Hi friend! Transcripts live here now! If you are looking for a transcript of a specific episode, just type the title in the search bar on Substack. I am also working on adding older episodes’ transcripts over there, but if you’d like a particular quote that isn’t there, feel free to email hello@artistsforjoy.org.
Thanks for your patience as we create the podcast in written form for you!
Merideth: One benefit of playing Handel’s messiah 194,000 times is that you no longer have to count the rests. This year, as I sat in the small orchestra, which was sorta uncomfortably close to the audience members in the first pew of the narrow church, still, when the overture ended and the first recit began, I retreated into myself and stared off into space. The to-do lists and other general worrying thoughts appeared as usual. What was I forgetting? Suddenly, my eyes fell upon on one listener a few rows back. I didn’t know her personally, but something about her seemed familiar. She had a fragile fierceness that only women in their 90s carry. Her size was childlike, and her skin looked velvety. Only her head and hands were visible from above the pew; even so, I could see she was sobbing with her whole body. Not bury your head in your hands, kind of crying, but head up and eyes closed, like she was soaking the music up like sunshine. What I saw on her face was something like ecstasy, transcendence. My entire heart changed in that moment. For the rest of the concert, I played and heard every note through her tear-filled eyes.
This podcast is for the little old lady a few rows back
It’s for anyone else staring off into space this time of year
It’s for artists who carry grief and joy together
This show is for anyone interested in debunking that “tortured artist” stereotype, for those who want to believe that the creative life can bring us deep satisfaction, healing, and even joy. I’m so glad you’re here.
I’m Merideth Hite Estevez, and this is Artists for Joy, the podcast.
SHORT MUSIC BREAK
each week, I will share stories of artists seeking joy… We’ll explore how so many travelers along this artist’s way have left us breadcrumbs—wisdom and inspiration that can help us stay joyful on the journey.
Today is our annual Christmas episode. A meditation on persistent joy: an invitation to pay attention this season and give yourself permission to let the joy overflow, as it mixes with grief and gratitude, anxiety and wonder. I’ll share a story of when Joy found me in one of the most unlikely places, I’ll answer a listener question about creative block, plus I’ll give you something to consider this week. But first, here’s some more music.
There should not be hospital beds for children. Not for adults either, but there’s something categorically wrong with tiny stretchers, mini IV kits, and an oxygen mask with the face of a dragon on it. Cognitive dissonance. Does not compute. It shouldn’t be this way; these things should not exist. And yet this past week, we found ourselves in a hospital wing overflowing with sick children on highox. Is it possible to think something shouldn’t exist and yet be immensely grateful that it does?
Before I go on, I want you to know that my children are fine, thank God. We spent one very long night and two days in Michigan Children’s with my son, whose airway reacted to a mystery virus. It could have been much worse. For many families, it is. And yet, I know comparative suffering leads to guilt and shame and a lack of empathy. If you know the messed up nature of child-size medical supplies, I’m sorry, and I see you. In an attempt not to violate my son’s HIPAA rights further nor relive a very difficult moment for me as a mother, I’ll skip to the part about all the surprising joy that there was in that place that should not exist.
I was living on adrenaline in a way I have never experienced: vigilance that only crisis managers know. Somehow, I had not slept more than 30 minutes in two nights, I’d barely eaten, yet I was neither tired nor hungry. In fact, I could have lifted a car and done my taxes. I think back through the 36 hours I spent at my son’s bedside, and I wonder what I was doing all that time. I’m someone who usually has one earbud in listening to a podcast or audiobook while I cook dinner. I’m writing these essays or Instagram posts on my phone in between things when a line comes to me, but this was like some subhuman or superhuman (unsure) way of being, a blank version of me that cared only about pulse ox and breathing treatments, it was watching those monitors and prolonging MY next inhale which came only when the resident who did not look old enough to have a medical degree, appeared from around a curtain once per shift and told me he was going to be ok.
Amazingly, suns still rise when your children are tied via IV to a hospital crib. And incredibly, Eli slept peacefully there almost all night. Trust me, I stayed up watching him to be sure. But by morning, the Michigan winter sunshine (an oxymoron) poured in through the one window of our double room, and reflecting on some surface, there was a rainbow across his wall. I was tempted to open our curtain and show the mom on the other side, but something stopped me. The sun coming up was not something I was responsible for; even through my adrenaline high I knew that was good news. Rainbows were a sign of hope, of a promise that we are held and not alone. There it was in spite of everything.
And almost on cue, as my son rested peacefully, a young woman with a blue t-shirt appeared. Not a doctor or a nurse, from what I could tell. She paused until I looked into her eyes. “Today is a special day here at the hospital. It’s called Snowpile. We have gifts donated by people in the community for you to shop for Eli and any kids you have at home; plus, there are snacks, treats, live music; it’s for parents, and it’s free, and it’s your turn.” I skeptically followed this woman in the blue shirt, leaving Eli with a friend who had picked the perfect time to come to visit.
As I entered the quote-unquote snow pile, with gifts floor to ceiling for every age kid, all donated by Michigan individuals and organizations, as a personal shopper helped me pick out gifts for Eva and Eli as he handed me a handmade pillow case, socks, stuffies, and books for each of their stockings, plus a Christmas book and a puzzle for each family, as I noticed a woman with a translator picking out the same for her five children, as I waited in the cafe while a team of elves gift wrapped every single thing I’d picked, as I ate my first calorie in 24 hours, as I let the jazz from a keyboard in the corner bathe my exhausted heart, the red velvet stuck to the roof of my mouth, and joy welled up in me in a way I can barely explain.
Look, I don’t know what grief you are carrying this year. Fewer chairs around the table, fractured relationships, chronic pain, a hopeless diagnosis, unfulfilling work, or that pesky feeling that something is missing. Rejections and unanswered emails and dreams deferred another year and then another. Crippling debt and new roof leak and the sudden passing of someone you hadn’t spoken to in years. Maybe you’re thinking, “It isn’t the same without that parent/child/friend.” The adrenaline has officially worn off, and all you are left with is a shell of yourself. And it’s Christmas when every other carol tells you should feel joy.
As artists, we have the opportunity to evoke great emotion in people. When I play the oboe, I can feel it. It’s like knowingly turning a key to open a door inside the heart of someone else. It's my very favorite thing about being an artist. And yet, artists, the dreamers of dreams, and the singers of songs, we so often stay closed, jaded and busy and worried about being perfect, immovable and unfulfilled and empty. We experience a joylessness and despair and it is a special kind of lonely because as easily as we can open those of others, our own doors remain locked. It becomes harder to want to create because it feels hollow, we numb ourselves with mediocre tv and doom scrolling and substances that take the edge off, and we manage somehow to keep going..
But what I learned this week inside a snow pile of generosity inside a packed children's hospital is that joy is actually all around us, persistently knocking at the door. Even in, perhaps especially in, the hospital, the fear, the crisis, the lonely and feeling lost moments. Did these gifts solve all my problems or make Eli’s lungs clearer? No, but something about it made me feel seen, it made me remember that grief doesn’t cancel joy. It’s okay to eat a cupcake even when your child is upstairs receiving breathing treatments. It’s okay to feel joy. I have a feeling that someone needs to hear this…don’t postpone joy until they're well, don’t wait until the war’s over, don’t save the china for special occasions. Today is a special occasion; joy is actually all around. Now fear, and despair, and pain are around, too, to be sure. Maybe that’s why every single angel in the Christmas story keeps saying, first and foremost, do not be afraid; fear abounds, but what if good tidings of great joy do too, and what if instead of choosing joy this season, all we have to do is look up and notice joy choosing us.
CS Lewis said, “All Joy reminds. It is never a possession, always a desire for something longer ago or further away or still 'about to be.'” Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to hold onto; it feels fleeting because it calls to something more, something that has slipped beyond our reach and something still coming, all at once.
That’s what I saw in that 90-year-old audience member crying during Messiah. I imagine this time of year is full of pain for her too; if you are blessed to get that old, you have watched a lot of people you love leave. Maybe she wondered if this might be her last time hearing this music live. I don’t know the details of her life, but I saw my own reflection in her tears, flickering memories of Messiahs gone by; through our broken hallelujahs, we were connected across the room across decades and generations; this music burned in our hearts forever a kinship, a faith, the reminder of what eternal goodness keeps us coming back to this pew in this room in this season, longing to welcome joy in amidst all the sorrow. Hand in hand, loving the same thing. The music resonating and vibrating something so deep within us at the exact same time.
My friend David told me about a friend of his who, whenever something special happens she always says, “I’m gonna put that in my heart pocket.” It instantly reminded me of Mary in the Christmas story when she says, “and she took these things and pondered them in her heart.” This season, I’m making room in my heart pocket for all of the joy that’s there, lifting my eyes long enough to notice people in the audience, letting myself accept gifts from strangers for my children’s Christmas, sharing the rainbows when they come, believing in the signs and wonders that are here calling to something long ago and still coming. Something right now and not yet.
So, when have you felt it this season? Here’s an invitation to feel it now. Look around. Maybe you’re listening to this at a bedside or on a walk. Maybe you’re waiting for a delivery man, or you’re going through boxes of someone who isn’t ever coming back. Maybe you are sitting in your car alone, giving yourself the gift of a good cry. I’ve done that this week, too. I want you to look for something about this moment to treasure, even if it reminds you of what you’ve lost or could lose. Let the music or the poem or the twinkly lights this time of year witness to a weary world; accept the invitation to open your heart again. Ponder there what a joy it is to have loved, to grow old, delight in the precious and terrible absurdity of being human for a moment, be grateful for even one more shaky breath, and whatever grief rushes in, let it come. Look now for whatever persistent joy is choosing you, even in the pain. Open your heart pocket. Make some room.
I’ll be right back.
Today’s Listener question is from a DM I got on IG
Hello, Merideth, from my kids' penultimate day of school before Christmas. I’m already feeling bitter and resentful since all my creative time goes out the window with everyone at home. Do you have any tips for how to get in writing time when everyone is home?
Thanks in advance, Christmas Chaos
Christmas Chaos, oh yes, oh yes, when our inner artist loses our carefully sought-after alone time, creative time, it can make for one salty winter recess experience. I feel this deeply. My whole December has been slightly derailed because of all the illness and changed travel plans. And honestly, let me model what I’m telling you to do and change my mindset right here in front of you. It isn’t so much derailed, as it has shifted because of new things that have appeared that also matter. I think besides naming that we struggle when our creative context changes, it’s important to cast a new light on all the things that pull you away from the writing desk.
I actually said to my husband yesterday, I am so disappointed in myself. I didn’t get anything I needed to do before the end of the year off my to-do list. He said, “You took Eli to the doctor, you rocked him, and helped him nap. You went to pick up his medication. You answered the phone when the doctor called with the test results. You swung by the store to buy more milk. These are all things that are valuable and needed and appreciated, and yes, I am sorry you didn’t get to practice or produce podcasts as much as you needed to today, but I want you to know that I am grateful for the ways you stepped up for the kids and for me.” So Christmas Chaos, you gotta start giving yourself these pep talks. Don’t believe the lie that you are doing nothing because you aren’t moving the needle on a creative project. We can feel bitter and resentful about all the sometimes invisible labor we carry– that’s legit– and I want to encourage us not to be afraid to make that labor a little more visible to other people in our lives. Ask family or babysitters or whoever you trust to give you one hour daily during the holidays. Be honest about what you need to the people around you. Do not feel guilty about wanting to go into your office and write for one hour. It’s just as valid as childcare and cooking and wrapping people’s gifts so Christmas is magical. Everyone is stressed and short on time, but don’t suffer in silence; speak up.
So that’s a little internal coaching I think we all need to do in these moments…but here are some practical tips, one for any time of day:
Morning: Wake up before everyone else. Look, I know we aren’t all morning people, but goodness, I feel good when I set my alarm for an hour early and sneak into the living room and write. You can do anything for a short period of time; give it a try; it might do wonders for your mood.
Afternoon: Teach your people that you are human and need alone time. Now, I don’t know how old your children are, but I think regardless of their age, one thing that’s helped me is letting them bend to my need for a little downtime after lunch. Maybe you have one that naps and one that doesn’t, like me. If I’m home alone with both kids, when Eli naps, I explain to my 5-year-old that it's quiet time. I explain she can watch tv for a bit, she can play a game in her room, whatever she does, she has to let mama rest for a little bit. Sometimes, it does not work at all, but worth a try. I never regret telling my family members what I need. They have a right to say no, but every time it makes me feel seen and known, and it really helps my mood.
Night: stay up later than everyone else. Go to bed with the kids. Sit in your room and write or paint or whatever you need to do to feel like yourself. I know this can mean cutting short dinners or alone time with people, but again, be intentional about that. Who knows? Maybe your spouse or loved ones need some alone time, too. Don’t worry about asking them; be honest and try it out.
Creating in the cracks is still creating. This wild west of winter break isn’t forever. Do what you can, release your expectations, ask for what you need, and don’t forget to schedule some rest for yourself, too.
Hope that helps.
Now for today’s coda
I fell down a foreign language rabbit hole this week, looking for a word to describe the feeling I felt at the hospital in the snow pile, gratitude, and joy mingled with grief and sorrow. I knew in German they have Schadenfreude, but that actually means taking joy in someone’s misfortune. So that’s not it. There were others in Japanese and Welsh that started to get at it, but as I went deeper and deeper into the internet trying to find the perfect bow to tie on this Christmas episode, I ran into an article about tears. And I suddenly realized it, maybe there is no word for holding joy alongside sorrow and grief because we have something better. We humans have a unique physiological response to this emotional intensity: tears of emotion.
Unlike basil tears (which lubricate your eyes when you blink) or reactive tears (which flush irritants), Emotional tears are much more complex. Scientists do not completely understand this physical response to deep emotion. But as far as they can tell, no other animals cry with emotional tears. And you’ve felt it; you don’t say to your brain, ok, I feel sad now, so cue the sadness tears. Or I feel overwhelmed with joy: joy, tears NOW. No, the tears that come from deep within are a complex cocktail of all those feelings at once.
It is an impulse and wisdom of your body to hold all the complex emotions together, and wow is that is beautiful to me. And get this: that salty water coming from your eyes when you feel deeply also contains stress hormones, electrolytes, and protein—endorphins (natural pain killers) and other molecules that signal a release response in your body. Emotional tears contain more lipids, which means they are slower to roll down your cheek and slower to evaporate than basil or reactive ones. Some scientists think this has a social function, emotional tears hang around so that people in our lives have more time to notice them.
There is no one word in English for holding joy and sorrow together, but our body has a biological and psychological response that speaks for us. When we allow them to be, our inner experience and our physical bodies are connected. Will you allow them to be? If and when you feel them behind your eyes, let the tears come this season. Let them be noticed by someone you love. May they speak when you have no words. May they remind you to make room for the persistent joy that continues to choose us, never asking us to deny the grief or pain or sorrow of now, as it gently whispers, do not fear.
That’s it for this week’s episode of artist’s for joy. It was written and produced by me, Merideth Hite Estevez. Artists for Joy LLC is a woman-led small business where we craft workshops, talks, podcasts, and performances that help people harness the power of creative expression to make their lives better. This podcast is free for your listening pleasure, and if you’d like to support the work of artists for joy, click the link in the show notes to buy me a coffee.
Today's music featured the seasonal goodness of Ardie Son from his album December. I’ve linked to that album in the show notes if you’d like to hear it. Our theme song is by Angela Sheik.
Next week I will be back with what was last year's most popular episode, a musical meditation for picking your work of the year. Make sure you subscribe and follow wherever you listen.
Our next cohort for The Artist’s Way begins in February so if you’ve been listening to this show for a while and wanting to find creative community with us, go to artistsforjoy.org/theartistway or click the link in the show notes to learn more and join almost 2000 other artists who are forming a sacred circle of community in the new year. Plus, it’s FREE.
Until next week, take good care.
Today's sounds of joy is that opening of Handel’s Messiah that, to me, signifies Christmas: I mentioned a few podcasts ago, “Comfort Ye, My People.” Enjoy!
*These transcripts aren’t perfect! But who is?*
My friend Kennan graduated from art school and got a quote-unquote real job. Like so many of my coaching clients, she sat adjacent to the work she was called to do, serving as an administrative assistant to a top gallery director in NYC. Steven Pressfield calls this a shadow career, sitting across the desk from the artist you long to be, too tired and burnt out by the end of an 8-6 to paint or make anything.
One evening in December, Kennan left the gallery after a long opening reception of a new young artist, and stepping out into the street and Christmas lights, she bundled herself up for the long walk home, flipping the collar of her oversized coat over her ears. She’d forgotten a hat. Not that any beanie could contain her massive black curls. Even though she could have grabbed the train, Kennan almost always chose walking. The sound of her low heeled boots on the pavement were in harmony with the beat of her heart. She looked up as she rounded a corner and caught a glimpse of herself shining back from a store window. Her hair sat on top of her head, erupting from her coat like a floral bouquet. It covered her entire face. The lines of the peacoat drew the eye in just so, and the gold buttons glimmered; she extended her neck like a swan. Suddenly she felt an intense desire to paint, not just paint any old thing but this. This was a feeling she’d not felt since grad school. She grabbed her phone and tried to grab a selfie awkwardly in the cold; her gloves were nowhere to be found either. When she arrived home, it was after midnight, and she felt more energized than ever. She fell asleep sketching the beginnings of what would be her first major collection.
This podcast is for Kennan
It’s for anyone with complicated feelings about their physical self
It’s for artists who feel disembodied.
This show is for anyone interested in debunking that “tortured artist” stereotype, for those who want to believe that the creative life can bring us deep satisfaction, healing, and even joy. I’m so glad you’re here.
I’m Merideth Hite Estevez, and this is Artists for Joy, the podcast.
SHORT MUSIC BREAK
each week, I will share stories of artists seeking joy… We’ll explore how so many travelers along this artist’s way have left us breadcrumbs—wisdom and inspiration that can help us stay joyful on the journey.
Today’s episode is all about the spiritual work of loving yourself. I will tell you why Pilates makes me cry and I’ll share how Kennan stepped out of the shadows and into a fulfilling life as an artist. Plus, I’ll answer a question from a listener about creative blocks, and the coda will give you something to consider this week. But first, here’s some more music.
A Pilates studio is not a common place to have a spiritual encounter. As I laid back on the very intimidating machine with its levers, straps, bells, and whistles, I heard the teacher call it a reformer. Hmm, I remember thinking to myself, I don’t know if I’m up for any sort of reformation. My relationship with exercise has been tenuous at best when, after my second pregnancy, I discovered that a nerve in my right foot was now being pinched by two of my formerly friendly foot bones, making running (my preferred exercise activity) impossible. But My daily walks were treating me well. Until one day, a new teacher, a young mom like me, stopped me while I walked past the information table one day at the gym and asked if I wanted to try her new pilates class.
My body and I have been working on our relationship for as long as I can remember. I’ve talked on the show before, way back in season 1, about my struggles with body image, with loving and accepting myself in physical form. I’ll link to that episode in the show notes. After struggling with disordered eating while I lived in NY, which, looking back, was sort of an issue since high school, all I can tell you is that for as long as I can remember, I have taken issue with my shape and size. Through calorie restriction and excess exercise, I have been working to make myself smaller almost all my life.
I told a story in that first episode about this that resonated with so many of you; back in my worst body image days, I kept a pair of size 0 jeans, and I would try them on to ensure they fit almost every day. They were too tight and uncomfortable to wear out of the house, my secret shame jeans. If I didn’t fit into them, I’d fall into a spiral of starvation and sadness until they buttoned again. So many of you said you have treated yourself like this. Numbers on the scale or certain measurements or clothing that you use to torture yourself into submission, to make yourself smaller, perform your disappearing act.
With the help of therapy and as soon as I ended a couple of toxic relationships, I was able to stop those behaviors and begin healing. So these days, you could say that my body and I have mostly suspended our hostilities; a truce has been named. There’s a whole other episode in here about what pregnancy and childbirth and living with an autoimmune disease do to your body image, good and bad, so I’ll spare you, but this week, when I turned the big 4-0 on Tuesday, I found myself in a pilates class of all places, being asked to pay attention again to my body. Trying not to look her directly in the eye and yet longing to love her fully, just the way she is. Wondering if that was even possible.
As I stared at the ceiling in the dim studio, the teacher’s gentle voice explained with patience what combinations of simple movements to do, and I instantly liked this pilates thing because most of the exercises involved lying down. Even though I was a little uncomfortable initially, I let my body relax into it. I thought about all we’d been through, the two of us. The exercises gently invited my twice-cut c-section spot to wake up, I felt the scar tissue stretch. As the teacher invited us to open the front channel of our body, with each breath to look for strength deeper and deeper, I felt the buried muscles of my core, muscles I hadn’t noticed in decades, I felt them firing; the reformers gentle rocking shook them awake from some deep slumber. And that’s when something in me shifted.
The word core has origins in the French word for heart. When I read that this week, it made sudden sense. The core is the heart of the body. And I don’t know how else to describe it, but that day in Pilates, I somehow felt like I was tending to my body’s heart.
The tears ran down the sides of my face and onto the cushions of the machine. I tried to hold it together (who cries in a Pilates class??), but I felt such a rush of deep empathy and compassion for myself; the emotion was palpable. I wasn’t so much being reformed as I was being reborn.
Listen, this isn’t an ad for Pilates. Although I do highly recommend you give it a try. Haha, It’s just a reminder that you are an artist, a person inside a body, and your body deserves your respect and compassion; it deserves to be tended to. This time of year, we get so many messages about our bodies. Don’t we? That’s what I know now at 40 that I wish I had known 20 years ago: being at war with the very thing that holds you upright is like sinking your own ship. Because no matter how much weight or how many inches you lose, it will never be enough if you are doing it out of hatred instead of loving kindness to yourself. And that’s the thing: the pilates workout isn’t easy; you lift your own body weight and balance and stretch in ways that take work, but what I learned is that exercise can be a gift you give yourself, an invitation to stir and strengthen your body’s heart, instead of just another way to make yourself disappear.
