I am pursuing the great driving dream of my life:

To be a great artist and touch the lives of thousands of people with my creations.

How painful this dream has been!

How much drive and longing and push and disappointment. How much invisibility and slow growth.

Yet this dream is threaded through my soul. It anchors my life, gives my life radiance, meaning, joy, blessings.

This dream pushes me insistently to grow, like an acorn tugged at to become an oak. Hard, slow growth. Thwarted often.

At other moments, exuberant, exhilarating, ecstatic.

My life spins around the making of art as a planet around the sun. This is my orbit, my unerring route.

And it is deeply fulfilling and engaging. What better way to spend my time? It is what I love and believe in.

A Daring Choice

So I make a daring choice to stand forth in the world as an artist—vulnerable, deeply feeling, unsure. Shadowed by my own fears that my art won’t be wanted, welcomed or understood, by my old belief that I have to hide parts of me to be loved.

In this gradual emergence from the chrysalis, my butterfly wings wet and heavy, I am slowly shedding old habits. No longer crawling as a caterpillar among leaves on the ground. Yet pieces of the old self still stick to me, old painful patterns hindering my flight.

I have to reinvent my environments—inner and outer—to suit the inner transformation.

Next week I’m going to share with you a big step I’m taking. A new way I’m going to be sharing myself in the world as an artist. A big risk.

Reinventing Myself

That reinvention also includes how I write this blog on creativity and artful, soulful living. I have to experiment with voices, styles, subjects, with how I show up in the world. To let my artist self shine through more clearly, in service to All. To be true to my heart and soul.

I don’t know how to do that, what that means, looks like, sounds like, how it may or may not be different from how I’ve been writing and living.

I’ve been wondering again and again whether I need two different blogs, one to do what I’ve always done here (my teachings) and one to share my own artistic journey, my poetry and musings, to be more fully myself as an artist. Maybe so.

Meanwhile, I’ve discovered a place to share that artist self with you in a magical, beautiful way. That’s what I’m going to unveil next week.

Serving You Heaps of Good Things

At the same time, these Creative Sparks posts are one form of my art. They are not just tools to convey information.

They are meant to be inspiration, creation, a form of induction into all I love and cherish: beauty, heart, transformation—wonder, grace, art—creativity, play, connection—imagination, freedom, joy—soul, essence, poetry—wholeness, aliveness.

So, I seek a way to serve you, my readers, with my artful, soulful essays, to touch you deeply, inspire, delight, nourish and help you. Without having to be so didactic, removed in a way. To feel more like a fellow artist, co-conspirator, playmate, as well as guide.

I keep stumbling, as I draw on different voices, resort to old habits, try on new styles.

I will know I have succeeded when you start reading and sharing my posts so much that the my writing and work takes flight in the world. I haven’t reached that yet.

As always, I love to hear from you about what you want, need, what you struggle with, what you are seeking, what your questions and challenges are, what you would love me to write about, what you would love me to offer.

Meanwhile, thank you for walking this path with me. For reading my posts when you can. For being here and living your own creative life.

Stay tuned for when I unveil my big new creative outlet next week!

Love, maxima