogue with other artists in your art form and in other art forms, in your geographic area and elsewhere. Foster connections. Grow a network. Learn from others, make art with others, support others. You and your art will be better for it. And you’ll probably have a lot more fun, inspiration, and joy in the process.

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This past year was a particularly difficult one to narrow down my favorite books of the year to just ten. There were so many good books!

I read 49 books this past year, plus parts of quite a few others, plus six more I read aloud with my husband. I could easily have gone on with more favorites than I list here.

I have quirky tastes. Still, I think most avid readers will find something to enjoy or edify them in this list, which includes fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, both bestsellers and little-known gems.

Without further ado then, these are my favorites of the books I read in 2022. Most, if not all, of these were published in previous years, so you’ve likely heard of and read some, but not all, of them. I list them not in order of favorite-ness, but in the order I read them during the year.

Apereigon, Colum McCann

This is an absolutely stunning, astonishing novel based on the story of two real men, a Palestinian and an Israeli Jew, both of whom have lost daughters to the violence between the two sides. They become friends, united in grief and in their shared purpose to raise awareness to end the conflict.

The form and style of the novel are as intricately orchestrated as a symphony. The telling is powerful and deeply affecting. And you will learn things you never knew about both sides of the conflict and the very real lives behind them.

The Book of Delights, Ross Gay

On a far lighter note, deliberately so, Ross Gay, an African-American poet, set out to create a compendium of small daily delights, writing a short essay about one thing each day that delighted him for a year.

And it is a delightful read that does not pass over the hard things, but turns again and again to finding the little pleasures. A helpful book in these times. He has a sequel of sorts, Inciting Joy, which I haven’t read yet. If anyone wants to get this for me as a surprise gift, I’d be delighted!

Searoad, Ursula K. LeGuin

Most of us know the great Ursula K. LeGuin as for her enormous reknown as a writer of science-fiction or what is now called speculative fiction. But this collection of linked short stories, which I stumbled upon in my local library (I love libraries!), is a master class in the art of the short story. And none of these stories are sci-fi or fantasy.

Instead, LeGuin creates a fictional seaside town in Oregon and peoples it with fascinating characters, leading more or less ordinary lives. The stories are riveting and exquisitely crafted. I wanted to know more about everyone and was sad when it was over.

If the House, Molly Spencer

This debut collection of poems is delicate, beautiful, startling, and fresh. Taking us through the process of a divorce and a move, the house becomes rich with metaphors while illuminating the bonds that tie us together and the disappointments that tear us apart. A deeply rewarding read.

The Lost Spells, Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris

Oh my gosh, what to say about this absolutely gorgeous, one-of-a-kind book that follows on their astonishing book, The Lost Words, but is smaller in format. Featuring exquisite watercolors and magical spell-poems about birds, animals, trees, and flowers, this book induces a state of wonder and delight.

Dancing in Odessa, Ilya Kaminsky

Coming late to the party on this one, as I often do, I was quite taken by this much-acclaimed debut collection of poetry. In a moving, dream-like voice, Kaminsky praises and laments his native Ukraine and his exile from there, and evokes magic and wonder in the midst of the trials and joys of daily life. His poems read like listening to music and offer glimpses into another world.

The Anthologist, Nicholson Baker

I absolutely adored this novel. Delightfully witty but also deeply felt. The hapless protagonist is trying to create an anthology of poetry and write the foreword to it amidst his relationship, work, and life woes. I wound up learning things about poetry I didn’t know! But most of all, this book delivered the kind of absorbing and delicious experience I want from a novel. Deftly written.

Writers and Lovers, Lily King

Another thoroughly satisfying novel and a quick read. If you haven’t read Lily King’s Euphoria, start there. It’s extraordinary. But this story of a struggling young writer was filled with great characters, a compelling plot, and wonderful, lucid writing. A delight. 

Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehesi Coates

This is another one-of-a-kind book and truly exceptional. Not an easy read but a necessary one. Toni Morrison called it “required reading,” and I agree. I wish everyone would read this book. Certainly, I think every so-called white person should read this. The entire book is addressed as a series of letters to Coates’ teenage son and is written as a memoir. Coates details in incredibly powerful, clear, hard-hitting language his experience of being Black and male in America, coming to race consciousness in various different situations—both good and bad—and how he attempts to navigate that terrain for himself and his son.

Tatterdemalion by Sylvia Linsteadt

I was blessed to read so many books this past year that are like no other. This one certainly is that. Inspired by a series of otherworldly paintings by Rima Staines, which are featured in the book, the author created magical and often heart-breaking stories of a post-apocalyptic world in which people and creatures with unusual powers learn to craft a better way of life. Big shout out to my favorite bookstore, the Point Reyes Bookstore, for having this book displayed, so that my husband and I could find it and read it aloud by firelight as we camped in the redwoods.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also like Stunning Books of 2021.

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Making art is a profoundly good thing to do with your time. It makes our world a better place. Yet almost all artists struggle with doubt about whether what they are doing is worthwhile.

Many of us have also been told that when we are making art, we’re doing something frivolous, silly, or wasting our time. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Anytime you are feeling that doubt about the value of doing what you love—it’s strikes me often—you can look at this list to rekindle your commitment to your art.

Here are 9 excellent reasons to answer the call of art

1. You become a better, happier, more fulfilled, kinder person when you make art, follow your dreams, do what you love to do. (It doesn’t mean you become a saint. Of course, there are plenty of badly-behaved artists, but it does help.)

2. You become a more imaginative and humble person. (Nothing can humble you like trying to make good art and grow as an artist.)

3. You become an inspiration to others. When you make things and do what you love and follow your dreams, it encourages, delights, and inspires others.

4. You give voice or form to things that others cannot express for themselves. You help others feel seen, heard, understood, less alone.

5. You enlarge the world for others and help people appreciate the world. You express things others didn’t see, hear, feel, know, or stop to pay attention to. You also make the world more beautiful, wondrous, and magical with your art.

6. You help people wake up to what is actually going on. You can be a visionary, a way-shower, a shaper of culture and society. You can shed light on things that need light shed on them.

7. You help people feel, think, and experience life deeply. You help people come alive.

8. You open new visions, new possibilities, from which new worlds are born. You motivate and inspire, instigate and foment, and lead the way forward.

9. You uphold values that are deeply in need of being upheld in our world today: values like love, wonder, play, compassion, gratitude, honesty, and also outrage at what needs to change.

Yes, you may also be a bit of a pain in the neck sometimes. Making art can make you obsessive, self-involved, and weird (by societal standards). It does that to me.

But I am also more joyful, alive, real, funny, balanced, and have more to give when I give myself plenty of time in my creative bubble, tinkering around with the joy of art.

So, go forth and make art. It’s an excellent use of your time.

The post 9 Excellent Reasons to Make Art appeared first on Maxima Kahn.

At the start of 2020, I chose generosity as my word of the year, not knowing consciously what we were in for globally that year. Or rather, the word chose me. I started this essay back then, exploring how generosity can enlarge me as an artist and human being, and I return to it now to share with you.

I invite you to journey with me as we explore this sacred quality together.

What is my growing edge around generosity?

A part of me cringes as I fear being taken advantage of if I’m too generous. That part still takes advantage of herself at times, over-giving, not feeling deserving, not believing in myself, not feeling I am ever “enough.”

As I meditate on generosity, an image pops in my head: The beggar archetype, the one pictured on the five of coins in the tarot, huddling in the cold outside a church. I recognize this archetype in me. The beggar that feels starved, needy, impoverished, shut out. She thinks she must beg for everything, that there is never enough, and she cannot afford anything for herself.

That archetype is rooted in my ancestral past. My parents and ancestors on both sides lived through intense privations and persecution. I inherited a lot of fear about survival both in my DNA and in my upbringing. And I have struggled to provide for myself financially much of my life.

How can generosity help me shift my relationship to money and provision? How am I stingy with myself and others, cutting off the flow?