In class that day, it was like I was being introduced to my body again for the first time. A long lost loved one, showing up on the doorstep of your consciousness, a prodigal body, tired and weak, asking to be seen and loved and tended to. I felt I was being invited to love her again, and with each lift of the leg and quivering core muscle, with each inhale, I said yes. Loving yourself is spiritual work.
There’s something else I haven’t told you about why loving my body and myself is so hard these days. The particular flavor of my autoimmune disease doesn’t have one simple cause. They don’t know why my stomach cells are deteriorating so rapidly. But you know, one thing they mentioned could have caused it? Disordered eating. Gross oversimplification here, but I imagine it like this: You deprive your stomach of nutrients for so long, and one day, she makes adjustments to stop accepting nutrients at all. For the last year, I’ve wrestled with the guilt and feelings of blame for having potentially caused my current issues. It is my fault that I am sick. I brought this on myself.
Do you ever do this? The mental gymnastics of trying to make sense of bad things. It isn’t just the shame of not living up to some unattainable beauty standards, is it? For so many of us, it is more than that. Maybe you are at enmity with your physical form because it's proof of how you’ve abandoned yourself. It’s the evidence you refuse to see because it’s easier to ignore it instead of dealing with how we got here. Tending to your body’s needs would mean admitting the ways you believe you have failed and telling the truth. It means confronting trauma or pain. If you believe that you are what you eat… if you believe not giving up your aluminum deodorant soon enough is the reason you have cancer… or that your failure to think positive thoughts is why you caught that cold…I see these kinds of thoughts everywhere, in my self and my coaching clients… It’s like our body is just some secret shoe that is dropping just like they expected it would…you’ll pay for this, and oh, we are. We are paying for it in the form of numbness, weakness, disgust, and more pain. And so you punish yourself more. Through restriction or excess, through quiet hatred and insecurity or physically dangerous behaviors or just neglect, all the while, there are muscles in your core doing the work to hold you upright, even now. You are still here after all you’ve been through, and you are a miracle, whatever kind of shape or size or white blood cell count or b-12 level.
Our actions and even our thoughts make a difference they have consequences, AND it isn’t your FAULT. I won’t let myself carry that weight for one more moment and you shouldn’t either.. I realized in Pilates that these thoughts of blaming myself for my autoimmune disease were definitely not serving me. If our thoughts matter then those thoughts definitely aren’t helping me. It is just the same old war she and I have always been fighting. A new sneak attack across enemy lines; on the outside, we were working to make peace, but inside, I was still burning her down with judgment and shame. As I slipped my legs into the straps and lifted my own body weight. I thought, “Both things can be true. What we do in our body and what we think in our mind matter, AND each moment, I have a choice to love her or hate her. To accept her or to judge her.”
As my abs burned so deep within my core, I heard God saying, I made this body good, and it’s still good, even and maybe especially in its weakness. In weakness, you remember my capacity to make you stronger.” When we partner with our body, when we speak the language of breath and flex and skin and goosebumps and all ten toes on the bar, then tending to her becomes an act of remembering our belovedness. Accepting grace. Not earning it, not changing so we can be loved, but loving her right now, this minute. On that machine, I sensed how I was created with reverence and a beauty as deep as my weak and scarred abdominal muscles, a beauty that the world keeps trying to measure but can’t, beauty like a piston firing in an engine, turning fuel into energy, always propelling me forward even in weakness. That day, I met again for the first time, the soft animal of my body (as poet Mary Oliver describes it), and all I could think about was how I couldn’t wait to tell you about it, to invite you to meet you too, to love and tend to yourself, again, and invite you to accept the spiritual and holy invitation of movement, to let it make you more creative, more joyful, more imperfectly whole.
Kennan told me that beginning her creative work again after a long break started because of that walk home in the cold. In the safe and reassuring rhythm of her steps against concrete she was able to look at herself, her life, and her choices in a way she had been avoiding. That day in the NYC lamplight, she remembered her belovedness, the joy of staticy hair and seeing her breath, her spirit, the purest pleasure of being at home inside a body. So she painted that. And then she put on wigs and glasses and painted herself again. She rented high-fashion gowns, took photos, and painted herself in clothes that she’d never actually wear. She eventually was able to quit her job and find something that left her more time to paint. Through a couple of fellowships, she will soon be able to be an artist full time. Most importantly though, these self-portraits, this work of seeing her self, meeting her body there in it’s many forms, it has healed her. She said in an interview recently, “I wanted so badly to create a body of work, and when these paintings came forth I suddenly realized my body of work is an extension of my physical body. Each painting is an act of radical self acceptance and play. I think every artist does that in a way, even if they don’t paint themselves, there’s a little bit of each of us in everything we make, it’s all a self portrait.”
Kennan reminded me that tending to your physical self, learning to live in peace inside of a body, is the work of creative recovery; and of course it is.
In “The Artist’s Way,” Julia Cameron talks about what she calls the Zen of sports. How taking a walk can help you feel more creative, allow you to listen to your life, and she doesn’t say this directly, but she eludes to a core belief (there’s that word again) that movement is central to creative thriving. And that’s what I experienced that day in pilates. That’s what I believe Kennan felt as she walked to the train on that chilly night. Moving invites us into conversation with ourselves and something bigger than ourselves; it helps us on the spiritual path to accepting, forgiving, and cherishing our body.
Accept the spiritual invitation to move your body. Have your abs not burned within you? Tend to the core of your body in whatever way feels right today. Every glance in the mirror, whether you are a painter who does self-portraits or not, is an opportunity to accept and love what you see. When you create from this place of freedom and recognize your own beauty, it feels like anything is possible.
I’ll be right back.
Today’s listener question is a quick one from IG: Meredith what are some of your favorite gifts to give artists or by artists for the holidays? I have a couple of friends I’d like to get something small and love to support artists who are building their own business.
I love this question. It think it is a really important reminder to all of us to shop with intention this season if you can because it really makes a difference. I will put a few links in the show notes for folks I absolutely love supporting. One is my good friend writer kristin vanderlip who creates beautiful products. She’s got her journals which are called “Rest: a journal for lament” so really thoughtful gift for someone grieving this holiday season. She also has some lovely candles and other creative things that artists would love like creative date cards. I bought a couple of her original oil pastels, if you join her email list you can get notified when those go live again, they are so beautiful and available at a great price. I know it is sometimes hard to buy originals on a budget and I always feel so bad that I can’t afford large works of art by all my friends, but look for smaller pieces that you could put on your desk or book shelf, that are still an investment, but cost a little less. Other folks I love supporting are Sara Delighted Papercuts, she’s got this amazing game called the playdate deck which is full of fun improv games. But she also does papercuts on bags and tea towels and she even does commissions, so I have bought many things from kristin and sara and so those are two I would recommend.
Whatever you choose to by this season, think about putting your money directly into the hands of a working artist. It makes me feel so good when I do it, and brings me so much joy knowing a little piece of these amazing women lives with someone I love or here on my own desk as I type. Might seem basic, but use your holiday funds to support the actual human beings on your instagram feed and in your life, it’s a pretty great feeling.
Thanks again for submitting that question, reminder that all these links will be in the show notes and so check those out. There is also the link for you to email me and ask me a question to answer on the show including our voicemail number where you can leave us a message that we will play on the show.
Now for today’s coda
Amelia and Emily Nagoski in their book about burnout, describe the stress cycle something like this: imagine you are being chased by a hungry lion, you realize you are in danger and you run as fast as you can, until you get to safety. Where you rest in the comfort of a lion free environment. The cycle is alarm, resistance, exhaustion. They posit that most people in our modern day get stuck in the resistance step of the stress cycle for a few reasons, 1. We attempt to deal with the stressors (which are chronic and never ever actually go away) instead of the stress itself. We deal with the stressors not the stress. 2. Sometimes it is safest and most social appropriate not to deal with the stress, but instead stuff it down or act strong, this is very common with women, because..of course it is.. Now not all stress is bad, but these authors remind us that unprocessed stress leaves you feeling stuck. It becomes toxic and it leads to burn out…when we don’t complete the stress cycle, when we don’t run from the lions in our lives until we are actually physically exhausted so our bodies can truly believe they are safe.
So my question for you today is this, how will you complete the cycle? What Julia Cameron wrote about the Zen of Sports, what I experienced at Pilates, is confirmed in this latest science, when our bodies move we release more than persperation and lactic acid, we release the fear and the anxiety we carry from the lions that never seem to stop chasing us. This exertion of effort is like sending a telegram to your nervous system that you are safe, it’s reconnecting the lines of communication, however broken, however long separated you may feel from your body. And you what else does this? Creativity. The authors tell us that creativity too, especially when we name our feelings and create with emotional honesty, can help us complete the stress cycle, too.
Creativity and Movement work in tandem, and so here’s your invitation to reconnect with your body this week. Not out of guilt or from the need to change your shape or size, but in support of getting lost in the rhythm of your footsteps on the sidewalk, saying yes to the spiritual invitation of lifting your own body weight, holding her, accepting her. Just as she is.
That’s it for this week’s episode of artist’s for joy. It was written and produced by me, meredith hite estevez. Artists for joy LLC is a woman-led small business where we craft workshops, talks, podcasts, and performances that help people harness the power of creative expression to make their lives better. This podcast is free for your listening pleasure, and if you’d like to support the work of artists for joy, click the link in the show notes to buy me a coffee.
Todays music features cellos Erin Ellis performing works of Da’Albaco. Read more about Erin by clicking the link in the show notes. Our theme song is by Angela Sheik.
Next week I will be back for another musical meditation that will invite you to move as you reflect on some coaching questions around body image etc, so make sure you subscribe and follow wherever you listen.
Our next cohort for the artist’s way begins in february and so if you’ve been listening to this show for a while
Until next week, take good care.
Today’s sounds of joy is a little conversation I had with my 5 year old about jobs. She was wondering what all possible jobs there were for people to be. She even shares what she wants to be when she grows up. Enjoy.
[00:00:00] Merideth Hite Estevez: I when, when somebody asks me if I'm procrastinating, I'm just gonna like, no, I'm stewing in creative juices. Leave me alone, .
[00:00:08] Sara McMahon: That's right. Let yourself be open to that. The, the conduit for creativity that's all around us. You're always going and filling it with other stuff. You're not present.
[00:00:17] Merideth Hite Estevez: Right. Hello there.
Merideth Hite Estevez here, your host of Artists for Joy podcast. If you are new here, welcome. Today's episode is number two of the new series we started last week entitled The Artist's Oath Last week's episode, featured a full length one, all about this concept that I made up with the coaching client of mine Oath, writing for the artist, getting down on paper.
What matters to you, how you wanna. In your creative practice, the code of conduct that you have in your creative life, signing it, having a friend or colleague be a witness to all that, you are joyfully swearing in your oath. I turned that into a workshop and invited friends and [00:01:00] members of my online community.
And so during the rest of the month of March, we will be hearing the oaths from other artists for joy artists. Before I introduce today's show, just a quick reminder that April 21st and 22nd of this year, I am doing another round of the Artist Oath workshops on two different dates, so you can pick one that works best for your schedule if you have wanted to do some one-on-one coaching with me but weren't able to afford it.
Or if you are longing to connect with other creatives like you, click the link in the show notes to register. this week on the show we have a dear friend, Sarah McMahon. She is a classically trained actress with a tendency to fly by the seat of her pants, which is what her bio says, . I love that she is also a passionate improv performer and instructor who teaches others how to enhance their listening skills, playfulness.
Empathy, connectedness, and liberation from fear of failure. She [00:02:00] called me from her home in Seattle to tell us about her creative process and to share her oath for all to hear. Hey Sarah.
[00:02:08] Sara McMahon: Hi Meredith. How are you today? I am doing really well. How are you doing? I'm
[00:02:14] Merideth Hite Estevez: good. I'm glad to see you. Tell us, tell us a little bit about yourself and about your creative.
[00:02:19] Sara McMahon: Oh, well. Um, yeah. My name is Sarah McMahon and I am a paper cutter and I am an improviser, and I am a, an applied improv facilitator, which means that I do improv both for performance and then I teach it as a way to, um, connect with life skills as well. Mm-hmm. ,
[00:02:40] Merideth Hite Estevez: how do improv and paper cutting go together?
Like how do, which, which skills do they have in.
[00:02:47] Sara McMahon: Hmm. They are both so much about flow and mindfulness and being present and also so much about being okay with [00:03:00] mistakes. So, um, You know, both in paper cutting and in improv, uh, the creativity feels alive. It feels like you're connecting to the creativity and you, uh, might do something that might look outwardly like a mistake, right?
Like I might. Be cutting and right, like cut right into something that I really wanted to keep there. But I look at it and I go, oh, well maybe the art actually wanted to do something different. What can I do with it as it is now? Because paper cutting especially, you can't, if it's cut, I could glue it back on, but I really try not to, you know?
So once it's done, it's. Kind of
[00:03:43] Merideth Hite Estevez: reminds me of OBO reads actually.
[00:03:45] Sara McMahon: Uhhuh . How so?
[00:03:47] Merideth Hite Estevez: Well, because when you're scraping reeds, there's no putting, there's no putting the cane back on. And once you, like, once you scrape too much in particular parts of the read, the re it could ruin the Reid. But, but there's like, there's tricks you can use [00:04:00] by.
In proportions, in scraping another part to make the other part seem thicker, if that makes sense. So, yeah. Yeah. I, I never thought of remaking, like improv, like accepting the offering of what you get .
[00:04:11] Sara McMahon: Yeah. It really is. We have a saying in improv where we say, play the scene you're in, not the scene you wish you were in.
Right. And that sort of applies for in your art as well. Play the scene, you know. Play with the art. Sometimes if you paint your art is too thick and yet all of a sudden you end up with this gloppy thing that's different than it had looked like when you went into it. But then if you say yes to it, you can see a whole nother thing that starts to be created.
So it's the same way improv and paper cutting really have that in common, that really that ability to, um, see mistakes as gifts.
[00:04:49] Merideth Hite Estevez: Hmm. Yeah, that is, that is such a beautiful. Tell me about some of the challenges that you face creatively.
[00:04:59] Sara McMahon: Well, it's [00:05:00] interesting that, um, improv is completely a, uh, community-based art form.
You, you can't do improv by yourself really. It's not standup comedy. It all relies on listening, paying attention, connecting with other people, and paper cutting. Very solitary. It's just me sitting alone with a blank piece of paper for many hours and sometimes it can be tricky to switch my brain back and forth between the two sort of ways of being creatively.
Um, so that's one challenge, I think. And then just also trying to be, um, trying to continuously be connected to what I. Like my purpose in both of those art forms, right? Like partly I do them just because they bring me joy because I see a picture in my mind and I wanna cut it. Or I [00:06:00] think, oh, I wanna play that game and I go play it with some friends or something.
And there's also the piece of it that I feel like is about purpose and about how to use my art and how to use my gifts in a way that feels. Uh, relevant and, um, connective to the bigger world and, um, impactful. Yeah.
[00:06:24] Merideth Hite Estevez: One of the, the lies that I have had to stop believing in my, my music training was that it's like being multi-passionate or multi, multi-faceted is not a liability.
That that could be, that could be a gift. And so you've talked a little bit about how the, the art form. Speak to one another, but how, how does your, does your paper cutting, um, purpose and your improv purpose align?
[00:06:53] Sara McMahon: Oh, I think there are a couple ways. One is that I feel [00:07:00] like both of them. Because when I do sort of surrender to the joyfulness of them and they, they both bring me joy.
And then I think that allows me to bring joy to others and connectedness to others. I think that's a real, like, in and of itself that is, is valuable, that is enough to, uh, to participate in delight and joy and playfulness is, uh, is huge. And as I wrote in my Artis oath, which we'll talk about later, , I believe that, um, making art is powerful and is a form of resistance against, uh, a lot of things that, um, are in our society and our culture that tell us that it's not worth really much of anything.
So, um, yeah, that's what I can think of right now. Uh,
[00:07:50] Merideth Hite Estevez: what I, what I see in you as a friend and as a, as a co-facilitator is like a deep love for community and a deep connection with others across the Zoom [00:08:00] room and. in, uh, I haven't met you in real life yet, sadly, but, um, , I know that that is a really important part for you.
And so I wonder how, how you're able to find the energy and sort of the, the courage really to show up and be real in so many places and to share yourself with the creative community. Like, what's that? What does that feel like? And could, can you tell me about how you do value community in finding connect?
[00:08:30] Sara McMahon: Yeah, I, uh, I, I, first of all, I have a really, I just have a natural enthusiasm for learning and then also for teaching. So as soon as almost the second I learned something new that I just. Think is amazing. I want to talk to other people about it. I wanna, if I learn a new game, you can bet I'm gonna take it immediately to my class and start teaching it to them and talk about how it builds us up as [00:09:00] community or how it.
Um, how it helps us tune in more to ourselves, how it helps us tune in more to our listening skills, our, um, empathy, our playfulness, all of those things. And, um, so that's one of the things is that I, I just naturally am a, I'm curious and I'm excited to share. So I think that really helps. I have learned through the artist's way and therapy and, um, just a lot of years.
Working on myself that taking care of myself and as Julia Cameron talks about treating myself like a precious object, um, will make me strong. I, the, the self-care that I do, the way that I have learned to. Take care of myself and love myself as is, which I also, um, reference in my artist's oath, allows me to then, um, care [00:10:00] for and show up in a genuine way with others.
When I say no, I don't have that bandwidth right now, it allows me to say yes when I do have the bandwidth. So, um, that's, that's something that I really, um, take seriously. Yeah, and I, I.
[00:10:17] Merideth Hite Estevez: I've read your oath. I was with you when you were crafting it, and I think one thing that strikes me about the power of naming what matters and connecting with who we wanna be and naming how we wanna show up, right?
Is that then we can use it as sort of a calendar or a net to, to run things through, to make sure is this, is this aligned with who I wanna be and how I wanna show up, and what do I need to do? To, you know, to show up at this audition and feel prepared or to show up this at this group and be ready to share my heart or to be authentic and real.
Yeah. And I, I saw that come, come through in your oath. Tell me a little bit about what the process for you was like writing your [00:11:00] oath. You attended the, the very first workshop I ever did on it after the original Artist Oath episode, and I. What was that a, did you have to give yourself permission to go there?
Was it, when you heard the episode, were you just like, ready to write your oath right away? Like, tell me about that.
[00:11:17] Sara McMahon: Oh yeah. I was so excited. I, I can't remember. I feel like I had been kind of, Thinking about writing some sort of artist statement or something that sort of tried to encapsulate it, but this felt like so much more.
Um, it just felt bigger and deeper and more rich and it really was. Uh, Meredith, you really led us through, there was a small group of us and we shared the things that shaped us as artists. Um, Poetry and artists, and you had us think about people who we looked up to as artists and mentors and um, and we could, um, sort of grab things from their, from what they had put out into the world [00:12:00] from their art and uh, and then from each other and really encouraging each other and writing in, in bits.
And then it just was really a, um, it was a really, a great experience and I was, I was ready for it. And like I said, I had been doing all this work that it felt like, it felt like a really great opportunity to write a, a love letter essentially to my artist, to myself. And like you said, you know, I, I take it out and I read it, um, pretty regularly to remind myself, uh, it's sort of like the values.
You know, when you sort through and do your value stuff, like you're saying, like that's kind of a filter that you make choices through having your artist's oath there for you to look through, reminds you of how you really feel about yourself when you push comes to shove. Hmm.
[00:12:53] Merideth Hite Estevez: Can you read it for us now?
I can.[00:13:00]
[00:13:00] Sara McMahon: I believe that I am part of and a conduit for the creativity that is always flowing around us. I believe that I was created to create. I believe it makes a difference in this world to honor my creativity. I believe my creative impulse is inexhaustible. I believe art is a revolutionary act, rejecting the narrative of apathy, white supremacy, and scarcity.
I joyfully swear I will allow myself and others to fail joyfully and maintain a sense of humor about the ridiculousness and sacredness of the human experience. I joyfully swear to make art. Bad art, weird art. Art. I don't understand to sit in the chair or take the stage and make the art. I joyfully swear to accept my role as a teacher to cheer and support others on their artistic journeys.
I will treat myself as [00:14:00] a creation and not a problem to be solved. I will treat myself and my body with hydration, healthy food, dancing. Sleep, tenderness, coddling, spoiling, treats, and rest. I will love the body I live in, not merely tolerate it or wish it were different. I will say yes when I am enthusiastic and no.
When I feel drained listening to my gut, I will advocate for myself and protect my artist self. Always I will say, I will say yes to the offers as they are and not as I wish they were. I will name myself as an artist and make choices for my life that honor that identity. I will make space for myself and others to expand into our creative selves.
I will not limit my life as an artist to a certain number of years monetary threshold to hit or approval from those around me. I will have the [00:15:00] stubbornness to accept my gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. I will leave space. I will sit for the same lesson as many times as it takes to learn it with no judgment on myself or my abilities.
I will laugh at my own jokes. I will forgive myself a million times over.
I love it so much. I love, and I can see all these fingerprints from so many other artists. I see this part and I think, oh, that's from my experience in the artist's way with Meredith. And there's from I for I will Forgive myself a million Times Over is from everything everywhere, all at once. And I will laugh at my own jokes and thinking about the ways that improv impacted me.
And I see my parents in here. Mm. You know, and [00:16:00] I see my community. It's really, it's pretty, it's a pretty amazing experience. I hope you do it again cuz I think it's great for everyone to dig down and think about what do they joyfully swear, you know, .
[00:16:14] Merideth Hite Estevez: Yeah, I am. I am gonna offer it again. And that's, uh, you can read more details about that in the show notes,
[00:16:21] Sara McMahon: Yeah, it's, it's pretty stunning. I'm very, um, I feel very. Very tickled . Very joyful to have to have this in my, in my, uh, artist's toolkit. Good.
[00:16:39] Merideth Hite Estevez: Yeah. Tell me how listeners can support you. Where can we find you in your work? Where can we go and give you a digital high five? Uh,
[00:16:47] Sara McMahon: digital high five. Let's see. I'm on Instagram.
It's Sarah Mac Paper Cuts, and uh, my website is sarah delighted.com and I provide updates for everything that's coming, uh, [00:17:00] in the. Month or so on my newsletter, which you can sign up for on sarah delighted.com. And I would love to have you as part of the delighted community. It would be great.
[00:17:12] Merideth Hite Estevez: Love it. All those links.
We'll, we'll put them in the show notes so that people can just click and hit follow and click and enter their email address and all of it. We're all connected on the internet . Um, before I let you go, I'd love to ask you what or who I guess technically, um, is bringing you joy today?
[00:17:31] Sara McMahon: Hmm. Today, what's bringing me joy today is, um, well, this time with you, Meredith makes me very happy and, uh, I'm really excited to, I have a couple of, um, new ideas for paper cuts that I'm.
Percolating on sort of stewing in creative juices makes me really happy. Like before you sit down and start working on the project, but while you're still just kind of percolating. So that's bringing me a lot [00:18:00] of joy is thinking about some portraits that I'm gonna do for people as presents. And um, and I'm really excited about a big project that I'm working on with some applied.
So
[00:18:12] Merideth Hite Estevez: cool. I, when when somebody asks me if I'm procrastinating, I'm just gonna be like, no, I'm stewing in creative juices. Leave me alone, .
[00:18:20] Sara McMahon: That's right. It looks like I'm just staring outside into the, into the wilderness. But really, I'm. Creating. Yeah, it's true though. I mean, it's really true. You have to let yourself be peaceful and let the, let yourself be open to that big creativity.
Like I said, you know that the, the conduit for creativity that's all around us. Hmm. You're always. Going and filling it with other stuff, you're not present. Right. So,
[00:18:47] Merideth Hite Estevez: totally. I think, I think I did an episode, a musical meditation about how daydreaming is productive . So , it's, yeah,
[00:18:54] Sara McMahon: it's important. It's important.
I, yeah, I feel like we had a just big discussion about this recently, but Yeah, [00:19:00] you need
[00:19:00] Merideth Hite Estevez: to, you need to do a paper cut that says, uh, daydreaming is product.
[00:19:03] Sara McMahon: Okay, I'll add it to the list to give you some more
[00:19:06] Merideth Hite Estevez: creative Jesus
[00:19:07] Sara McMahon: to stew in . . Thank you Meredith. This was lovely. I always love seeing your beautiful face and talking to you.
Hmm. And uh, I love doing the artist's way with you. It's really fun.
[00:19:20] Merideth Hite Estevez: Thanks for sharing your heart
[00:19:21] Sara McMahon: with us. Yeah, thank you, Meredith.
[00:19:24] Merideth Hite Estevez: Thank you so much to Sarah for sharing yourself with us, encouraging us to feel the joy of whatever offering the world gives us and to play the scene that we're in. To say yes to Joy.
You can follow Sarah via the links in the show notes and sign up to her email newsletter to learn about online and in-person improv classes if you are in the Seattle area, plus you can buy some paper cut prints and other delightful products. All of the links about Sarah are found in the show notes.
Today's music featured Artie [00:20:00] Sun and Angela Sheik. Also, don't forget to grab your seat to the Artist's Oath Workshop so we can help you get creating with confidence and with joy. That workshop is April 21st and 22nd. Until next week, take good care.
Today's sounds of joy is a little improv game Sarah and I played at the end of our call. I think you can hear the delight in our voices. Enjoy. All right, Meredith.
[00:20:30] Sara McMahon: So bumper stickers is a game where we go back and forth each. Saying one word at a time and we're gonna do a very short little saying that would fit on the back of a car like a bumper sticker.
And when we feel like when we've got to the end of the bumper sticker, we're gonna stick our hands out and say, stick it. Cuz that means it's ready to stick on the bumper. . Does that sound good? Sounds
[00:20:52] Merideth Hite Estevez: great. Okay. Do you
[00:20:54] Sara McMahon: want me to start? Yes, please.
[00:20:56] Merideth Hite Estevez: Okay, great.
[00:20:56] Sara McMahon: Um, um, [00:21:00] forever is,
[00:21:03] Merideth Hite Estevez: Really long journey stick.
Stick it .
[00:21:11] Sara McMahon: Okay, you start
[00:21:12] Merideth Hite Estevez: one. Artists find that joyful creation begins with explosions of off love. Stick it. Stick it. Good. Your turn. Okay. Um, Hawk, if you love spaghetti.
Hello there, Merideth Hite Estevez here, your host of Artists for Joy Podcast. If this is your very first time tuning in, welcome, and if you’ve been around these parts for ages, then welcome back. This is one of our musical meditation self-coaching bonus episodes where I feature some of the music from the full-length episode before it and give you some questions or a visualization so you can go deeper with the topic. These episodes are meant to be little creative coaching boosters in your earbuds, so feel free to grab your journal and a pen, hit pause so you can answer a question I ask, or how about this idea? Share the show with a friend and answer the questions over coffee! How about that?
So last week’s episode was all about courage. I shared the 3 W’s that will help you become a more courageous, creative person. And each of today’s coaching questions will be centered around those…the Why, the Work, and the believing this game was designed to be Won.
But before we dive in, today’s music features a few movements of a piano sonata by Beethoven featuring pianist Raviv Leibzirer. Our theme song is by Angela Sheik. If you are a musician and have an album of original or public-domain music that you want to be featured on the show, you know I would love to hear it and feature you. Follow the link in the notes for how to write to me.
Speaking of the notes, you can simply swipe up wherever you listen to read these questions you’re about to hear, too.
After I read each question, I’ll share some music and give you some time to reflect. Try to be really honest with yourself. Read between the lines and even the words, like Claude Debussy or maybe it was Miles Davis said; in between the notes is where the music is…and sometimes there is more than what you are writing on the page that you are really saying. So listen deeply to all you are saying and not saying with these questions:
No.1: Name your why. What do you most dream of doing? What do you want your life to be like? How can your greatest gifts meet the world's greatest needs?
No. 2: Naming your why takes its own kind of courage, and so does doing the work. What is your current creative routine like now? Are you able to find a rhythm of consistent small acts of creative devotion and discipline? What are current obstacles getting in the way of you practicing your art form with consistency so you can feel that net of safety under you as you leap?
And finally, No. 3: Emily said something along the lines of “Zelda was a game designed to be won. The creators of the video game gave you a challenge, but in the end, they did want you to win, they wouldn’t have designed the game if they didn’t.” What do you believe to be true about the nature of creative work? If the metaphor of comparing it to a game isn’t helpful for you, what metaphor is? If you return to those questions around your way, do you believe that reaching your goals and living your dreams is possible? If you don’t believe that today, what roadblocks stand in your way?
I’ll be back next week with another episode. Until then, take good care.
My friend Emily is an oil painter; that’s her real name; you’re gonna hear from her in her own voice later in the episode. She attended her first art class at the age of 32. Her projects are born from ideas that she can’t shake, and all her life, becoming an artist had been one of those ideas…no matter how far she ran from it, the fact that she wanted to paint just wouldn’t leave her. She longed to lose herself in the deep focus of a creative endeavor, a mesmerizing feeling she hadn’t felt since childhood if she was honest.
Recently Emily was telling me about a competition that she’d entered. I was like, “where do you find the courage to submit your work, to throw your hat in the ring, to keep trying?” She said, oh, that’s simple. I get my courage from Zelda.”
“As in, the video game?”
“There’s a reason why they call her a legend!”
This podcast is from Emily.
It’s for anyone who needs a little boast of bravery
Its for artists who feel the impulse to hide their work away out of fear.
This show is for anyone looking to debunk that “tortured artist” stereotype, for those who want to believe that the creative life can bring us deep satisfaction, healing, and even joy. I’m so glad you’re here.
I’m Merideth Hite Estevez, and this is Artists for joy the podcast
SHORT MUSIC BREAK
each week I will share stories of artists seeking joy… We’ll explore how so many travelers along this The Artist’s Way have left us breadcrumbs—wisdom and inspiration that can help us stay joyful on the journey.
Today on the podcast, a topic that was requested by a long-time listener (You do know I take requests, by the way, right?) COURAGE. How do we cultivate it? Why is it an important attribute in the creative life? How do we become stronger and braver in the face of hard things? I’ll share one of the moments of my career as an oboist that required some major courage, I’ll reveal what Emily learned from the legend of Zelda, plus I’ll share some really inspiring words from listeners and give you something to consider this week, but first here’s some more music.
It was an average December night in New York City. I was practicing at a friend's apartment in the mid-thirties on the far east side of the island (this fact is important for reasons I will explain in a moment.) It was a few days before Christmas, the semester had ended, and I was practicing some music for a Christmas eve gig when I heard my phone ping. It was a text from my teacher at Juilliard. “The third oboist in the orchestra for the Girl of the Golden West tonight at the Metropolitan Opera has been in a car accident on the way to the hall. She’s fine but won’t make it here in time. Could you step in?” I looked at the clock. It was 7:23. The downbeat was at 8:00. I had 37 minutes to find black clothing (which I luckily had with me), my instrument (which was luckily in my hand), and get across town to Lincoln Center. This was that moment they always talk about, I thought to myself. That moment when the call comes in, and it's your chance. Was I ready? I had no time to answer that. I typed, “I’m on my way,” and sent it. Her next text described where I was to meet the personnel manager for the orchestra at the stage door, explaining that I would be escorted to my seat in the pit. She also said, “This is a live broadcast; it’ll be on Sirius XM radio tonight.” Gulp.
I decided to take the subway, even though it was not the most direct route. I walked/ran to Grand Central, and while I did, I breathlessly called my parents to tell them to turn on the radio. I grabbed the S train to Time Square, where I switched to the 1 and exited at Lincoln Center at 65th street and Broadway. (By the way, if anyone ever asks, the subway is almost always faster than taking a cab, except on weekends or extremely early or late hours, for your information. Subway is always better. Ask a cab driver. They’ll agree.) By 7:52, I was in the pit. I felt the eyes of everyone in the wind section as I found my way to the 3rd oboe chair. The lights blinked, alerting the audience to take their seats. The principal bassoonist who was behind me leaned forward, tapped me on the shoulder, and said, “Hey, you can definitely hear the third oboe part at letter M in Act II.” I frantically flipped to that page, but my teacher (I had one on either side of me, which was consoling) said, “Act 1 is first. Use intermission to look through Act 2. And watch the key signatures. You never play alone, so if we aren’t with you, you’re in the wrong place.” And then came the downbeat. 2.5 hours of Puccini later, I had made my Met debut.
When I started thinking more about courage this week, I remembered that night that I got that call in New York City and how I responded almost unthinkingly. As majorly scary and risky as it was…on the surface, it looks like sight-reading an opera with one of the world’s best orchestras live on the radio would take immense courage. And it did. But if I’m honest, sometimes being an oboist at all, being an artist at all, feels like a courageous act in and of itself. Doesn’t it? So I wanted to name that first. I got that call that I thought would change everything, it didn’t, by the way, it changed my plans for that night and a few other nights. But how about normalizing that the need for courage didn’t stop or start when your quote-unquote big break comes? The artist’s life takes courage, like playing the oboe takes breath.
I read a quote recently from painter Gerhard Richter that said, “Art is the highest form of hope” and this kind of gets at it. By doing the work in our creative endeavors, we believe in something that we cannot yet see, we hope for things to come, and so we must have courage in the face of uncertainty and fear, to move forward in spite of them, in the name of hope.
So how do you develop more courage? How do you become the kind of person who can stay the course in the face of hard things, who can answer all the calls when they come in and say yes to all the offers that the creative life gives?
Here are two things that have helped me step into more courage…what I’m calling the two W’s—the Why and the Work.
First, the Why—it is so much easier to live a life of creative courage when you are connected to what you really want, to what matters most to you. When you name your values out loud, express why you are doing something, and who / what / where you want to be, then you can make decisions more easily. I didn’t think twice about packing up my oboe and heading across town because that was why I was in NYC in the first place. I had come there to study the oboe, to become an oboist, and so of course, I would say yes when someone offered me a chance to do that, even though it was very scary. When you name and claim why you are practicing your art, what you want out of your creative career, and what values matter most as you do that, then courage is the force that catapults you toward your dreams. And stepping outside of your comfort zone, remember, will definitely cause the negative inner voices to begin firing, and so don’t think that just because you have doubts or hear those blurts that attempt to convince you you are not good enough, that doesn’t mean you aren’t on the right path, in fact, when those voices show up within you, it could mean you are finally on the right path because you are doing something new and different. Connect deeply with your WHY to cultivate courage.
Secondly, to become more courageous, we must do the work. We have to stay connected to our values to help us make decisions, but once we decide who and what we want to be, we then have to commit to taking small steps every day to actually get there. Show up at the desk or the instrument or wherever you do the work, every day, with devotion. There are going to be days where you feel like it isn’t worth it or it’s too hard, keep doing the work anyway, even when the call doesn’t come or the work isn’t recognized; hard work, consistency, and creative devotion builds courage. It gives you the wisdom to know when to step out into the arena, and your training, your practice, the gift you give yourself in the face of the immensely risky thing you are about to do—the hard work becomes a net that keeps you from falling.
To be more courageous, stay connected to your why and keep doing the work. There are many things we cannot control in our creative lives, but these two things are like weapons to defend yourself as we seek to rescue Princess Zelda from the evil Ganon, which brings me back to Emily, the oil painter. I’ll let her tell it:
“So I’m not a huge fan of screens and video games but as a young teenager, my family bought a Nintendo 64. And one of the games we had with Zelda. And this was a game that was part strategy (like a multilevel game where you’re going through different worlds), it took hours and hours and hours to finish this game spread across weeks, maybe even months, I can’t remember, but the one thing I think that that game gave me as a gift of an almost blind belief that there is always a path forward. And it may be challenging, and it may be hard to find that path or beat a certain level, but the game was designed to be won. It was designed to be a challenge, but it was designed to be won and I think that really gave me this idea in life that you’re going to run into problems. You’re gonna run into challenges, but the game is designed to be won, and as a visual artist, I can look at artists that I admire who have run the race in front of me and worked with galleries I wanna work with. They developed a style that I appreciate and I can see that there is a path forward, it may take years and years of practice and hours of hard work, but but there’s a path forward and that’s a gift. Obviously there are plenty of artists were talented, who have done excellent work, and they have not received recognition in their lifetime and that is the case… but I think that we do ourselves a disservice by not believing things are possible in the first place, that we have to start from this belief that there is a path forward, that there is a chance to succeed in the efforts. So believing the game is meant to be won is essential, but it really comes down to whether or not we have the courage to set out on that path and stay on that path. Keep going in the face of failure and setbacks. Courage is a game changer. It’s that thing that drives us to try again and I had to keep that belief going and in motion.
Even when you can’t see a way out, even when you have no idea how you are going to beat this level and go onto the next, the thing that separates us from others is the fact that we keep playing. Even when the phone doesn’t ring or you don’t win the competition, or the doors haven’t opened yet. Real creative courage is born from the hope that the game is ultimately meant to be won, and that, courage is the game-changer.
I’ll be right back.
I posed the question on social media, what is the bravest thing you ever did and boy, did I get some incredibly inspiring responses:
I have artist friends and followers who:
Have left toxic relationships, religions, chamber groups, jobs, etc.
They have struck out on their own, sometimes with young children and no family or money in their bank account.
They have undergone treatment for cancer or addiction, they have bounced back from career-ending injuries, and have gone on tour alone with a 9-month-old whew, props for that!
They have started their own businesses, learned to drive at age 65, they have climbed in and out of the grand canyon, and almost run out of water.
They did the incredibly brave work of reporting abuse, harassment, and worse when it could have cost them their lives and did cost them their jobs and their community.
They’ve bungee jumped and sky dived and took the long shot audition and joined the Marines. They’ve stood up to bullies, blown the whistle, and hiked the El Camino alone. They have moved to another country where they didn’t speak the language, and they have come out to their loved ones. They have stepped in to care for their daughter / father / uncle, who was dying when they had no one else. They have fought off intruders, followed that car, raised four children alone. They’ve bought and renovated houses and gotten sober and stayed in the marriage. They push past the fear to find a better life that aligns with their deepest values. They are incredibly brave. And so many of those who have done these hard things have prioritized their creativity in spite of all the barriers and challenges in our way. In fact, they saw their creative expression as something that sustained them when things got hard, not only a thing that required courage but a hope that carried them through the darkest times.
If you want to share your response to the question, what is the bravest thing you’ve ever done, or tell me what you think of the episode or give me a question to answer, click the link in the show notes.
Now for today’s coda…
The 2022 Fifa World Cup in Qatar was one for the books. (Ok, let me be real and stop trying to act like I even watch more than 3 minutes of it, but stay with me.) I read recently that the finals actually broke a record for the number of games decided via penalty shootout in a world cup tournament ever: and that number is 5. 5 different games went to penalty shootouts because the score was tied even after extra time. Penalty shootouts mean each team goes to the goal and takes a turn shooting, the best out of 5 wins. It is incredibly stressful. Suddenly the goal looks like cavernous jaws threatening to swallow the poor goalie. And you bet everyone’s eyes are on that player, who literally has a split second to decide. Jump left or jump right?
And so my question for you today is this…which way will you jump? We have to make the best call we can with the information we have at the time, and sometimes a ball gets by us. We cannot be all things to all people. Being a courageous, creative person means making the best decision you can, connecting to your why, and doing the work, but it feels important to say that sometimes we go right, and the ball goes left. Remember that quote by Roosevelt that inspired Brene Brown to write the Daring Greatly books? “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
In the end, the ball is heading your way, and you can go left, or you can go right. Which way will you go? Trust yourself enough to know that whatever direction you choose, it is the courage to jump at all that counts, that being in the arena, being willing to risk it all in the name of what matters most to you, in service to the person you are becoming that’s a goal no one can take away from you, regardless of the score of the game.
That’s it for today’s episode of artists for joy. It was created, written, and produced by me, Merideth Hite Estevez. This podcast is free for your listening pleasure, but if you would like to support the work of artists for joy, a woman-led LLC that helps creatives thrive, you can buy me a coffee by clicking the link in the show notes. If you enjoyed the show, could you do us a favor and share it with a friend, or as every podcast host says…leave us a rating and write a review in apple podcasts. Seriously this allows us to serve more artists, so thanks in advance for your help.
Today’s music features music of one of the most courageous composers of all time in my opinion, Ludwig van Beethoven. There was a piano sonata featuring pianist Raviv Leibzirer and a recording of the 5th symphony from the European archive. All recordings are licensed, and used with permission.
Next week I will be back with one of our musical meditation episodes that will feature some self-coaching questions for cultivating courage and put some of the music you heard today center stage. And, exciting announcement, in March, I am breaking from my normal rhythm here on the podcast to feature some listeners who I believe will inspire you with their courage, and give you a jolt of creative inspiration, more on that later, but make sure you subscribe and follow wherever you listen so you don’t miss an episode. Until then, take good care.
Today’s sounds of joy is a recording of something I did recently that took some courage. My friend Sarah Lewis (assitant principal oboist of the detroit symphony) and I played a concert together and we decided to crowd source a piece of programmatic music for two oboes. We had the audience write a love story, because the concert was on Valentines day, and they wrote a sweet tale of a young girl trying michigan cherries for the first time and falling in love with them. Then Sarah and I improvised the telling of that tale through music. Pretty fun and silly stuff. Enjoy.
podcast transcripts may contain errors
Hi there, Merideth Hite Estevez, the creator of Artists for Joy Podcast. If this is your first time listening, hi, hey, hello, and welcome! You have tuned into one of our bonus episodes that happen every other week. These bite-sized episodes offer you a chance to reflect more deeply on the topic we covered in the full-length episode before this one, giving you some coaching questions or an exercise or visualization to take the content and apply it to your own life. I also feature some of the music from the episode too for your listening pleasure.
Last week’s episode was called Shame resilience, and in it, I discussed the 4 steps towards becoming resilient to shame, per Brené brown. If you haven’t heard that one yet, take a moment to pause and go back one in the feed, so this will make the most sense.
Before we dive into a little creative pep talk for when you’re feeling shame, I wanted to share two listener comments from last week's episode I received via email:
One listener said: I listened as I talked myself into doing morning stretches –– which, thank goodness, I am motivated to do out of love and care for my body and its mobility issues, rather than shame. (I am very grateful my relationship to exercise got transformed in this way despite the chronic pain that led to this) Anyway, just a note of appreciation!
Thank you so much for listening. And this listener brings up a really good point–look deeply at the motivation behind your actions. Are you being motivated by shame to do something? Maybe that’s one of the reasons you don’t love it, or it drains you or burns you out. So thanks for that reminder.
Another person said: OMG, thank you for saying what you said. I am a fellow Juilliard grad who was deeply affected by what I like to call shame pedagogy. A way of teaching that using shame as a motivator. I’m working on healing from that and was so encouraged by your applying Brown’s research to artists. Feeling a little less alone. thanks
Whew, you are so welcome. It means so much to me when you write in, even just to say “me too” or that you found something meaningful. It helps me feel less alone, so thanks to everyone who shared and commented, and sent DMs.