Part of my growing edge is a more generous and trusting approach to myself and others, but with wisdom and healthy boundaries. Sometimes true generosity is saying no.

What does generosity feel like?

As I tune into this quality, it seems like a feeling of such inner abundance, such sense of plenty, that I overflow. Not giving in order to be liked or accepted. Not giving out of a sense that I am never enough and must always give more, do more, try harder, in order to be loved or okay or simply safe from attack. But instead, giving out of a true sense of having-ness, plenty, a desire to share the bounty of my life.

And knowing there is always more. The universe is a generous, bountiful place.

What does generosity in language look like?

To me it looks like that marriage of truth and beauty that John Keats wrote about. “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

Generosity in art looks like creating truth and beauty and spending time and care to hone it, so that it can be of value to others.

How could/does generosity inform my poetry or help me to cross that invisible barrier that often keeps me from being satisfied with my poems? That same barrier also appears to keep me from receiving greater outer acceptance of my art. The outer so often mirrors the inner world.

As a poet, I seek to find the voice that is truly mine and no other’s. That voice sometimes feels in danger of being lost in the froth of so many other voices telling me how and what I should write.

If I were more generous toward myself, wouldn’t I be more trusting in my voice and subject matter, in what I need to say in the ways most true to me?

How do I balance that generosity towards myself with generosity towards others, which asks me to make a thing of deep value to others, a thing with an open door through which others can enter, yet without betraying my own aesthetic?

What does it mean to be generous with myself?

Not self-indulgent, but caring for and giving to myself deeply. Surely that is where generosity must begin. To generously accept myself as I am, and to give the best of what I have to give, and let that be enough.

I know how to drive myself, unrelenting. But how to be truly generous?

This exploration is one beginning. These words allowed to flow and find their way. The seeking or permitting of a voice entirely mine. The way my mind and hand and heart moves when allowed out, like a dog into a park, romping.

And then to share with others from that same spirit. Here, this is what I have.

A memory of fear and generosity

When I was preparing for my senior concert in college, the culmination of four years of intense work as a composer and improvising violinist, I suddenly developed terrible pains in my arm. The concert was a few weeks away and I was practicing and preparing like mad, terrified, trying to become better at my instrument in the few weeks that remained.

And then suddenly, these shooting pains in my arm. I went to see a skilled masseur, but still the pains were there. I went to see a specialist in violin posture, and she said my posture was impeccable.

Finally, I realized I was not going to get any better as a musician in the remaining time before my performance. I was going to have to accept myself as I was and present that to the audience openly.

The pain left and never returned. The concert was a grand success, one of the high points of my life. The place was packed, the audience enthusiastic. But, most of all, I felt on top of the world, in the sheer delight of music. I gave my all generously and didn’t worry what they would think. I left that to them to decide, generously.

Generosity in art, love, and work

When I get stuck in creative doldrums, I have to return to the love of art, the love of making, and then just give my best and let it go. I have to share from a spirit not of wanting to be loved but of wanting to share the best of what I have to give or what delights, intrigues, preoccupies me now. Not needy but full.

This was the turning point for me in love. When I stopped seeking to be loved and started loving my life so deeply, feeling so full, that I had so much to share with another. And longed to create a life together out of that fullness.

Poetry, music, and art have been so generous with me. I create to give back to the things in this world that I love and cherish, the things I long to uphold, the values, the beauty, the ways of being. This is a cause that summons deep devotion in me.

Is that what generosity looks like? Giving my all for what I most love and cherish?

In that case, I’ve been generous my whole life.

Let me spread the gospel of generosity through my own embodiment of plenty. Let me know that I am enough and I have enough. Earth is a great teacher of this, so relentlessly generous. Always sharing her gifts with no thought of reward.

May I do the same, doing my work for the love of it, sharing it out of love for others and our world. When I remember this, the work becomes lighter, a joy. And I know that I have found my way, the path of generosity.

For more on choosing a word of the year or dream seeds for the year, check out: https://maximakahn.com/dream-seeds/

The post On Generosity: Sacred Key to Abundance and Joy appeared first on Maxima Kahn.