Now, today I am going to give you a little creative pep, and share some things I am saying to myself these days in the face of shame that has been helping me.
Today's music features me playing oboe with Jani parsons on piano, as well as Amy Gustafson and Jani Parsons playing some solo works for piano, all the music of Claude Debussy. By the way, if you don’t know, we have a playlist of all the music we feature on the pod on Spotify so click the link in the show notes for that.
I will be back next week with another full-length episode; until then, take good care.
I want you to start by taking a few really nice breaths. Breathe out very slowly as you listen to this next part. If you don’t yet believe what I am saying, imagine holding my words in your open palms, considering them, and letting them invite you to listen to what they have to say.
You are not your mistakes or shortcomings. It might seem so clear to you how you have failed, or it may be murky and shape-shifty like an object in the fog, but however you feel about not having lived up to your own or someone else's expectations, let’s separate those feelings from a fact…you are loved and loveable. You are not defined by what you do or do not do. You are more than how you perform or whether or not people tell you you are amazing or if your work sells. That is not who you are. Your value is nonnegotiable and is not up for debate. It is already secured and locked into place, and nothing you can do can erase the truth about your belovedness. And if you are one who is often repeating to himself or herself… I am not good enough, or that thing I made or did was just not good enough; I want you to take a deep breath with me, and as you inhale, breathe in the truth that your value is not determined by your output. I know many of you who listen. I know there are folks struggling with job loss, relationships ending, infertility, and illness. It is hard enough to go through that, and then on top of the grief and loss and fears you feel around those traumatic events, you then feel shame about getting fired or not being able to make your marriage work or birth a child from your own body, and friends, first let me say that your pain and disappointment, resentment, anger, frustration…all that is valid and real. And you are not inherently flawed. Nothing is irretrievably wrong about your character or your playing or your body, or your creative work. Feeling BAD about FEELING BAD is serving no one and will not fix what you are facing; in fact, studies have shown that people who try to be perfect are actually some of the least productive people. They procrastinate or paralyze themselves with fear of not being good enough. So join me as I name the shame out loud for what it is, the lie that tells us something is wrong with us at our core, to release that so we can get down to the real business of grieving, healing, taking action, moving past the mistake to make things right if I need to. As you listen to the music, breathe out shame and breathe in love.
There are likely mistakes in the transcript. But NO SHAME ;)
Hi there, friends quick note here at the top of the episode to share that this one will feature discussions of shame, mental illness, and substance abuse. Reminding you– if you are struggling you are not alone. The Suicide prevention lifeline is available 24/7 by calling or texting 988. Now, for today’s episode.
My friend Claire, an old friend from Juilliard, and I were catching up this week after months of missed facetime calls. She had just come from the gym. When I asked her how her 2023 was going so far, she said she had joined a sports club reluctantly, trying again to get back in shape… then she stopped herself. “No, that’s not the right phrase.” She said. “Not get back into shape. I joined this gym because I enjoy moving my body and that act makes me feel strong and joyful.” And that right there is why Claire is my friend. She went on, “The hardest part about all of this is the whole locker room chatter post-workout. Women of all ages, standing in their skivvies, with all our creams and potions and hair straighteners and tools for attempting to make ourselves acceptable, offering each other our thoughts (sometimes completely unprompted) on what is working for us…”you know a quick steam followed by an ice-cold shower is good for your metabolism?” Or “when I get my protein and water intake up I usually feel so much better.” Claire sighed. She went on, “I don’t want to project my issues on these women. They mean well. They have no idea that I just stepped out of the suffocating shame sauna that was my dance career. How would they know that? So yeah, how’s your 2023 going??”
This podcast is for Claire.
It’s for anyone else who has recently become aware of the shame they are swimming in
It’s for artists who are looking for practical tools for self-compassion and empathy.
This show is for anyone looking to debunk that “tortured artist” stereotype, for those who want to believe that the creative life can bring us deep satisfaction, healing, and even joy. I’m so glad you’re here.
I’m Merideth Hite Estevez, and this is Artists for joy the podcast
SHORT MUSIC BREAK
each week I will share stories of artists seeking joy… We’ll explore how so many travelers along this the artist’s way have left us breadcrumbs—wisdom and inspiration that can help us stay joyful on the journey.
This week is the final of my three-part series exploring my words of the year. The last one, SHAME-RESILIENCE (technically a two-word hyphenate, but It's my year I can do what I want!) Oooohhh this one was such a tough one to write for me because it feels vulnerable. I will share some about what I am learning on the journey I have been on to become resilient to shame. I’ve got some practical tips you can take as an artist who wants to stop the shame cycle including a poignant story I heard this week about one of my favorite painters. I'll answer a listener's question about something. And of course, I’ll give you something to consider this week. But first here’s some more music
MUSIC BREAK
It’s funny what can trigger a memory. My almost five-year-old daughter got her first set of bunk beds from the Three Kings and the other day I was playing in her room and we decided to cuddle up together in the bottom bunk. Lying on the pillow, looking up at the slats from the bed above, that wood smell of new furniture, took me back to my own childhood bedroom and my own bottom bunk in the room I shared with my older brother.
I had this intense memory of looking up at those wooden slats, as a young kid, worrying. It was bedtime in the summer almost time for school to return, the light in our bedroom was beautiful, the sun hadn’t quite given up and neither had the summer break, but I think I could sense everything changing. I’m not sure what grade it was, probably 2nd or 3rd, but all I can remember is deep concern about being stupid. I remembered looking at those slats and thinking “What if there is something my teachers haven’t taught me that I’m supposed to know?” What if I was missing something? What if I wasn’t prepared or ready for this new grade, for life after elementary school? And I don’t remember consciously doing this but at some point in elementary school, I decided that the way I talked, my accent, was not ok. Something was wrong with me.
Lying in my own kid's bunk bed this week, made me remember being 8 years old and feeling what I now can name, as shame. Brene Brown (and by the way I am going to cite her work a lot in this episode because her research on shame is incredible, there is a link in the show notes to her latest book) She defines shame as: “intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.”
I somehow had gotten the idea as a kid that I was flawed. That there was something wrong with me. If you were my therapist you might ask, did someone make fun of your accent? Did someone tell you you were stupid? And as far as I can remember, no.
And speaking of therapists, let me go no further before I say…I am not one. Like I tell my coaching clients, I am a doctor…of the oboe. So the knowledge I share here is for solidarity purposes and not to diagnose or treat. So let this empower you to find someone who is trained and ready to help you deal with your shame.
As I look back on my training in the arts, my relationship with myself, and my journey towards creative joy…a common hurdle I run into is shame-upon-shame-upon-shame, it keeps coming up. This pit in my stomach that I am not good enough, not thin enough, not smart enough. Not that my actions need to be different or that I need to improve but I am somehow WRONG. I believe shame affects artists in ways that aren’t talked about enough. We so often equate or work with our identity and so when someone criticizes your work, which they are known to do if ever you share it, then, of course, you feel shame. The work we create is so often deeply personal.
And flash forward 30 years and you can find me lying awake in my grown-up bed worrying, still.
And so this year enough is enough. I am taking action.
Along with anti-hustle and resonance, my final word of the year is shame-resilience. And it turns out that through Brene Brown’s research, she offers us the 4 steps of shame resilience and so I offer them to you, each with a vignette from the life of an artist. Some of them real, some of them me, and some of them are conglomerations of people I coach or know. Because first and foremost, more than any steps, we need to know we are not alone. When someone says something is flawed about your art, of course, we are tempted to believe the lie that something is wrong with us. So 4 steps for being resilient to shame, per Brene Brown, brought to an artist life by me:
So #1:
Locker Room Trigger Point
Claire, my dancer friend who you met at the beginning of this episode, eventually found the words to say that the locker room talk of those women at the gym that morning had triggered her. It took her back to the way dancers chatted before and after class. It brought back all the feelings of needing to look a certain way. To be a certain size. To take up less space. And all of it came rushing back: the shame she felt for quitting, the way she believed she’d failed. The anger she felt for her teachers and parents for not only not seeing her eating disorder and pill addiction, but sometimes subtly and other times explicitly praising her for getting into shape. And yet, she longed to move her body again. And so, Claire’s shame resilience comes from recognizing shame for what it is–the lie that she’s not enough or that she’s too much–and each thing big and small that triggers those feelings. To see the trigger as a reminder of something that needs healing. So after the gym, she calls me. Or another friend or support person who can help her bring the shame out of the locker room and into the light.
#2. Understanding the Box
Jane is a horn player, the other day we were on a zoom call talking about creative recovery and she was asked, “What brought you to this group?” And Jane quipped, “As a female brass player, entrenched the classical music world, I am here as an act of espacing the box, the box we all feel stuffed into. I’ve been crammed into one all my life, and I want everyone to know that there is plenty of room outside the box. The second step to shame resilience is to be critically aware of shame…what it looks like, how it feels, but also why it exists, how it functions, and who-what-where it impacts. The practice of critical awareness is the second step to being shame resilient. And so climbing out of the shame spiral, whatever other boxes the world might put you in as an artist, but also looking around and becoming aware, critically aware, of exactly how the box was used to make you feel shame and why. Unpacking the box if you will with a trusted therapist, with those that love and support you. And take it from Jane, life outside the box is pretty great.
#3. Grabbing the Rope
I met Sam on the internet, it was her social media poems that got me. Her words always felt like she was handing me a rope and saying “here, grab on.” We became friends when we wound up in a coaching certification course together and coached each other weekly for 12 weeks. After that ended, whenever I have a hard day and feel that familiar weight of shame on my shoulders, It is her name that I type into my phone. It’s almost like one of those confession booths in the catholic tradition, “Sam, I feel shame. It has been 2 weeks since my last shame spiral.” And she listens as I say some version of the words: “I feel ugly, unloveable, and incredibly idiotic.” And almost always she’ll say back, “Now Merideth, that isn’t the voice of God.” And being a Christian myself, having lots of feelings about religious shame specifically, having felt like God was shaming me pretty much all my life, Sam’s words pull me out of my pit of shame every time. Wherever you are on the religious or spiritual spectrum, I imagine you have once believed or been shamed by someone who believed that shame is the way to motivate people. Allow me to remind you what Sam taught me. God doesn’t shame God’s children, that is something people do. It’s not inevitable or deserved or the only way you’ll learn your lesson, it’s not who you are or who you always will be. It is the shame that tells us we are worthless and rejected. And so step three of being shame resilient is finding a friend with a good strong rope to pull you out, by reminding that you are inherently, eternally, no matter what, loved and lovable. Connection sets us free from the bonds of shame, it allows us to climb to freedom, and we cannot do that alone.
#4. Say it with me now
Oil painter anna finishes about one painting a year. She came to me for coaching for a self-prescribed problem of paralyzing perfectionism. (how’s that for alliteration?!) We worked on ways for releasing the shame that was woven into her process, but I kept feeling like there was something she wasn’t saying. Finally in the third session, she shared that she’d never finished art school. “And I have no good reason why either,” she confessed. “I just couldn’t hack it. I stopped going to class, disappeared without a trace, and started binging. I didn’t even clean out my stuff from the studio.” After she told me, I think she was waiting for me to be horrified or judgemental. But of course, I wasn’t. I felt deep compassion and empathy. We sat together there looking at what she called the most shameful part of her life. After some silence, she said, “So it’s almost like every painting I start represents art school now. And the fact that I can’t finish it, it confirms all my fears, I am and always will be a quitter.” Friends the last step to shame resilience is speaking shame out loud. And so that’s what we did with Anna. We wrote some statements, that she believed with her logical mind were true, but couldn’t believe with her heart just yet. She practiced saying them until she believed them: “I am not my mistakes.” Say it with me now “I am not my mistakes.” And notice being shame resilient does not mean denying the part you played in things not going right or mistakes you’ve made or even very real guilt you feel about something. The goal is not to stop taking responsibility for your actions, to not care, because caring makes us human. The only people who don’t feel guilt or shame are psychopaths. Brene Brown says “If you put shame in a Petri dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence, and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in a Petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can't survive." We are not our mistakes. We become resilient to shame, by speaking the truth out loud.
So those 4 steps to shame resiliency were:
—Understand your triggers
—Become critically aware of the anatomy of shame
—Connection
—Speak the truth out loud to yourself and others
This year I am working on my shame resilience, I hope you’ll join me. This work isn’t easy, friends. But it is so, so, good. Turns out Jane is right, life outside the box, or in my case the bottom bunk, it’s pretty great.
I’ll be right back.
Today’s listener question came from an email I received: Any good responses/tips on social media boundaries and creativity? A constant struggle for me to keep reigned in. When I stay away, my creative mind works so much better. But then I hop on and get a few good things and then get fomo again. Thanks, IG JUNKIE
IG JUNKIE! Yes, social media what a time to be alive, am i right? So yes, I struggle with this too. Taking the shame resilience steps and applying them to this, what if we developed a critical awareness of how social media affects us and name it. Sounds like you do get good things out of it, but it also makes you feel shame around what you feel like you SHOULD be doing or ways you aren’t living up to some arbitrary unnamed expectations. So hone your awareness by asking, what ways does this affect me? What kinds of content do I find helpful and engaging and motivating? Are there ways to filter, unfollow, mute, etc accounts that don’t keep you in the right mindset? And here are your words right back to you…when you stay away your creative mind works so much better. Those are your words. So what are you gaining by staying? And maybe you need to stay to feel some connection to others, or to promote your business, etc. But give social media its rightful place in your life by becoming more critically aware of how it is affecting you, and by naming exactly, with as much clarity and detail as possible, what you want to get from it, then set your expectations and boundaries from that information.
Hope that helps.
Speaking of encouraging and empathetic content, I work hard on my social media to be that kin of account, so if you do find using IG in small doses is good for your creative mind, and you need some connection, you can follow me @ artists for joy. And you can dm me there or click the link or call our voicemail, both of which are in the show notes if you’d like to submit a question for me to answer on the show.
Now for today’s coda
In 1889 Vincent Van Gogh committed himself to an asylum in the south of France to be treated for mental illness. Initially, they confined him to a single chamber while still allowing him to paint using a makeshift studio in the room next door. Eventually, though, he was given run of the hospital grounds and it was there that he found the subject of as many as 15 paintings. The olive trees. In a letter to his brother Theo that he said he was "struggling to catch them…with they’re old and silver, sometimes with bluer in them, sometimes greenish, bronzed, fading white above a soil which is yellow, pink, violet tinted orange.” He went on to say the "rustle of the olive grove has something very secret in it… immense. It is too beautiful for us to dare to paint it." And yet he did dare. He dared 15 times. He painted those trees in every season and time of day. With women among them picking their harvest and the dark alps in the background. He evoked their blowing in the Provence wind, his brush heavy with paint, his signature strokes, one by one working out the pain and shame and melancholy, of his own inner twisty trunk. And painting those trees helped him joy in the sorrow.
So my question for you today is this…how can your creative practice be an act of shame resilience? Those paintings of Van Gogh, from the grounds of the psychiatric hospital, remind us that art helps us heal and sometimes healing looks like drawing the same tree over and over in different lights. Creativity helps us develop a critical awareness of our world, even as we struggle with it. When Van Gogh described those trees you could tell he could truly see them, greenish bronze, fading white soil, yellow pink, and tinted orange. So let us also use our creative practice to give us eyes to see, as we too search for the secret that only the olive groves know. Let your art connect you to others and to something larger than all of us, like Van Gogh’s olive trees remind me that I am not alone in my search for the secret of those rustling trees. May we remember that through our creative work, our place of greatest woundedness and shame can be an invitation to healing for ourselves and others.
That’s it for today’s episode of Artists for Joy. It was created, written, and produced by me, Merideth Hite Estevez. This podcast is free for your listening pleasure, but if you would like to support the work of artists for joy, a woman-led LLC that helps creatives thrive, you can buy me a coffee by clicking the link in the show notes. If you enjoyed the show, could you do us a favor and share it with a friend, or as every podcast host says…leave us a rating and write a review in apple podcasts. Seriously this allows us to serve more artists, so thanks in advance for your help.
Today’s music featured all music of Claude Debussy. Performed by yours truly on oboe, with Jani Parsons on piano, plus Amy Gustafson, Gerluz, and Ariana Falk on cello.
If you are listening to this when it comes out, our next creative cluster starts on February 7, so just a few more days. Grab your spot on our website is artistsforjoy.org/theartistsway or by clicking the link in..guess where…the show notes.
I will be back next week with a bonus musical meditation episode to help us practice our shame resiliency, so make sure you subscribe or follow wherever you listen so you won’t miss an episode. Until next Friday, take good care.
Today’s sounds of joy will hopefully make you laugh out loud as made me. We recently got a snow day and we all got a bit stir-crazy. You can’t see the video so you’ll have to imagine: my husband holding my son on one shoulder against his ear, like one of those oversized boom boxes from the ’90s. Of course, he is never ashamed to drop some rhymes. Enjoy
*Podcast transcripts aren’t perfect. I’m fine. It’s fine. Really… it’s fine.*
Hello there, Merideth Hite Estevez here. I am the creator and host of Artists for Joy podcast. If you are new here, welcome! This is one of our bonus episodes, they come in between full-length ones, providing some creativity coaching in your earbuds paired with some music from the last full-length show to help you find some time for meditative reflection as well.
So let’s dive in. Last week’s episode was all about my second (of 3) words of the year, that word is Resonance. If you haven’t heard episode 9 in season 3, the one right before this one in the feed, pause this and jump back one. In the episode, I explored this metaphor of resonance for a joyful, sustainable, and wholehearted creative life, and offered the idea that the opposite of resonance is resistance. That is a term of Steven Pressfield, author of “The War of Art”, and resistance is that pull we all so often feel towards keeping things the way they are… in my coaching practice I have chatted with many artists who are able to look at their resistance with curiosity, which is a must, by the way. When you say you want to do this or that thing, like get up early to write, for example, ask the question…what obstacles are standing in my way? Each obstacle is a point of resistance, and they so often have a lot of things underneath them to notice and that’s what today’s self-coaching questions will help you uncover.
Today's music features yours truly playing oboe, three romances by Robert Schumann, an oboe classic. This was recorded, let’s see, many years ago, when I was a student at Yale School of Music, a demo for some auditions. Since I was successful at that audition, I guess this recording was acceptable. The pianist was the very talented Jeanette Fang. I love this piece because when you do a little digging in Robert Schumann’s bio you’ll see that it was one of the pieces he wrote when he was experiencing, a ringing in his ears, tinnitus, I believe it’s called. And so this note A was ringing in his ears, and so his solution was to write a piece that would harmonize with the note A. And so this piece is written in keys where the note A fits right in. I think it’s perfect for this idea of resistance. What a great example of creating in tandem or collaboration with the resistance. Make it work. Schumann was a master of that, I would say.
As you listen, consider the following questions about your own resistance:
When you look at the distance between who you are and your dreams or goals, what would it take to get you where you want to go? What stands in your way? Write down a few goals and the resistance that shows up when you take steps in that direction, as you listen to the first movement.
Take one or two of the obstacles you are experiencing as resistance and lift them up with curiosity. What feelings, fears, or resentments are under them?
Lastly (and this question comes from Julia Cameron’s the artist’s way)--How are you benefiting from staying blocked? From letting the resistance stop you? For example, as long as that project is in the future, it can be perfect like you need it be. So you’re benefiting from being blocked because you feel safe and in control when you aren’t in the messy middle. How are your blocks serving you? How does the resistance benefit you?
Reflect on this or whatever else is on your mind as you listen to the final movement. I’ll be back next week with a full-length episode, until then, take good care
Transcripts are unedited! It’s all good!
One of my coaching clients, let’s call her Jen, is a ghostwriter for thought-leaders, entrepreneurs, and for lack of a better word, famous people who want a book and don’t want to write it themselves. When I learned about her work, I was so intrigued. What does it feel like to write 50K words and then have someone else's name on the cover? To pour your heart and soul into a manuscript and not be able to call it your own. As someone who barely got through the average group project in middle school, I could not imagine these kinds of huge creative partnerships. But Jen’s work lit her up in the best way. She found it so gratifying… helping people who do not have the gift (or time) for writing to be able to put their thoughts out into the world, to share a message that resonates with and helps others. To be a sort of bridge between important ideas and those who need them. And yet, as much as she loved her work, she knew she wanted so badly to create space to focus more on her own writing projects. Specifically, a book she’d been writing in spurts for years, her own story. She had managed to find a window of time off during which she’d planned to focus solely on her own writing, and maybe you see this coming, with full days of nothing to do stretched before her, she just couldn’t seem to make progress. She cleaned the house, organized her computer files, and did her taxes. She fell down many a research rabbit hole. She would lie awake with intense feelings of bitterness, and no matter how many journal entries she penned, she couldn’t get to the bottom of her stuckness. By the grace of google, she found creativity coaching, she reached out to me, and after a few weeks of working together, we explored the reasons Jen’s own voice had ghosted her.
This podcast is for Jen
It’s for anyone else staring at the ceiling, feeling stuck
It’s for artists wondering if a resonant creative practice is possible
This show is for anyone looking to debunk that “tortured artist” stereotype, for those who want to believe that the creative life can bring us deep satisfaction, healing, and even joy. I’m so glad you’re here.
I’m Merideth Hite Estevez, and this is Artists for joy the podcast
SHORT MUSIC BREAK
each week I will share stories of artists seeking joy… We’ll explore how so many travelers along this the artist’s way have left us breadcrumbs—wisdom and inspiration that can help us stay joyful on the journey.
This week, the second installment of my words of the year series–this week’s word is resonance. I will unpack what this word brings up and means to me, and I’ll share how Jen got past her creative block, with some concrete takeaways for us all as the year spins on. And of course I’ll give you something to consider this week. But first here’s some more music
MUSIC BREAK
I’ll be right back.
For today’s listener question: First I’d love to share a response from last week’s episode I received via email–this listener said: I appreciated the sentiment behind your anti-hustle episode, but I wanted to share my perspective. As the son of Latin American immigrants, I feel like the word hustle carries a different connotation for me. The “hustling” my parents did when they came to this country for example was the epitome of creative. They dreamed of a better life and they put rubber on the road and made it happen in amazingly resourceful and ingenious ways. So, as their son, I inherited this energy–this ability to “make it work” in the face of any challenges. So to me, hustling doesn’t feel anxiety-inducing or at odds with sustainability, it actually feels creative, energizing, and fun. So, I see what you’re saying about how you can overextend that part of yourself and lack balance, but I just wanted to share my two cents about how hustle can mean different things to people with different cultural experiences. Thanks for the work you do. –
Thanks so much to this listener for sharing that with me. He’s right. I do use the word hustle in a very different context and I appreciated that gentle reminder that there are cultural implications to certain terminology and that it can mean different things to different people. I really appreciate you pointing out that nuance there. And so, if you resonate with that listener, if hustling to you ignites a creative energy within you, then by all means, hustle away! That reframing of the word is actually really powerful for me because it shifts my mindset away from scarcity towards freedom and creative problem-solving, so, love it, thank you.
Also, I wanted to share a couple of your words of the year that you’ve shared with me since last week’s episode– David’s word is courage, and Tanya’s word is embrace. Theresa's words are an innovative, faithful movement. Lynnes are joyful creative and holy-spirit filled. Sara’s words are purpose, contribution, and creativity. I loved reading yours. I hope you’ve enjoyed hearing me talk about each of mine for 20 or 30 minutes each week. HAHAHA It is fun living with intention, isn’t it? If you wanna share your words or ask me a question, click the link or give us a call and leave a voicemail, that link and number are in the show notes.
Now for today’s coda
London’s millennium footbridge is a steel pedestrian bridge stretching over the river Thames, construction began in 1998 and it opened in June of year 2000. Londoners to this day apparently call it the wibbly wobbly because of a small catastrophe that occurred on its opening day. The bridge was built for as many as 5,000 pedestrians to cross at once, so imagine people’s surprise when only 2000 people crossing had the bridge swaying dramatically, to the point of near collapse. Each person’s gate began to synchronize with the bridge’s wobble, and this made the swaying worse. This synchronization of lateral motion caused by the footfall on the bridge is an architectural phenomenon called, you guessed it: “resonance.”
So my question for you today is this: as you create today, or put your work out into the world, however you are creatively vibrating…. what is resonating with you? And I mean that literally and spiritually. We can feel so alone in this work, can’t we? But when I play the oboe into the soundboard of a piano, I can hear its sympathetic vibrations ringing back, even when I’m the only one in the room. Every note I play makes even the most resistant things vibrate because vibration, creative resonance…it spreads and has a tendency to syncronize. So I believe that when we create, we set in motion a deep spiritual resonance that we cannot even understand, connecting to a higher power, or higher purpose, a force big enough to sway a bridge for sure and then some. By the way, they eventually added what they called dampers to decrease the amount of resonance of the bridge, so it is safe to walk on again, although it does still sway, as all good bridges should. But join me this year as I break the habit of dampening the resonance, the ripples, the joy that is close at hand when I am making things I care about. To trust the process, the myriad of mysteries, to let the the wibbly wobbly remind me of the power of my own footfall, of every creative action… how action in and of itself matters much more than creative outcome. To seek resonance in spite of the resistance, and fear, to get comfortable with the fact that I am uncomfortable, to keep walking in spite of the wobble. Hope that resonates.
That’s it for today’s episode of artists for joy. It was created, written, and produced by me, Merideth Hite Estevez. This podcast is free for your listening pleasure, but if you would like to support the work of artists for joy, a woman-led LLC that helps creatives thrive, you can buy me a coffee by clicking the link in the show notes, or you know another thing that helps if you’d leave us a rating and write a review in apple podcasts. Thanks in advance for your support!
Today’s music featured some oboe playing of yours truly, you heard music of bach, schumann,
We have some really exciting things happening around here…gave you a little teaser about book news and I can’t wait to tell you more about that AS SOON AS I CAN…but two ways we can connect are: sign up for my email list in the show notes and follow along on instagram @artists for joy. That is where I hang out most. And I love hearing from listeners.
Remember also we have an enneagram workshop coming up on tuesday january 24 and the next artist’s way creative cluster begins on Feburary 7. Those two things are filling up fast so grab your spot now. Our website is artistsforjoy.org. Where you can join the email list so you’ll get all the goodies and surprises and workshop announcements in your inbox!
I will be back next week with a bonus episode featuring some music from today’s episode to help you explore this concept of resonance and what that might mean to you. But for now, take good care.
Today’s sounds of joy is a clip from a day in the life of a musician mother of tiny littles. My son, is almost 2 and so his list of vocabulary words is increasing by the day and of course I had to make sure this word was in the first 100 he learned. Enjoy.
*Beware: Transcripts aren’t perfect!*
Hello, Merideth Hite Estevez, your host of the artists for joy podcast here! This is one of our bonus musical meditation episodes that show up in the feed between full-length ones where I put some of the music from the show center stage and offer you some FREE creativity coaching to help you find clarity, name what matters, and in today's case… slow down.
In last week’s episode, which by the way I recommend you pause this and jump back one in the feed if you haven’t heard it yet, it was all about finding harmony vs. hustle. Understanding that there will be marketing and hard work and pushing to a limit sometimes in the creative life, but remembering that there must be balance with that hustle mindset with one of harmony—and it’s that word we are going to focus on in today’s musical meditation, in a moment I’ll share some questions that will help you find balance and harmony in your life and slow down for a minute.
Today’s music features Marnie Laird of Brooklyn classical playing some Debussy and Brahms. Our theme song is by angela sheik.
Before we dive into the meditation, I’d love to share this voicemail I received from a listener (by the way if you want to leave me a voicemail our number is in the show notes for you each week.) Here’s what this listener said:
Hi, this is David, Love love loved the episode about anti-hustle I would like to be a member of the anti-hustle club. It’s important to market but we want to change our way of thinking about it so your podcast was so helpful for thinking of harmony. Seth Godin if you’re familiar with him, what’s it for, who is it for? We look at the how-tos and tactics too soon, I gotta put out a newsletter, we aren’t connected to our deep why, that’s part of it.
Yes, David thank you so much for calling in and leaving that message. He goes on to say that for him finding harmony means connecting to that deep why and not losing sight of that when we sell or share our work with the world.
I couldn’t agree more, David and so now I am going to help you practice finding some harmony, connect with your deep why, and release the stressful parts of hustle for just a moment
So find a comfortable spot to notice your breathing. If you think about it the human body knows more about harmony than we will ever understand. Without us knowing it is managing our digestive system, our nervous system, it is keeping our heart beating, our blood pumping, and so start now by working to find harmony with your body, through your breath. Slow down the rate of your exhale especially. Here’s an oboe breathing thing I do sometimes, breathe in through your mouth and when you breathe out of your nose, hold one nostril closed and push the air slowly out of the other nostrils, then take another deep breath in and exhale through the other nostril. Hopefully, you don’t have a cold or this could be problematic.
It might be easy to think that playing in tune, harmonizing well with others, in an orchestra or chamber ensemble requires the player to play softly and blend in with others by being less individual, but surprisingly that isn’t true. It is actually much easier to tune to a pitch that is full, resonant, and confidently placed in the center of the intended pitch. So remember this, finding harmony doesn’t mean you are becoming less than. It doesn’t mean you don’t care about the progress or the success, it just means you can balance your hard work and hustle with a sense of release, balance, and exhale. It means you stay connected to what matters most, and so are not pulled under by the weight of a single bad review, hard day, or creative challenge. Finding harmony in the face of hustle means crafting a sustainable, joyful creative life.
So as you listen to the music consider the following questions,
What is the current balance between your push to succeed and climb the ladder with rest and recalibration and restorative solitude? What needs to shift for you to feel more harmony, peace, and deep creative joy?
What do you want those who see, hear, and experience your work to feel or know? Do you feel or know those things yourself?
I’ll be back next week for another full-length episode. Until then take good care.
Podcast transcripts contain errors! Thanks for understanding!
My friend Ana, a poet, had always felt like the black sheep in her family. The third child of 5, all of her 4 other siblings had surpassed the very high bar that their late surgeon father had set forth for them. Two were doctors themselves, 1 was a litigator, and the other was a high earning investment banker. When Ana’s mother became ill, because her siblings were all so quote busy with their careers, Ana was tasked with sitting in hospitals and rehab facilities, she had taken on a caregiver role with reluctance. She wasn’t sure she could do it, she was not often the most calming, healing presence, she feared. She brought her notebook and her computer to work on her manuscript as time allowed, and as her mother was able, they would have long conversations about poetry and writing and art and music. One day, Ana’s mother grabbed her hand and said: you were always my tender one. You see all the poems we are offered in this world, and getting them on paper, must be hard work, but you, of all my children, were born for it.
This podcast is for Ana
It’s for anyone else who might need a reminder they were born for it
It’s for artists looking for a good dose of soul minimalism
This show is for anyone looking to debunk that “tortured artist” stereotype, for those who want to believe that the creative life can bring us deep satisfaction, healing, and even joy. I’m so glad you’re here.
I’m Merideth Hite Estevez, and this is Artists for joy the podcast
SHORT MUSIC BREAK
each week I will share stories of artists seeking joy… We’ll explore how so many travelers along this the artist’s way have left us bread crumbs—wisdom and inspiration that can help us stay joyful on the journey.
This week, the first of a 3 week series on the words I chose to live by this year. I am taking a week to explain why I chose each word and share whatever wisdom i am learning as the year starts off. And today, the word is Anti-hustle. I will tell you what I am doing to quiet the constant hustle culture messaging I get about my creative work, answer a listener question about morning pages, and I’ll give you something to consider this week. But first, here’s some more music.
My email account serves as the perfect metaphor for the battle I am fighting inside my own mind right now. Let me explain. Open your own email and go to the promotions folder and each one of those subject lines, they read like errant thoughts I can’t control. Anyone else? Things I think I need, questions I am asking myself. Noise about who I want to be as an artist, female, mother. I feel unsettled and squirmy and discontent, not to mention a little uninspired and distracted. And then I am tasked with writing my own marketing emails to you, my dear listener. Selling you on offerings I am making that I truly believe in, enjoy sharing with you. And writing the manuscript for my first book (no, I haven’t signed the book contract yet, thanks for asking…lol). Any fellow creatives out there as tired of talking and thinking about marketing as I am? I don’t know about you but I feel this call towards, what one of my fellow writers calls soul minimalism. I can easily unsubscribe to emails, but what about my thoughts, my life?
Coming off the busyness and sugar high of the holidays, the pressure to just get the thing for the person even if it isn’t quite right because you’ve run out of time. Or feelings of constant not enoughness that come with every sales pitch and the general push towards being entrepreneurial, not bad things, necessary, exciting things…but what they don’t do is help me feel sustainably creative, inspired, joyful.
For someone like me, someone addicted to a certain kind of success, juilliard and yale degrees, scholarships and awards, public accolades that remind EVERYONE how great I am, BLECH, someone who tends to make an idol out of that, it is so easy to let the siren call of entrepreneurship and commercial success lure me away from my truest creative self. And don’t get me wrong, making money off your art, being savvy at business, that actually can mean the difference between stopping or keeping going, being able to feed your family, pay your bills, and feel secure, those things affect your mental health, no doubt. But my first word of the year is anti-hustle, because there is something in that life that has not been feeding me. I have this deep desire to take a large black trash bag and toss the hustle thoughts out, to clear the way, to find quiet to hear a still small voice calling me back to who I was made to be. Reminding me of a worthiness that is not connected to my performance or size or potential for a 7 figure business. I believe that creativity, artistry can bring joy when we don’t ask so much of it all the time, when we aren’t hustling it into or out of anything, when we quietly, not so glamourously perhaps, show up for the work day after day. I don’t have a notebook to sell you, because you don’t need one to change. And knowing you, I bet you already have 10 that are a quarter of the way filled.
Someone wrote to me recently, it wasn’t the first email I’d ever gotten like this by the way, and she said “I really enjoy your podcast for what it isn’t about.” I was like, “Ok, tell me more!” and She said “every art podcast I tend to find is about entrepreneurship or being successful as an artist. Of course I have a lot to learn, but sometimes I just want to be quiet and think about what is going on in my head in relation to my art.” At first I felt a little worried, because I too feel this pull for some reason to be helpful useful in a way that is concrete and clear, the shiny listen to this podcast and turn your business into a success. But i have learned to love these messages because it means I have found my people. So here’s a reminder: being an artist, and look I know you may not call yourself that yet, but being an artist is not a title you get to earn by earning money or recognition. It is a way of life. It is a title that when you claim, it can help lead the way through the hard things, through the anger, through the druggery. Being an artist means what Ana’s mother said, Catching all the poems that the world offers us and getting them down on paper.
And listen I get while people might not want that job. It can feel vulnerable, tiring. Ana worried for decades about being the quote unquote “least successful” kid in her family, but sitting with her mother in the hospital, talking about the power of the written word, she couldn’t imagine her mother discussing her brother’s medical practice or her sister’s investment portfolios. Creativity connects to a deep inner tenderness in each of us, and when we get high on the hustle, we can become numb to the quiet power of it. And when Ana told me that story, I couldn’t help but think, being a poet, or doing anything creative, it doesn’t have to be your full time gig or your whole identity as a person, and honestly wouldn’t you want your doctor or lawyer or banker to value beauty, to understand the devotion it takes to play an instrument or create an oil painting? When we are obsessed with monetizing our creative endeavors, we can miss out on the truth that being an artist is a way of life–a joyful, simple, gentle practice that can change everything.
And so anti-hustle. As I run away from a hustle mindset, which one am I stepping into? As a musician, I think I’ll call it harmony. Understanding the reality that I am running a business, and harmonizing that thought with my business is based on something delicate and childlike and pure, that is my creativity—like Ana’s mother said, “seeing all the poems that we’re offered in this world, and getting them down on paper, is hard work.” Not the kind of hard work that requires a gimmick or an ad budget. It requires tenderness, rest, peace. Madeiline L’Engel calls it “feeding the lake”, when we create from a deep sense of connection to something larger than ourselves, we contribute to a pool of meaning that ripples beyond what we imagine or understand.
So, harmony over hustle. And so my friends, as you seek out harmony in your creative and/or professional life instead of hustle, remember to yield when needed, to pause the market speak and find places where you can connect to your real voice, regardless of how well it will sell. To unsubscribe for goodness sake. And if you find yourself identifying more with Ana’s quote unquote successful siblings, having denied yourself the title artist because you believed that and grownup jobs were mutually exclusive, then remember: being an artist requires nothing of you but openness, showing up. It isn’t too late to let that harmonize with whatever other things you spend your time doing. Being an artist is a way of approaching your life, not just something that goes on an email signature.
I would take what Ana’s mother said a step further, it wasn’t just Ana that was born for getting down all the poems the world offers. I believe we are all born for it, it is an offering we get to choose to accept each and every day. The bass note has already sounded. We all are called to harmonize, not just to hustle.
I’ll be right back.
Today’s listener question is one I received on a post on instagram. They ask: here's the thing: I truly believe in Morning Pages, but my mind races ahead and the pen is too slow. In fact, I was a medical transcriptionist (dental hygienist before that) and I type over 100 wpm. That is NOT to brag, but I've felt so "shamed" for not writing long-hand, that I gave it up. I prefer typing. WHAT do YOU think of my typing Morning Pages? I'd love to hear! All best and wonderment to you, Ann
Thank you for that question! I actually get so many questions about morning pages protocols. And while I hear that Julia cameron is pretty strict when it comes to the practice of writing 3 pages of long hand stream of consciousness writing first thing upon waking, I however believe that there are many ways to self-reflect and they all have the potent power to help you find clarity, peace, and creative inspiration. So here’s my answer—type them out! The pen slowing you down is actually part of the draw I think for some people, because it does require you to think slowly and methodically as you write. But if that is going to be mean you doing them vs not doing them, then by all means type. I would perhaps set a timer because if you are such a fast typer it might not take you long to fill through whole pages of your stream of consciousness. I think it takes most of us 20 minutes or so to write the 3 pages longhand, of course it depends on the size of your notebook and how big your handwriting is if the notebook isn’t ruled, etc etc etc. Here’s a good opportunity to harmonize instead of hustle. Make this work for you. The purpose is to witness your thoughts without censoring or judging them. If that is best done through voice memos to yourself, do that. If it’s typing, do that. Here i am giving you permission, whatever self-reflection practice works for you, whatever is going to keep you coming back for more, do that.
Hope that helps. If you have a question for me I would love to hear from you. We also have a voicemail you can call and leave your question in your own voice which we will play on the show! That number 302-415-3407. You can find that and the link for submitting via email in the show notes.
Now for today’s coda
Quick harmony lesson with your favorite music nerd. Put really simply, we have melody which is the sing-able part of a piece of music, and then we have harmony, which comes from the Greek word Harmonia which means “to join things up.” So harmony is added to a melody to join it with more than one note. When more than one note is played at once it is called a chord. And so harmonization of a melody, uses chords, which involve often 3 or more notes sounding in harmony together. But, and here’s the incredible thing, in order for the notes to sound in tune with one another, some of the notes must shift ever so slightly. In a C Major chord for example, that means a chord made up of the bass note C with an E and G…when the chord is in tune, the third (the E) must be ever so slightly low in pitch to sound in tune with the C and G. So, if you had a tuner and played an E in tune alone, and then an E in harmony in a C major chord, they would sound different. In other words, the whole of harmony is different then the pure sum of its parts. Notes are required to shift if they want to sound in tune in harmony.
So my question for you today is this…
In order to find harmony in your own creative life, what are you willing to shift? Or how about this question: what’s the bass note to which all other notes in your life are harmonizing? Maybe you have set up your whole life around a job or hustle you don’t even enjoy right now. Maybe you somehow started to believe that the outward signs of success the world puts forth dictate how you feel when you wake up in the morning. Finding harmony over hustle doesn’t mean you aren’t working to be successful in traditional and nontraditional ways, it just means you get to choose the balance. If we keep believing the lie that we can be all things to all people, denying the ways our unhealthy work life balance or toxic self talk are affecting us, sustainable creative joy evades us. A renewed, simplistic return to your artistic practice in its purest form could be just what you need to join things up. Not to make money, not to share with your audience (although you may share eventually), but to simple get down the poems that the world offers. To be creative for the simple joy of it. It’s not a flashy, marketable offering perhaps, but I happen to know it's a reverberation you’ll feel across your whole life.
That’s it for today’s episode of artists for joy. It was created, written, and produced by me, Merideth Hite Estevez. Artists for Joy llc helps creatives live their best life through one to one coaching, workshops, classes, and more. If you want to read more visit our website artists for joy dot org
Today’s music featured marnie laird on piano performing some of my favorite harmony writers—debussy, brahms, mozart, and beethoven. Listen to marnie in her group @brooklyn classical. Our theme song is by angela sheik.
This podcast is free for your listening pleasure but if you wanna support the show and the work of artists for joy you can click the link in the show notes and it’ll take you to buymeacoffee.com! We are up to 82 ratings on apple podcasts and the latest from this listener who said “wow this podcast oozes calm, warmness, and rest…that makes you feel inspired. After listening to this, i just feel so refreshed. I want tounqind and actually allow myself to be creative without feeling guilty! Highly recommend!” Thank you so much for that. Many people wrote in and left reviews for my birthday and I won’t read them all here but thank you so so much for that. If you haven’t left one yet, I will put the link in the show notes for you to do so, it helps us move up the apple podcast charts and find people who need artistic creative encouragement so thank you for your help.
I have a couple of really exciting things coming to you in 2023 one is another edition of our enneagram workshop, this time we are discussing how not all creative people are enneagram 4’s and how the personality archetyping system that is the enneagram can help you create with more joy. If you dont know what the enneagram is or you want to read more about the workshop in general, that link is there in the show notes. It’s being offered at an early bird price until january 1, so don’t sleep on it friends!
We also have another artist’s way creative cluster starting in february. We just wrapped up our most recent group this week and it was just so powerful. We have renamed the breakout rooms as break through rooms lol and had a blast so read more about that and register in link the show notes. That begins february 7.
Next week I will be offer you some coaching questions to help you find harmony over hustle, so make sure you subscribe wherever you listen so you won’t miss an episode. Until next friday, take good care.
This week’s sounds of joy is a little clip from our christmas celebrations at the Estevez house. I bought my daughter a uno deck and while she did let me explain the rules for a total of 30 seconds, she insisted on playing the game her way. Here’s a clip of that not pictured is me laughing hysterically at the confidence with which she enforced her made up rules. Enjoy.
Hi there, Merideth Hite Estevez the creator and host of artists for joy podcast here and this is the FINAL episode of the year, a special bonus for you to help you name how you want to show up to the new year that is just around the corner
Before that though…this is your last chance to get early bird price for our enneagram workshop. ALSO, you have to register for the next creative cluster around julia cameron’s the artists way is Read more and register by clicking the linksin the show notes.
. I am not very in to new years resolutions, if I am honest, it feels very adjacent to someone trying to sell me something…AND I also really want some things to change in the new year, ya know? I want to show up ready. I want to set new boundaries. I want to move my body more, i want to be kinder to myself and my children and husband when I’m stressed. And I bet if you listened to your own inner chatter you would pick up on some things you would like to change too. And listen, you don’t need to wait until the year on the calendar changes, so if you are listening to this way after the fact and it’s january 20th and you feel you are too late…go gently, my friend. It is not about a january 1 start, that’s not the important part, you can name your intentions for yourself ANY DAY OF THE YEAR. You can decide what matters most to you and craft a life of intentionality and expectation any moment you want, so why not try it today.
The last few years I have named A word or in some years as many as 3 words, as things a way to set my intentions, a filter to run things through as I make decisions. This practice allows me to have a direction that I am heading, a lens I want to use to see things more clearly, a kind of truth north to remind when where I want to go, to keep me from being pulled in whatever the dreiction the world wants me to go in.
So, I am going to take you through a little process I made up to help you find your own word or words of the year. I’ll give you some music between each of the question, during which I encourage you to get out your journal or the notes app on your phone and do some free writing and brainstorming based on the prompt. Full disclosure, I can’t even remember what my words were for this past year. I was in the throes of parenting a small often sick child and so this practice totally got away from me in 2022. All that to say, jump back on the horse with me friends…remember even a life coach, with all the tools for joyful creative living, can, well, struggle to stay clear about what matters most and to find time and energy to be intentional. So, I’m writing this podcast for me, lol but just know I am figuring this out as I go, too.
Before we search for the word of the year, let me share that today’ music features Alon Peretz on guitar, hans johnson, yuval vilner, as well as my new year anthem, Chin up by The Whiskey Wasps. Our theme song is by angela sheik.
Ok, so as we search for the word or words of the year, let’s start by reflecting back:
Go back and look through the photos of your phone from 2022. Looking back on the past year…what do you wish there had been more of? Here’s a fun question, regardless of whether you had a word or words of the year in 2022, looking back at the year that just happened, what would you say your word of the year might have been, based on how you lived? —I can’t remember mine, but I would say this year has been all about: writing, healing, and taking action. If you don’t remember what you did this year, (parents of small children, anyone dealing with illness, raise your hand?) Before we look ahead, look back.
Ok, as we look forward:
Answer this question with a stream of consciousness list–This year, regardless of my circumstances, I want to feel…. Write as many words as you can about how you want to show up in 2023.
Now go back through those words you wrote, and circle the ones that resonate most. Look especially for verbs or action words. Take the list of circled words and make a fresh list.
Lastly, sit with this longer list of words for a few days. Talk to a loved one about it. What activities, deadlines, trips, events are coming up in 2023 and which of these words will help you show up as you most want to, regardless of the outcomes or circumstances? Try to narrow the list down to the few that matter most. Share your word or words with me on IG on the post for this episode @ artist for joy so swe can cheer you on.
May this new year bring joy and love to you and yours.
Hello Merideth Hite Estevez, the creator and host of artists for joy podcast. This is one of our bonus episodes, offering a little creative encouragement and coaching inbetween full length ones. And today I have what will hopefully be a boost of joy for you–last week’s episode was all about finding joy in the waiting, letting your art or creative practice work on you—(if you haven’t listened to that I recommend you pause this one and go back one so it’ll make more sense).
Before I dive into the topic of the day, a few brief reminders. You have only about a week to get the early bird price for our enneagram workshop. Also the next creative cluster around julia cameron’s the artists way is starting in february! Both of those links you can find in the show notes.
At this time of year (christmas eve is tomorrow if you are listening to this on the day it comes out!) there is no shortage of music and theater and movies and art coming at you from every direction and if we aren’t careful, well let me speak for myself, if I am not careful, I am tempted to let this cynicism sneak in. This discontentment, probably laced with some anxiety, a heaping pile of judgment…and I can’t ENJOY anything. I feel like a spoil sport. I switch the playlist or change the movie or leave the room, and instead of feeling joy I feel lonely, dissatisfied, bitter, maybe even angry.
But as I shared in last week’s episode, I learned from my friend Clara that if we are willing to see it, to look up from wherever we happen to be sitting, and shift our lens to see the world differently, than we can feel joy instead of those things, and so in today’s episode, I’m going to offer you some prompts and give you a little exercise to try to help you get to a place of joy. I’ll also share some music that I featured in last week’s episode, that included Sarah Brooks on piano, and yours truly playing some oboe with Jani Parsons on piano.
First, I want to give you a little meditation on joy. What it is and what it isn’t. And, it feels important to say, there are theological, psychological and etymological definitions of joy to be read and discussed, but all I can tell you is what joy feels like to me…it feels like the most tender, sweetest, most poignant part of lots of feelings at once, and here’s the thing…even hard feelings are in there. For example, when I tear up at the end of that movie or cry happy tears when I hear children singing…here is what joy feels like…it feels like gratitude for being alive, like deep grief for the fact that life is so fleeting, sadness because I miss the people who are no longer here, but so happy and deeply satisfied by the fact that I got to love them. It’s like one of those huge bubbles that kids blow in the yard in the summer…joy feels airy and free and happy and effervescent but when you look closely in a certain light, you see a whole rainbow of colors in it even though it looks clear. I say all this so that you know I am not telling you to seek joy to escape from your very real feelings of loss, grief, pain, etc. No, to me, JOY makes room for all those feelings, in each of those joy tears, it includes the bitter and the sweet. And it doesn’t dress up pain as something it is not, it doesn’t ask you to stuff it, it lets it all show up. And so joy is something you can feel even in the face of deep sadness. Joy isn’t circumstantial happiness. It isn’t temporary pleasure. It can feel happy or pleasing, but it also acknowledges all that is hard about being alive. So when I ask you to feel joy, I am asking you to pause and feel your feelings, all of them, to let them come and turn the bubble around in the light and notice all the swirly things there, even when there are intense strong negative emotions that weigh you down, the joy can rise up, if you let it.
So, now, I am going to give you a few reflection questions and a piece of music, and a homework assignment.
I want you to pick a piece of art…and I would encourage you to choose something that is not your main art form. If you are a musician, choose film or a work of visual art, if you are a painter, then listen to the music I am about to share. But as you listen, I want you to consider the three G’s….that lead to joy, by asking the following questions of yourself.
For me gratitude is an on ramp to joy–so what are you post grateful for, as you let the creative product of someone somewhere, what does it bring to mind for you, what is most precious and important to you, and what are you most grateful for?
What needs to be grieved? Right next to your gratitude, you might find feelings of disappointment, pain, loss…in one hand hold the gratitude and in the other grief.
What goodness do you believe to be true? Regardless of your faith background or religious affiliation, I would argue that we all have deeply held beliefs about life. So take a moment and preach those things to yourself. Whatever is good, whatever is noble, whatever is TRUE, remind yourself of that now.
Let the art work on you, let it bring joy to the surface of your heart, let it call you home to yourself, to something larger than yourself. Hold the gratitude and the grief, and peer through the lens of goodness.
I will be back next week with one more bonus episode to help you ring in the new year. Until then, take good care.
Transcripts may contain errors. And I’ve got better things to do, so enjoy AS IS :)
My friend Clara, a cellist, wrote me a text the other day, it said “I’ve got a story for you…let’s call it the tale of two Christmas gigs.” She knew I love a text thread story, so she laid it all out for me—it was the best of times it was the worst of times, gig-mas season for a busy musician, one who’d been waiting for some confirmation that her career was moving forward like she had planned in spite of many unsuccessful auditions and job applications, feeling overwhelmed and a little dead inside ya know, like you do. And along came two gigs, that couldn’t be more different. The first gig was a regional orchestra pops concert, complete with sleigh ride and Christmas festival and Santa during intermission. But then the children sang. The lump in Clara’s throat appeared when they started in with let there be peace on earth. And the tears really started flowing when she looked up into the audience, and everyone, from the floor seats to the top of the balcony, waved their phone flash light back and forth from their seat. Suddenly the world seemed like a beautiful place again and the hope filled Clara’s chest and the tears blurred her vision.
The second gig was the one that had left her most perplexed and questioning everything she thought she knew about music. A director of a chamber music festival she performed in during the summer had invited her to play one tune at a dinner for the homeless in a church basement in the rough part of town. When she arrived and the door of the fellowship hall had closed behind her and the stench of people who lived on the street flooded her nose she wondered if she could do this. It wasn’t like she had something against them, she was just feeling so burnt out and tired and overwhelmed and uncomfortable. And yet when she’d started playing a simple arrangement of an ancient Christmas song with the clunky out of tune piano behind her, to her surprise, she felt it again…the same hope and peace and joy swelled up within her. When she finished she looked up to see one woman weeping and smiling and she applauded.
This podcast is for Clara
It’s for anyone crashing into the end of the year with a certain expectancy or longing
It’s for artists who need a reminder of the joy they used to feel in the simple act of creativity
This show is for anyone looking to debunk that “tortured artist” stereotype, for those who want to believe that the creative life can bring us deep satisfaction, healing, and even joy. I’m so glad you’re here.
I’m Merideth Hite Estevez, and this is Artists for joy the podcast
SHORT MUSIC BREAK
each week I will share stories of artists seeking joy… We’ll explore how so many travelers along this the artist’s way have left us bread crumbs—wisdom and inspiration that can help us stay joyful on the journey.
This week, our annual Christmas episode–some reflections on wanting and waiting. Why I believe we need to talk more about those two things than we do and I’ll share a bit about how I am managing my wanting and waiting during this very long journey toward being traditionally published. I will answer a listener's question about managing loneliness during the holidays and I’ll give you something to consider, but first here’s some more music.
If I close my eyes I can still feel the wooden banister against my cheeks. Craning my neck, cramming my 10 year old skull through the pegs as best as I could while I waited for my parents to give us the signal. My 3 siblings and I were made to wait at the top of the stairs until my dad had the camera ready to capture the joy of us running down the stairs on christmas morning (meaning the mad animal dash of children closing the distance between them and their presents) and I kid you not one year my dad left us at the top of the stairs waiting while he ran to walmart to buy more blank vhs tapes. (the nearest open walmart being 45 minutes away).
I don’t know about you, but even though the banister hugging days of my childhood are behind me, I still feel this sense of anticipation leading up to christmas, this longing for some thing I can’t quite name. Anticipation is really too positive a word for what I am feeling this year though, if I’m honest. It’s more like restlessness, impatience, frustration even. In my faith tradition, we celebrate what we call advent, that time leading up to christmas, of preparation… it turns waiting into a spiritual practice, which I like the idea of more than the reality, I now realize. The word “Advent” is derived from the Latin word adventus, meaning “coming.” As a kid I knew there would be a long line of gifts from santa at the end of that painfully long stint at the top of the stairs, as a christian I know that there is hope in the coming of a God WITH us instead of without US, that Christmas is good news. But in my creative life lately, I find myself waiting and waiting and waiting, unsure what will be found, I’m left wondering what kind of advent is headed my way. What will become of this book project I have been throwing my entire head into for well forever, what is coming? What is next? What exactly am I waiting for?
Even if you don’t make your living from your creative pursuits, you’ve probably experienced the leap of faith that is even a simple artistic endeavor. Julia Cameron said “leap and the net will appear.” There is a certain amount of blind audacity you have to have to take a blank canvas and even attempt to put a picture there. And at the start of a project you’re often rewarded with feel good chemicals in your brain, with a jolt of energy that comes with feeling motivated and ready and you can mark that moment clearly can’t you, the day you started writing, playing, painting. The moment you decided to get out the stuff and start doing the thing, but the middle, the end, these parts are much more nebulous. They are full of twists and turns and unexpected grief and shocking joy and everything in between and at some point you stop painting and let the thing dry and so you guess you are done. Leonardo da vinci is credited with the words “art is never finished. Merely abandoned.” And wow isn’t that dismissal. We sit down to make things we care about, we are brave enough to take the leap of faith and try even though we do not know when or how the thing will end, do we? And so we stop (maybe we don’t feel quite like we abandon it) but we stop, and then there is the waiting. We feel we’ve made a ripple in the fabric of the world and there is something we want but we can’t quite pinpoint, recognition maybe? We begin the wait… for it to matter to someone besides us, or for some confirmation that we fear deep down will never come, that we don’t want to entirely admit to ourselves that we need. We wait. At the top of the stairs, behind the computer, standing in the studio, the twilight shadows stretching across the quote unquote finished thing, maybe you find yourself asking… “Ok, so now what?”
The spiritual practice of waiting is something I started way before the first Sunday in December, in my creative life anyway. And in this most recent iteration of that process, specifically with this book I am writing, began what is to me a very long time ago. I want to avoid giving you actual numbers around how long because I don’t want you to compare your journey or read into a certain number of years or weeks or months, because honestly, to the artist, a day can feel like a century if you are waiting to hear back from some person who holds some key to your next creative door opening.
Many people have told me to be grateful that things are happening. Of course. Grateful to have had the opportunities I’ve had, if this book never gets published, that is still true. And so please don’t hear this as complaining. Hear it as solidarity, a reminder— waiting is part of the creative process, when you find yourself there, know that you’re not alone. Nothing is wrong with you if you find yourself there. If you find yourself wanting. So instead of judging this, I’m deciding to be curious about it…asking “what am I learning here in this waiting place.” As each book deal timeline gets pushed further down the field and into a whole other calendar year, what is here for me to learn? And for the answer to that I must return to the gigmas tale of Clara’s.
About the two gigs, one in a fancy concert hall and the other in a church basement, she said, “I was reassured after those moments…juxtaposed for me to learn from. I had really worried I was actually dead inside. So many years of fighting for a seat in some big orchestra, and just in case I thought I’d need a bright shiny stage and choir of angel children to remember music matters, why I love it, it was the dinner for the homeless that showed me that joy is much more simply found than I’d ever thought. Music, thank God, still works on me.”
So this story left me wanting to ask you…does your art form still work on you? Maybe in all the waiting and the wanting, one thing we can do is let it. Let it move you. Let it make you laugh or cry, let it take you home to yourself or something larger than yourself.
In German there are two different words for music—one is Noten which describes the sheet music or the physical notes you read, and the other is musik which is the thing that you hear or the thing that you make. And when we are wanting and striving and waiting our mind tends to be obsessed with the notes doesn’t it? Replaying everything we did, wondering if it measures up, so much so that we miss the music. There is joy to be found in creativity, in art, and so while you wait, I pray that you will let it still work on your cold heart, hardened by the stress of longing to make something great…it keeps us from making anything and it keeps us from enjoying anything either. Don’t miss the music for the notes. Clara reminded me, it doesn’t have to look a certain way. There can be beauty in places you least expect. I believe there is beauty everywhere, we just aren’t always open to seeing it at each moment. We can’t wait another minute to feel joy in life, even in the difficult moments, the beauty is there waiting for us, consoling us, reassuring us.
My husband the presbyerian minister reminded me of another thing about Advent is that it is supposed to be a time of waiting but also of preparation. So what if when we are made to wait in our creative life, what if we asked— what am I preparing for? What does the sacred pause I am being asked to take, like it or not, have to offer me that I may not yet see?
I know you want confirmation that you are good enough. That you have arrived. That all your work wasn’t in vain or wasted. That it mattered to someone. We all do. Sure the job would be nice for the security and benefits, the book would be nice for the advance money, but go ahead and admit..the thing on the other side of that creative advent is about so much more than that. We let our creative accomplishments instead of our creative practice, determine our joy. We keep waiting for permission or some outside confirmation to feel it, and I’m telling you this year, because I am choosing to practice joy here instead of waiting for that email telling me I get to write a book. I am seeking out all the beauty that is right where I am standing, it turns out it has been waiting for me too, in short, like Clara, I am letting the music work on me. Because what a miracle that after all this time, it still does. I’m living for the lump in my throat, happy tears, deep mirth moments in my creative life and since Clara pointed it out, I see that they are everywhere.
And so let me ask you, does your art form still work on you? When you let that beloved poem or work of art, when you let it in, does it still soften you, remind you of your smallness in the best way? I am letting this time of waiting prepare me to hold the book dream loosely, not because I don’t think it will happen or I don’t care, but because I have been doing this long enough to know that beyond this book, beyond this or that creative endeavor, is just more waiting, and if we are going to survive this life as creators than we can’t let the joy in this very moment pass us by.
I may not know you personally, yet.. But I can imagine whoever you are, wherever you are listening to this podcast right now, I imagine you have felt what I am describing, what Clara explained. You have been moved by the beauty of a work of art, you have felt your heart swell up inside you while you were performing, you have felt the tightening of your stomach or your throat and something someone dreamt up in their head has moved you beyond words. It has worked on you in spite of you, in spite of your inner dialogue or any outer imperfections. It’s worked in dark, dreary places where everything else seems wrong and even at high points of your life when the beauty is so palpable you can’t help but burst into contagious laughter. Maybe those experiences were what made you want to make art yourself. And friends, it's available, right now.
And maybe you are thinking…sorry but not for me. I played gigs eerily similar to Clara this year and I felt nothing. Maybe you believe you’re too cynical, burnout, creatively dry, full of grief and bitterness. You feel impervious to children singing or holiday anything and to you I would say: rest. Let the rest prepare you for whatever is ahead, keep sprinkling the beauty over your hard heart like you would the salt on your front steps, let it melt you, let it work on you.
So in the wanting and the waiting, let the little cell phone lights twinkling from the balcony or the feel of a calloused hand belonging to a woman with tears in her eyes, let them reassure you… advents are ripe with joy, if you are willing to look up.
I’ll be right back.
Today’s listener mail came from a listener on instagram
She wrote, “Hi there Merideth I am a single woman in my 30’s and the holidays are like a minefield of relatives asking about my dating status followed by a very long week between christmas and new years. I dread it because while I love my family and having some time off of work, I feel like my own mind gets in the way. I let people’s sly comments get to me and then I ruminate on them for the whole week I am off. I guess you could say I am lonely but I am also salty about how the people in my life treat me. Basically, being single at the holidays is hard and so i’m wondering if you have any tips for making this christmas more joyful. Thanks in advance for your help. –Sleepless in seattle
Ok, first of all, love that movie. Nora Ephron’s best in my opinion. But oh girl I feel you. I was the last person in my family to get married and the holidays were triggering for sure, and lonely. So here’s is what helped me, and honestly this goes for anyone struggling this time of year. First thing, set boundaries when needed. If there is something you really don’t want to talk about for example, try this tactic… call your mom/dad/sister/uncle ahead of time and share “hey, I am so excited about seeing you soon. I wanted to ask you for a favor. I always feel like you ask a lot of questions about my dating life or lack there of when I’m home, and, I know it’s because you want me to be happy and it comes from a good place, but I am calling to ask if we can discuss other things instead. I have some really exciting things happening with blank blank blank, that I am looking forward to sharing with you. When you keep bringing my singleness instead of talking about other things in my life, I feel disregarded and disrespected. Thanks so much. BAM. And if that’s a bit much in your opinion, when they bring it up, say really directly, “I am not sharing details about my dating life, but I would love to tell you about what else is going on with me.” And then have a few things locked and loaded that you feel comfortable sharing. Swift change of subject, recognizing that it comes from a good place (assuming that it does, even when it very much does not feel like it) and have a few things ready to ask them about in their life. AND PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT. Here are just a few things not to ask people during holiday gatherings—-ARE YOU DATING ANYONE? ARE YOU PREGNANT? ARE YOU GOING TO HAVE KIDS? ARE YOU GOING TO HAVE ANOTHER KID? No matter how well you think you know someone, do not do it. While I am at it…I would also avoid commenting on their appearance. Don’t say, wow you have lost weight. Or You look happy (while patting their belly). Don’t point out gray hairs or wrinkles. Just, don’t, people. Ask them good questions that begin with what or how. How is life? What is keeping you busy these days? What do you enjoy most about the life stage that you are in? Etc etc. Interview someone and listen deeply to their answers. Nothing probing. Nothing gossiping. Keep it kind.
Ok, and then, my dear sleepless in seattle, the loneliness question. The treacherous week between christmas and new years. Here is what I would do. Make some plans. Don’t make yourself crazy busy, but book one or two things to function as pillars in your week so it isn’t just 7 full days of free time. Do a friends christmas dinner, go look at christmas lights with some folks, don’t just hang out with people with young children or other family gatherings, go see that movie you’ve been wanting to see. Take your inner artist on a date. Schedule a few things now so you have something on the calendar, and then make a list of how you’d like to spend what free time you do have. It really helps to have even one or two things on the calendar, it helps me feel less lonely. I am wishing you a merry christmas, free of probing questions and comments that stick with you. One last thing–to exit out of the rumination cycle, write down your feelings about things and throw them in the fire or rip them to shreds and put them in the recycling bin. Sometimes our thoughts just want confirmation that they are being heard. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you.
If you have a question you would like me to answer on the show, send me a dm on instagram at artistsforjoy or click the link in the show notes to submit via email.
Now for today’s coda
African Blackwood, also known as grenadilla or mpingo trees grow under a wide range of conditions in many regions in Africa - especially in drier areas from Senegal to Ethiopia, Tanzania, and even as far south as South Africa. It is a small tree, nothing particularly stunning about it from the outside, only reaching somewhere between 13-50 feet tall, with grey bark, spiny shoots. But, when cut open, you will see it’s value–the dense, lustrous wood that ranges in color from deep red to jet black.
African blackwood is perfect for making musical instruments, especially woodwinds because of its density and stability, it holds up to the heavy metal keywork, repels moisture, and does not crack easily. However, African blackwood trees are severely threatened these days, due to illegal smuggling and other unsustainable or unfair trading practices. Beyond the lack of fair trading, one reason behind their endangerment is the fact that it takes on average 60 or even as many as 100 years to grow a fully mature African blackwood tree to make an oboe, or clarinet, or bagpipe. According to the african blackwood conservation project, “blackwood is in danger of being over-harvested, which could lead to its eventual economic extinction.”
So my question for you today is this, are you trying to put an unrealistic timeline on your artistic maturity? It might be easy to look at the african blackwood tree and notice that it isn’t getting any taller and sit there and wonder or God-forbid cut it down too soon, and ask why the wood has not hardened…The outward appearance of the tree does not change much during the waiting period, but wow does the inside. The dense, jet black wood is being hardened under the bark and that isn’t visible to the naked eye, is it? And having owned many beautiful african blackwood oboes, I have held that heavy, beautiful, vibrant tree in my hands and moved my air through it and I am grateful for every year that tree worked under the hot sun to mature for me. I like to think about how every sunrise and sunset and dry summer and wet season is baked into the wood and so into the sound, into the music.
So what is this waiting period you are in, what is maturing in you? What if you are so focused on the harvest that you miss the growth? The better we become at tolerating the waiting and the wanting, the more we see these moments as part of the organic processes that we were built for, the more sustainable our artistic practice becomes. The trees have value even before they grow hard enough to become an oboe, and so you too are loved and loveable just by existing, regardless of your output, no matter how many days or weeks or years or decades pass, trust me, it will be worth the wait.
That’s it for today’s episode of artists for joy. It was created, written, and produced by me, Merideth Hite Estevez. Artists for Joy llc helps creatives live their best life through one to one coaching, workshops, classes, and more. If you want to read more visit our website artists for joy dot org
Today’s music featured the christmas piano stylings of my friend Sarah E Brooks, and my vocal arrangements performed by Melinda Decocker. You can stream their christmas albums on spotify, i put those links in the show notes for you to add them to your christmas playlist rotation. I also used original music by jakub pietras and wolf samuels and During the coda, you also heard me playing some on an oboe made out of african blackwood. Our theme song is by angela sheik.
This podcast is free for your listening pleasure but if you wanna support the show and the work of artists for joy you can click the link in the show notes and it’ll take you to buymeacoffee.com! We are up to 82 ratings on apple podcasts and the latest from this listener who said “wow this podcast oozes calm, warmness, and rest…that makes you feel inspired. After listening to this, i just feel so refreshed. I want tounqind and actually allow myself to be creative without feeling guilty! Highly recommend!” Thank you so much for that. Many people wrote in and left reviews for my birthday and I won’t read them all here but thank you so so much for that. If you haven’t left one yet, I will put the link in the show notes for you to do so, it helps us move up the apple podcast charts and find people who need artistic creative encouragement so thank you for your help.
I have a couple of really exciting things coming to you in 2023 one is another edition of our enneagram workshop, this time we are discussing how not all creative people are enneagram 4’s and how the personality archetyping system that is the enneagram can help you create with more joy. If you dont know what the enneagram is or you want to read more about the workshop in general, that link is there in the show notes. It’s being offered at an early bird price until january 1, so don’t sleep on it friends!
We also have another artist’s way creative cluster starting in february. We just wrapped up our most recent group this week and it was just so powerful. We have renamed the breakout rooms as break through rooms lol and had a blast so read more about that and register in link the show notes. That begins february 7.
The next two weeks I have a couple of self-coaching episodes for you to meet you where you are during the holidays. Next week will be a musical meditation featuring some of this week’s music, guiding you to reconnect with the joy for your art like Clara and I have been doing in this season. Some coaching questions to help you wait and want well.
And week after next, for our very last episode of 2022, I will ask you some reflection questions about the year and help you set your intentions for 2023. Don’t worry, it’ll be more fun and nuanced than your typical new years resolutions. So make sure you hit follow or subscribe so you won’t miss an episode.
Until next friday, take good care.
This week’s sounds of joy actually was sent to me by a podcast listener, (by the way please submit your sounds of joy video/audio to me if you have one. Would love to feature the joyful sounds of listeners, for sure) So, this is a listeners little violin playing daughter, finding joy in playing some beethoven, enjoy.
Hello there, Merideth Hite Estevez creator and host of artists for joy podcast here. This is one of our mini bonus episodes that come in between full lengthers where I offer you some self-coaching questions to help you find clarity and take action in your creative life. Last week’s episode was all about burn out…what it is, how we might keep it from happening or bounce back if it does, and many of you write in with comments of solidarity. One listener said: as someone so passionate about preserving passion for teaching for the long haul, I identified far too well with your self inflicted expectations. I see these tendencies in myself and pretty much every young teacher bent on saving the world through their chosen medium. Establishing boundaries and expectations are essential”
Thank you for that comment. So glad you found it helpful. And a few folks chimed in with thoughts about being in other caring professions or roles, like nurses or mothers or caretakers of their aging parents, and they said that setting boundaries was very important to not get burnt out. I am so glad that resonated. Just a reminder that we are having conversations about the episode over on instagram at artists for joy, hope on over and leave a comment on that episode, it was episode 6 of season 3 or send me a DM if you prefer to remain anonymous.
I am going to put some of the music from last week’s episode center stage so you can listen and I’m going to do it a little differently this week and have a piece of music for reach one, so I’ll share the question, you can listen and reflect, then I’ll share another and you listen, and then I’ll share the last one and you’ll listen. This way you won’t have to keep track of all of it in your head as you go haha.
My hope is that these questions will help you put into action everything we learned last week about burn out.
Today’s music will feature Dreaming by Amy Beach performed by Andrys Basten, Roxana Pavel Goldstein playing Dvorak, and yours truly playing some shubert I transcribed with sooklyung cho on piano, that’s a live recording for the record but I think it’s the perfect music to listen to while you consider how to rest.
Question 1: What are your expectations for your work, your family, your creative work? Take a few moments and write down what you expect of others and yourself. Where and to whom do you need to communicate those expectations to?
MUSIC
Question 2: What boundaries need to be set? It is so easy to answer that question retroactively isn’t it? When you look back on a situation that was painful or that burnt you out, you can see so clearly the boundary that was crossed either by yourself or others. But looking forward and learning from the past, what boundaries feel important to name now? Brainstorm the best timing to communicate those, and maybe even write out a piece of sample text of how you’ll word it when you say it outloud. Begin the sentence with phrases that begin with I—like, “This christmas I need….” or “This next semester I feel it is important that…” and practice taking up space with statements that begin with I.
MUSIC
Question 3:
Lastly, where in your schedule can you fit in some rest? If your first response is NO WHERE then zoom out. Can you carve out one saturday per month. One morning per week, where you actually schedule down time, leaving white space to recover, reflect and decompress. Keep the meeting with yourself. Set a boundary there, because rest is critical for all people, it is note something we have to earn.
I will be back next week with another full length episode until then, take good care.
MUSIC
My writer acquaintance Mary became a NY times best seller at age 40. Watching from across the internet, she seemed like one of the most expressive and creative people I have ever known. She was an illustrator, musician, and writer. Her life looked like one big explosion of creative joy. In passing at a writer’s conference recently, I heard her speak about how she was experiencing something akin to writer’s block. She shared that honestly writer’s block was too extreme a term. It was less of a block and more a subtle snuffing out of some flame. It was more like the calling to make something, anything, was just gone. Another term that Mary said people were throwing around for what she was experiencing was burn out. And this too felt wrong to her. Don’t people who experience burn out suffer from some extreme exhaustion? She didn’t feel exhausted. She felt blank, bored, boring.
This podcast is for Mary
It’s for anyone like her, who may be suffering from some inexplicable malaise
It’s for artists who feel the need to protect their creative impulse like a flame in the wind
This show is for anyone looking to debunk that “tortured artist” stereotype, for those who want to believe that the creative life can bring us deep satisfaction, healing, and even joy. I’m so glad you’re here.
I’m Merideth Hite Estevez, and this is Artists for joy the podcast
SHORT MUSIC BREAK
each week I will share stories of artists seeking joy… We’ll explore how so many travelers along this the artist’s way have left us bread crumbs—wisdom and inspiration that can help us stay joyful on the journey.
This week on the podcast, a frequently requested topic: burn out. What is it? How do you keep it from happening? And how do you bounce back? I’ll share a story of my biggest burn out moment in my career, plus I’ll share Mary’s remedy for all that ailed her. 3 tools or frameworks to consider for reducing or recovering from burnout, with a fun twist. And I’ll give you something to consider this week. But first here’s some more music.
I didn’t know it at the time, but at my first teaching job I set myself up for a huge creative crash. Burn out you might call it. My first two teaching jobs honestly. It took me so long to learn this lesson. My overfunctioning came from a good place, as it so often does…my desire to help students, or maybe the less virtuous need to impress people, who knows why else. It showed itself in a lot of ways: the main one being: I led a 7:00AM warm up class for all woodwind students every single day that school was in session. It wasn’t part of my course load, I wasn’t being compensated for it. I just knew early morning warm up was important and I knew it would help students to learn how to practice fundamentals. And in my mind “Someone had to do it.” (martydom complex amiright??) At the time, I was single with no children, I lived alone, and looking back it was shocking how easy it was to burn all the ends of the candle at once, and shocking that I perceived that it was expected of me (by whom besides myself,I am still not sure) and the 7AM warm up was really only the beginning. Answering emails all hours of the day and night. Taking my students' issues home with me, absorbing the stress of my colleagues and supervisors to the point it was hard to sleep or even take time off. I had headaches and neck pain that I couldn’t explain.
And the symptoms of this kind of overwork were more than physical, I had this deep spiritual numbness, confusion, doubt, insecurity and listlessness. I thought that if I worked hard enough and was excellent enough at my job then I would receive accolades and love and then I’d recover my creative joy for music in the process. Not surprisingly, I was seriously wrong. I hit a type of rock bottom creatively, and realized I couldn’t do it anymore, so I left my full time teaching job in higher ed, in search of rest or healing or something I couldn’t quite pinpoint. As I quit I fell into a spiral of shame, believed I had failed, wondered if my quote unquote career would ever recover. But the gift of my burnout as an educator was when the smoke cleared, I was able to started working through Julia Cameron’s book the artist’s way and it was the beginning of a powerful shift towards creative recovery.
Burnout can manifest itself in a couple of different ways, I’ve learned through my coaching practice. It can look like overfunctioning OR underfunctioning. It can show up as procrastination, an inability to focus, general malaise or listlessness, or it can look like manic productive energy, feelings of needing to save everyone, followed by a deep sense of emptiness when you achieve a long sought after goal.
Since my teaching days, I have worked hard to develop practical skills and tools for myself to avoid burnout again, to stay connected to my joy for making music and even teaching people things. And so I have 3 preventative measures to avoid burnout or if you are already feeling burnt out you I believe these 3 tools will help you right the ship, blow out the ends of the candle and help you find some sustainable, healthy relationship to your creative work.
If you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while you know my unabashed love for metaphors, especially musical ones, and so each of these 3 tools or frameworks to help with burn out has a musical metaphor attached. And if you aren’t a music person, don’t worry, I’ll explain everything.
The first tool for burnout is expectation…
Expectation is like the key signature of your creative life. The key signature is found at the top left corner of the music and it literally sets the tone for an entire movement. If there is a b flat in the key signature you can expect that every b is hitherto flat unless otherwise noted. I think where so many of us go wrong and end up burnt out is when we do not set our and others expectations accordingly. If you are a visual artist for example, who is selling your work at a holiday craft market or something, what can you expect from the situation? Before you walk into an opportunity like that, set yourself up for success by naming…what you are expecting, what you would like to happen, find out what you can control and release the rest. Are these expectations reasonable? Do you agree to them? Think long and hard about them, even simple ones. Name how you want to show up. How you want to be with others. Any musician will tell you that the key signature which outlines a certain scale a piece will be based on, it functions as a shorthand. It communicates a lot so that you are not reading every single note in every single measure but you’re able to zoom out and look for patterns. And even predict what is ahead in some cases. Naming your expectations is like that. It allows you to connect what is most important about something and make decisions from your deep core values. Sure somethings will catch you off guard like a pesky sharp 4 but that’s likely secondary dominant (ignore the music terms if you don’t know what that means) but setting up your expectations with yourself and others in your life helps you avoid burn out because it is clear for everyone involved what is required, expected, or needed. If you end up giving way more than was initially expected, then an alarm should go off in your head. You will know that you are operating outside of the key signature and doing that too long and you’ll wind up in a chromatic soup where you have no idea where home base is. With my teaching example, I set everyone up to expect an email response from me immediately. My students and more importantly myself, we all expected me to be there to warm up with him everyday, and it was a very hard pattern to break free from. I felt like I failed because of my own expectations. I had no choice but to crash and burn. Naming your expectations to yourself and others, is like settling into a familiar key signature, it makes playing the music easier because you know where you are heading.
The second tool is a close cousin to expectation and that is boundaries. Boundaries are like the bar lines of your creative life. Bar lines are the little lines that make boxes within music that makes the music digestible and organized in an again predictable way. In common time, where there are 4 beats per measure, every single bar will include 4 beats and a bar line is there to remind you. It is clear where each group of 4 starts and finishes, and while I’m going to try to avoid giving an entire lecture in music history, there is actually a hierarchy of beats within the bar. The boundary of the bar line communicates which notes are important and which ones are less important. See how boundaries and expectations go together? Boundaries are the tool you use to rein yourself back in when expectations have not been met or even completely ignored. Just like expectations work best when they are communicated beforehand, boundaries are handled much better when folks can sense the lines you draw as serious, important, and worthy of respect. When you’re open upfront and clear about the line. When my student was late to their lesson, I should have set a boundary and not allowed them to have a lesson that day. Instead I allowed them to come late and made up the half hour they missed at another time, which ate into my free time. Now, occasionally doing that and bending over backwards to go above and beyond what is expected of you, look, that’s occasionally fine. But beware friends, never setting the boundary and over and over and over going above and beyond the expected, it will burn you out. Setting boundaries is so hard, trust me, this is not my strong suit even now. But you know what is way harder? Being so burnt out you can’t do your job at all anymore. If you are in a position where you are around others who carry a lot of stress or have experienced trauma, being compassionate does not mean absorbing all of their intense emotions. In coaching training I learned the phrase—Observe, do not absorb. This might seem cold to you but it is actually kind because it allows you to avoid compassion fatigue. To be with people in their pain but setting a boundary around absorbing their suffering keeps you in the game longer instead of being completely sidelined due to burn out. Boundaries are actually kind if you think about it.
Because they feed right back into managing expectations. And it teaches others that they are safe and loved as they set boundaries too. You can expect that there will be a boundary set after each set of 4 beats, the music communicates a lot for you, you fall into a manageable rhythm. Setting boundaries gets easier when you see how it serves you and everyone in your life. And by the way there is a special type of bar line called a double bar at the end of a movement or piece of music and that assures everyone that they aren’t missing a page, that it’s really the end. So How clear are your boundaries around endings? Getting stronger with leaving toxic relationships, work environments, mindsets, setting expectations and following through, using clear boundaries throughout the process, if helps us end things well when needed, if helps us not get burnt out.
And the final tool I have for you for burn out is rest. And there are all kinds of rests in music aren’t there? Eighth, quarter, half, and whole rests. Mozart said “the music is not in the music but the silence between.” What if rest were not only relaxing, vegging, letting go, but what if you saw it as something as important as the creative work itself. In orchestra when your instrument is not needed in a particular movement, when you are asked to rest while others play it is marked with the word “tacit” and how interesting to me that the non musical definition of tacit means “understood or implied without being stated” like a “tacit agreement” etc. in other words, when we are tacit we communicate things with ourselves and others. It’s the ultimate boundary, to put down the oboe, the pen, the brush, and accept your limits, heal where you need healing, restore and renew your creative impulse. Rest is not something you have to earn, my friends. It is absolutely a central key in avoiding burn out. It’s where the music is. If you skip or rush the rests the music's rhythm will be completely off. And so will your rhythm as a creator. Mind the key signature, the expectations set by you and others, use the boundaries of bar lines to clearly denote where you end and the work begins. And lastly, rest. Rest in whatever ways feel restorative to you, but listen for all that is being said in the tacit moments.
Mary, my Writer friend decided the only way forward from her state was to take what she called a sacred pause. She didn’t start any new projects, she walked longer and more often, she waited it out. She read when she felt like it, but didn’t fake enthusiasm for what was next. She listened closely to what she believed she was supposed to hear and she got some sleep. She told me that she was resistant to calling it burn out at first because she hadn’t felt like she’d actually worked that hard. Sure launching a book was a lot but it was her dream! She had had very labor intensive jobs in the past that left her so physically and emotionally exhausted after 12 hour days that writing books felt like a luxury, and how horrible to complain as a ny times best seller that you feel overwhelmed or burnout how ungrateful. Friends, your feelings don’t need justification. What if the symptoms in your creative life…so feeling blocked, uninspired, bored, disinterested suddenly…what if they are trying to communicate an important message to you? If you’ll call it burn out or not, just know that your creative impulse is not some wind up toy that plays the same song on command. Creativity is a spiritual practice, and so of course you need to approach the maintenance and sustainability of it through doing the personal spiritual work. No one else is going to do that for you. Not your boss, your agent, your partner, your audience member or reader. You are the spiritual director of your creative life and so the work of managing expectations, boundaries, and rest are up to you alone. Last time I checked Mary is still inside the sacred pause, and I love that name so much. And of course, she’s been writing about it and I find those words some of her most beautiful and honest yet.
I eventually did go back to teaching, and when I started setting more boundaries I was able to explore other mediums, and eventually decided full time teaching was not for me at this juncture. If I had been monitoring my expectations and boundaries more back in my first few teaching jobs, I might have learned this about myself sooner. Like a child’s tantrum, sometimes our creative selves will rebel until we listen. I’m not really sure honestly, no way to know. But what I do know is that my perfectionism, quote unquote commitment to excellence, fear, shame around letting teaching go, not sure what else– these had been cacophonous noise that kept me from hearing some truer music from deep within. So what if burn out could be a call to some KEY change that you need to make? Will you listen?
I’ll be right back
Today’s listener question is from an direct message on instagram. They asked, hi meredith I love your podcast for many reasons but especially because of the way you use music and sound. I truly don’t know any show like it, most podcasts are people talking or interviewing and they are great too, but your show is like a whole new category of audio experience. I am wondering what inspired you to make something like that, how did you learn how to craft something like that? I am a writer and actor and I would love to synthesize my love of theater with a solo show podcast but I don’t know how to do that. The way your show does that with music makes hopeful that its possible. Do you have any shows that you know of that have done this? Any tips for how to think about this? Thanks for inspiring me and keep up the good work! –
Actor/podcaster in the Adirondacks
Aww thank you so much for these kind words. I really appreciate that. First of all it makes me feel really seen because this is truly my favorite part about podcasting. Create little audio worlds for people to listen to, a radio essay that takes them inside my mind a little bit but also helps them relax, reflect and hopefully be encouraged.
So first, this question of what inspired me…pretty much all of NPR. HAHAHA I am a big fan of the podcast radiolab and this american life. Radiolab especially was originally created by a guy who was a composer and so if you listen to some of the early episodes especially, the sound design is a WORK OF ART. It was through that show that I guess I realized that podcasts can be an art in and of themselves, and the storytelling of This American Life really inspired me too. The writing in all of these shows has had a huge impact on my writing style, especially writing for the podcast. So, those are two shows I would recommend you listen to FOR SURE because of their sound design alone.
As far as expressing yourself as an actor through your own show, I would encourage you to find shows out there that do it well. There are radio dramas out there, storytelling shows that feature dramatic readings of monologues, etc. Do market research and don’t be afraid to listen to really old stuff, see everything you hear as research, even if it isn’t about theater and acting.
However, don’t get overwhelmed by all the options and all the other voices in your ear buds. Spend some time reflecting about how you want your listener to feel when they listen. What outcome do you want them to experience? Ask the question that almost everyone asks when they purchase something or hit play on a free offering…what is in it for me? How do you want to serve your listener? Start there, and don’t be afraid to get started because you will learn so much as you go. Don’t wait for everything to be perfect before you hit publish, there is power in taking action, so do the research but don’t let it paralyze you from getting going. And when you do send me the show so I can listen and share.
Thanks so much for that question. And this answer goes for any genre you are considering exploring, maybe for you its a book or a musical composition or work of visual art and you are worried that the stage is too crowded or everything has already been said…you have something unique to offer, something only you can give, and so there is always room for you to step out here and be yourself. Don’t let the fear stop you. If you have a questions or creative conundrum that you’d like me to answer on the show, click the link in the show notes or email me artistsforjoypod at gmail.com
Now for todays’ coda
Anyone who has started a campfire knows about the fire triangle. Three things must be present at the same time for a fire to happen. Oxygen…which helps sustain combustion, heat…which raises the material to ignition temperature, and some sort of fuel or combustible material. Take any of these 3 things away and you will no longer have a fire. Reading up on fire safety this week I learned that the basics involve keeping the fuel sources and combustible materials separate and under control at all costs. When these three elements come together, Once a fire has started, the resulting exothermic chain reaction sustains the fire and allows it to continue until or unless at least one of the elements of the fire is blocked. Foam or a fire blanket suffocate the fire restricting it’s oxygen, Water lowers the temperature of the fuel. The chain reaction is stopped when one or more of the 3 fire triangle elements disappears or is blocked.
So my question for you today is this: what are the elements that keep your creative pilot light burning? I think we do ourselves a disservice mistaking the chemical reaction (or creative output) for our creative impulse itself. When we see the flames of artistic passion resulting in our work, what we are actually witnessing is a chain of events, a combination of certain elements that must exist in certain quantities and only when they do, when they are all present, does the flame ignite. We deprive our creative fires from oxygen and wonder why our flame isn’t roaring.
Your creative work is not your worth, stopping to rest and recalibrate does not put your lovability or potential in jeopardy. Fan the flame, my friends. If we all set better boundaries and think deeply about our expectations of ourselves and others, if we rested before we got injured or burnt out, if we practiced good creative passion fire safety, think of all the warmth we could offer the world? Your creative impulse will burn out without fuel, which could mean friendship, a pursuit of your inner artist, fun, joy, play. It will burn out without oxygen, a self-care that is deeper than bubble baths but likely involves doing hard things like therapy and facing your fears, and something to burn–prioritizing your time because making things matters. When you are creating from a place of scarcity, the fire dies.
So let this be a reminder that we each have our own flame to tend, because when we do, the most incredible things happen… a creative chemical reaction that is more beautiful and mysterious than anything we could ever imagine. As the author cormac mccarthy said, “Keep a little fire burning. However small. However hidden.”
That’s it for this week’s episode of artists for joy
Today’s music features Andrys Basten performing a piano piece by Amy Beach, Roxana Pavel Goldstein playing romances of Dvorak, and yours truly playing works I transcribed by Franz Shubert, oh and the Leeds chamber orchestra playing some handel’s music for the royal fireworks because I just couldn’t help myself. Our theme song is by angela sheik.
Our latest registration for the artist’s way creative cluster went live. Click the link in the show notes to register today and learn more.
And if you want to make my day you can go to apple podcasts and leave me a review over there, it would mean the world. Someone wrote one recently called “exactly what my writer heart needs” it said: This podcast speaks to my head and opens my heart. I feel lighter after listening, and I’m reminded that I’m a part of this big, amazing artist community. Thank you, Meredith, for putting this lovely work into the universe!”
You are so welcome and thank you for listening. We are up to about 80 reviews and my dream would be able to get to 100 before the end of the year. Can you help me get there? Click the link in the show notes, click 5 stars and share what you love. All of you who share the show with friends and fellow artists, I am so eternally grateful. Thank you from the bottom of my almost 40 heart.
I’ll be back next week with a creative coaching episode with some prompts and questions to help you get clear about your expectations, boundaries and rest. Plus I’ll put some of the music from this week’s show, center stage. Until then, take good care.
Today’s sounds of joy is a little recording I made a couple of weeks back on the way to the grocery store. My husband has this thing he does where he gets an idea for a song and insists that we stop everything and record it immediately so he won’t forget (he has yet to do anything with all these little jingle recordings mind you) but now being married to him for 6 years or so, these things rub off on a girl, so here is my new hit single, here we go to trader joes. Enjoy.
My friend Cate is a writer, entrepreneur who is also raising two little ones. Her weekly work flow is, well, not really a flow at all, it is mostly stops and starts. She shares the family duties with her husband and they work in the cracks during naps and after the girls fall asleep. That is, except for Mondays. Cate gets a whole day childfree. She usually goes to the library, armed with her computer and a packed lunch and gets down to work for a mostly uninterrupted 8 hours of work. Except, she realized recently…she couldn’t seem to get anything done, even when she was closed up without distractions in the library study room. Sure, she’d play catch up for a few hours and clear the inbox, maybe plan some social media posts, but it wasn’t a good use of her time, she wasn’t “flowing” then either, even with all the time laid out before her. She still felt distracted, anxious, and behind when she walked into the house at 5PM.
This podcast is for Cate
It’s for anyone else wondering why they can’t seem to make the most of their time, whether they have chunks or cracks.
It’s for artists who are wondering if there’s some secret to hacking their energy, to managing their work, to getting more done and staying joyful in the process
This show is for anyone looking to debunk that “tortured artist” stereotype, for those who want to believe that the creative life can bring us deep satisfaction, healing, and even joy. I’m so glad you’re here.
I’m Merideth Hite Estevez, and this is Artists for joy the podcast
SHORT MUSIC BREAK
each week I will share stories of artists seeking joy… We’ll explore how so many travelers along this the artist’s way have left us bread crumbs—wisdom and inspiration that can help us stay joyful on the journey.
This week on the podcast, our penultimate installment of our how to series–how to manage your time (and stay joyful in the process). This week I am sharing the most helpful insight I read recently for artists who are struggling with time management, which lets be real, is all of us. Plus I’ll share how Cate learned to find the flow when or wherever she was working. get ready to readjust your whole schedule, friends.
But first here's some more music.
I knew I wasn’t like other kids. One weekend I was home from boarding school and I was driving in the car with my dad. He had this thing he would do when he was driving you around, he’d reach out and grab my hand. Since I had left home at age 16 to go to a special boarding school for the arts, these drives to and from school, with my dad as my chauffeur, were special. He’d make me listen to his favorite classic rock station, he’d tell me about how he’d always wanted to play the guitar as a kid but that his dad bought him an accordion instead, and other stories he repeated constantly. Or sometimes we’d just ride in silence, hand in hand.
My dad loved me, that I knew. And this particular drive back to school, I realized that he did more than love me, he knew me. He said, “ya know, most people don’t learn what you learned until much later.” I said “What do you mean?” “You are improving so much at playing the oboe because you set your mind to it. Your mother and I had no idea that you would take the instrument so far. But now I am not surprised because I see how disciplined you are. You wake up and first thing in the morning you practice, you prioritize your music. It took me many more years than you have now to figure that out. You are more driven than anyone else I’ve ever known. I’m proud of you.”
As happy as I was to hear he was proud of me, there was a part of me that sunk when I heard him say the bit about being driven. He was right. And that was what made me different from others my age. I was what you might have called serious, or single-minded. And that felt complicated somehow, I think in that moment I was worried I was missing out on some other freer simpler way of life. A life where I didn’t obsess about my rate of productivity, or every result of an audition or lesson or practice session needing to be stellar, and perfect, and good. For God’s sake, I was 16. I remember having those thoughts as early as 12 or 13. This was before conservatory or Fulbright or Ivy league or Juilliard. So you can imagine how this mindset served me well, until, it…well, didn’t.
I had this way of removing obstacles and barreling forward, at whatever cost. And boy, it did cost me. It cost me my joy for music, in fact. If you’ve listened to this podcast for a while you know more about that big crash that came at the end of those years. And remembering this car ride with my dad this week, maybe a part of me knew that would happen. Maybe I didn’t have to learn how to be disciplined like he did, I had to learn how to let go of outcomes and enjoy the process a little more.
So what relationship do you have with managing your time? Are you like a 16 year old me–do you tend to worship your schedules, plans, planners, obsessively mapping out your days down to the minute and chaining the schedule to your ankle like you are a prisoner? Or, are you someone who goes with the flow more, but fears you are missing the mark on your goals and even when you reach maybe if you’re honest, you’ve gotten there through the unhealthy and unsustainable cramming?
I know from my coaching clients and creative friends that we have an abundance of tasks to do, creative and not so creative, and we have a finite number of minutes to do them each day. That is pretty much true across the board. And we have long term goals, like win an orchestral job or book a show in a gallery, but we are unsure about the steps for how to get there or if our day to day work is even heading us in the direction of our dreams, or any direction even, sometimes it feels like spinning in circles and going nowhere specific. Like dodging bullets or keeping yourself afloat, there’s no time for thriving or growing or even thinking sometimes. The creative life is full.
Back in season 2, episode 9 I did a show on energy, and I’ll link to that one in the show notes, if you haven’t heard it, it’s a good companion to this one. It talks about how time is finite, and energy is not. So instead of focusing on how much time you do or do not have, focus more on energy…stay away from tasks that suck your energy and build up those that give you energy, etc. That’s episode 9 in season 2, I’ll link to it in the show notes. That advice stands up, I work coaching clients through the energy audit exercise all the time.
But since then, I’ve been thinking specifically about creative energy, that if being disciplined and driven to achieve when unhealthy, can lead to injury or burn out or whatever form of unsustainability you may choose, then what is the alternative? And the question that I’m left with now having lived trying to maximize my energy levels as an artist for the last few years, is that frankly I can’t always control what I need to do when.
Try this little thought experiment: take the creative thing you do and now flesh it out for what it really involves. And put percentages beside each one. Let’s take oboe playing for example: playing the oboe is about 50% reed making and 40% practicing alone, 5% practicing with others, and 5% performing. And that isn’t even including things like, writing emails about gigs, promoting yourself, taking auditions, writing a resume, etc. Whatever your percentages are, there is likely a hefty percentage that is not something that particularly gives you energy, or even is creative. Oboe reed making actually takes very little creativity. It’s science, it is a craft. The most creative you get to be is which thread color you choose. So what other things go along with your creative practice that are not creative at all? What things go along with your work that you find energy draining, and yet, you can’t be a painter without cleaning your brushes or prepping the canvases you’re about to paint on? So maybe the first step is recognizing that when you call yourself an artist you are also an entrepreneur, a writer, a content creator, a CEO, a book keeper. And so no wonder we can’t manage our time or our energy. We just want to make stuff for goodness sake.
I discovered an essay recently written by Paul Graham, it was written way back in 2009, but many folks have written about it since then… I’ll put the link in the show notes so you can read it, it’s called “makers schedule, managers schedule” and in he discusses how the creative work flow is not best measured in hourly chunks like a mangers work flow is. He says “One meeting can throw the whole day off creatively.” EXACTLY. How many times have you had a whole day ahead of you and one zoom meeting at noon and just because that meeting looming you think, well, I won’t have time to get really into that so I better just wait until later and so you start answering some emails and suddenly its noon and you haven’t practiced. And then after the meeting is over you are longing to check off the list the things looming in your inbox and so you keep in a manager mindset until its 4PM and you are far too tired to make anything at all.
Graham points out that the world’s most successful people are functioning on a a manager schedule, and we makers, well we are over here in in a different time zone entirely. And so here is the first of the how tos for managing your time—change that language, stop MANAGING your time, when you are being creative, approach the time you have with a maker mindset. Makers need time to percolate, makers need an entrance and exit ramp, they need a flexibility that cannot fit into neat hourly appointments. Get better at listening to your inner maker, what does he or she need to do the creative thing? A change of scenery? A candle? A latte? It isn’t weakness to need or long for these things, of course little things matter to your inner maker. Are you trying to be a maker on a manager’s schedule?
My friend Cate, the one who can’t seem to feel in the flow on Mondays even when she has the whole day…she realized that she was approaching her free day like a manager, not a maker. She was holed up in a library conference room and what her make really wanted was to take a walk first, let her mind wander, and to dream. This filled her cup, gave her so much energy that she could work better in the cracks for the rest of the week. She resisted the temptation to check more things of her to-do list, managers have to-do lists, artists have ideas to explore…and instead she now calls Mondays, dream days. Days when she focuses on letting her inner maker play, explore, be curious. She’ll set some loose goals for the day, but she holds them with flexibility and gentleness. You might think it’s wasteful to use her full day with childcare doing these things, but check in with your inner maker, make sure he or she hasn’t been completely drowned out by that loud mouth manager that the world always validates and celebrates. And the amazing thing is that Cate is not only creatively thriving, but more productive than ever.
So the key to managing your time well as an artist is to take the managers mindset out of it, and start making with your time instead. You buy the planners and you sign up for the workshops for how to hack your creative energy, but what if it doesn’t need more structure, what if it needs more space, more play, more dream days. Protect your maker spirit, your creative impulse, find all the tools like timers and do not disturb alerts, and away messages on your email and social media and put the boundaries in place for your maker schedule so you can find the flow. And hey, there are going to be manager days. You gotta make a buck, you have to be an adult in the world, you have to in some cases run a business. But find the practices that help you transition, block off large chunks of time, and STOP CONSTANTLY CHECKING YOUR EMAIL (That’s mainly for me.) Remember that saying no to one thing means saying yes to something else. And don’t expect the world to approve of you carving out a makers schedule in a managers world. But you do not need their permission or blessing.
Bach when I was 16, watching my dad drive away after saying those things about me, after dropping me off, I remembered feeling worried. I think I thought I was nothing without my driven, disciplined, taskmaster personality. I worried it wasn’t sustainable to work this hard forever. Spoiler alert, it wasn’t. I worried about what failure would do to me. And maybe you have similar fears.
So how to manage your time? DON’T. Reserve your managing for things like your email inbox. Don’t see your creative time as something to be managed, but accept it as space for you to make in, big or small. Be a maker, unapologetically in a world of managers. You’ll be able to hear yourself and what you need, you’ll be capable of dreaming. You will actually know how near or far you are from your goals because you’ll find some perspective. You’ll fill the tank to fuel all the non creative tasks you need to complete on a managers schedule at another time, and you won’t spin your wheels feeling bad as to why you aren’t producing from the same impulse with which you reply to emails.
Try manager mornings and artist afternoons or maker mornings and manager middays. Carve out 1 hour and play on the page. This is oddly specific to oboe players, but don’t have your reed knife out fixing reeds when you are warming up. Listen to the sound coming out of your instrument and be present in whatever moment you are in. Make and leave the judgment for later. Notice your percentages, how much of your creative practice is manager and how much is maker. What boundaries do you need to put into place so you can switch between the two schedules or work flows? What are some on ramps or exit ramps that will help you shift between the two.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, the quality of your work does not correlate to the value of your worth. Being disciplined and driven did not make my father love me anymore than holding his hand made me any more his daughter. That was who I already was, I was already loved unconditionally, it was a non-negotiable. And the same is true for you, too. Bringing forth creative products, making things that you care about, sharing your work with the world is hard work. And it is not work for the manager to do. And using managerial ways to get things done– treating yourself badly while you are learning, not allowing yourself to make mistakes, working yourself into the ground, however much temporary success you find in the interim, it will only lead you to the dead end road of burnout, injury, or creative block. The maker inside of you is longing for the freedom and space to think, to play, to dream. Can’t you MAKE some time for that today
I’ll be right back.
Today’s listener’s message is from a listener on instagram. I am a writer and I have trouble getting started writing each day. Once I get going I seem to find a rhythm but it literally feels like pulling teeth getting myself to sit down. I’m wondering if you had any tips for how to get going more immediately. I think I keep waiting to feel inspired and when I don’t I dread sitting down. I waste half my writing time researching or making to do lists. Any tips? Thanks, sincerely Poet Procrastinator
Oh yes do I have tips. I must say my writing routine at this juncture in my life is not something to be envied. So I feel you. I just can’t seem to get myself to stop being in manager mode and move to the maker mode. So here are 3 things that work for me.
Entrance ramp/exit ramp—do something that helps you transition from one activity into writing. Light a candle, say a prayer, spin around 3 times, change locations, get a new drink, close out all the tabs on your internet browser. Mark the moment with some small ritual or action. If you are writing a poem, try a short free write in prose or write a haiku or something fun. Pretend you are an athlete and you are stretching your writing muscles. Don’t treat writing like some other managerial task, because that energy is all wrong, IMO.
Something I’m trying is manager mornings and artist afternoons….block out half your day if you can to just make. This is particularly useful if you are trying to write in the cracks of time, see if you can move all of your creative work to one afternoon or even one day and DO NOT SCHEDULE MEETINGS or anything tasks that will take you out of that mindset. It is so hard to do, OMG. I can’t tell you how many things just kept creeping in on Thursdays when that used to be my podcasting day, so now I am trying to focus on the emails in the morning, and being a maker all afternoon. It allows me to go home to my children with a better energy and everyone likes me more.
Last tip, when you leave the writing the day before, stop slightly before something is finished or finish a poem and start writing another one, even though you know you won’t finish. It is a lot easier to get started when there is something on the page. I usually start by reading something I wrote the day before and usually it’s easier to pick up right where I left and keep it moving. DANGER though…this may tempt you to start editing, unless that’s what you need to be doing with that time, resist the temptation to go in and start correcting things. Remember some parts of writing can feel managerial, some parts can feel very vulnerable and emotional, some parts are just downright frustrating and arduous, so check in with yourself, what kind of energy is it take from you each day? What kinds of tasks bring you energy with your writing? How can you find some sort of equilibrium in your creative practice that will keep you coming back for more?
So those were….entrance/exit ramp, try blocking off larger swaths of time when possible, and begin in media res, or in the midst of something you’ve already started. If you have other tips for this poet procrastinator, please leave them in the comments on instagram, in the post for this episode. We’d love to read them.
Now, for today’s coda
Writer Austin Kleon said “if you want to be the noun, first do the verb.” And so my question for you today is…which nouns do you wanna be— writer, oboist, singer, dancer, painter, artist—What if all you had to do to be those things is to do those things–to write, to oboe, to sing, to dance, to paint? Let’s not forget in the busyness of trying to manage our way out of stress and the daily time crunch… that to be the noun we must do the verb. There’s no minimum number of words you need to write daily to call yourself a writer, when you write, you are a writer. When you make you are a maker. And so don’t let anyone else tell you differently. And, there is not a set number of verbs you can do or nouns you can be. Consider the ways your mindset about your identities, the things you believe to be true about yourself or the world, consider the ways they are holding you back from living and making with joy. I think there is a little lie that we all love to believe—that if we only had enough time, then we’d create more. But my friend Cate and any number of listeners who have empty nests, or have lost their jobs, or otherwise find themselves with loads of time on their hands will tell you—time is not the problem. So don’t believe that scarcity mindset, accept the verbs of the creative life with joy, be patient with yourself as you manage your energy. Protect your inner maker from the constant and exhausting manager schedule that the world made convince you that you need. Using all the time that you have, to let yourself play, dream, and make.
That’s it for this week’s episode of artists for joy
Today’s music features my favorite musical procrastinator, wolfgang amadeaus mozart, performed by the chamber orchestra of ny. Our theme song is by angela sheik.
Our latest registration for the artist’s way creative cluster went live. Click the link in the show notes to register today and learn more.
I’ll be back next week for another musical meditation episode. Until then, take good care.
Today’s sounds of joy is the world famous baby cellist, my daughter Eva who is 4.5 years old. We have been learning some mozart, we’ve spent an entire year learning twinkle twinkle little star. So here’s a snippet. Enjoy.
Hello, Merideth Hite Estevez, the creator of Artist for a Joy podcast here. This week's show features an interview, which is something we do a few times per season with someone who personifies a joyful creative life. And today's installment of Meet and Artist who is with Ariel Curry. She is a book coach, editor and writer.
She helps writers write the book the World needs to Read, and she is also just a delightful, knowledgeable, calming creative. And before you pause this and think, this is only an episode for writers, Ariel is also a pianist. And so of course we bonded over our favorite music, and I really especially loved what she told me about returning to the piano after many years away.
Ariel shares what she loves most about helping creatives find clarity in the creation of their books, and she'll share some practical things you can do to celebrate at every stage in your creative journey. When I was writing the How to Celebrate episode, I was really struggling with an opening story. I was down to the wire and had officially run out of time when I decided to take a break and turn on a Zoom meeting that I had missed.
As I watched the recording, I listened to Ariel lead, a group of writers that I'm part of through an exercise around self-efficacy. She had us remember something that we had done that was challenging, and that's when Ariel shared her story of becoming a mountain climber. Suddenly I knew that that was the story I should use for the podcast.
And so for anyone out there struggling, wondering where to go next in a specific creative project, Sometimes all you need to do is to live your life, to turn on the next Zoom meeting to keep going, especially if you're in a community with other creatives. The answer may truly be right around the corner.
And so after that happened, I knew I had to have Ariel on the show
so. I'm excited to talk to you today. Um, you and I have become colleagues and maybe on our way to being friends, and I would love for you to just start off this interview by introducing yourself and telling our listeners who you are and what makes you an artist. Oh, sure. Thanks. Um, I definitely think we are on the way to being friends for sure.
Um, so I am a book coach and an editor. I was in the traditional publishing space for about a decade in various positions. Um, most recently, uh, as an acquisitions editor. And I was an acquisitions editor for about seven of those years. Um, and so my responsibilities were, you know, finding new authors, kind of reading through proposals and um, negotiating contracts with authors, uh, things like that.
And it is a lot of fun to do that. But most of my job was telling people, no. and I just, in my heart of hearts, truly believe that more people can and should write books that than do. And so I wanted one to, you know, be able to work with a wider variety of authors and two, be able to act on that and say yes to people more than no to people.
Hmm. So that's what I do now in my job is I. Writers, um, develop a great book idea usually, Um, well actually not usually all the time nonfiction, . And, um, I have so much fun doing that. I love, um, I love crafting book ideas with authors and, you know, being able to land on something that we just know is a great idea and then helping.
Expand on that idea into a book structure. I'm a huge believer in structure and having a strong outline and a plan for your book. Um, and so I have so much fun working with authors on developing out, you know, what is this book going to be? And so a big part of that, especially considering my. Experience in traditional publishing is helping authors with book proposals.
I ghost write book proposals all the time. Um, and then I also kind of coach people through the book proposal process. So that's a big part of what I do just on a day to day basis. Hmm. I love that. I, I called you a book midwife in the in my, Yes. I don't know if you would use that term, but what I like about, I like about that image, You really facilitate the, the, the bringing forth of some big creative project.
And I, you know, I wonder, does that resonate with you, that title, but also what does that feel like to, to shepherd creative people through, you know, giving birth to their book, Baby? Mm-hmm. . Yeah, definitely . Um, I, I do resonate with that title. Um, it's not a title I usually use for myself, but I definitely think it's appropriate for sure.
Um, . It is a lot of fun, like I said, but then there's also this like really interesting balance between creativity and marketability, and I find that, you know, in the publishing world, when I lived in that space, everything was all about marketability. And marketability really drove a lot of decision making, which is good and necessary.
You have to have marketability as you're considering. Um, you. Uh, the, the efficacy of a book idea and whether or not it's going to work, and obviously whether it's gonna sell is an important part of, um, pitching a book to a publisher. So I can bring that side of my brain that more like analytical data driven.
Um, Piece of my brain to this. But I also really believe in the power of creativity and like Liz Gilbert, you know, calls it big magic. And there's just something that's a little bit more like spiritual about this book process too, that I have more space now in my career to explore with authors. And I'll give you an example.
Yesterday, um, I was meeting with an author. And she said, I know we talked about doing this book idea because it's what my agent wants me to write. It's what you know. I know for a fact would sell really well, but it's just not the story I feel ready to tell yet. And I think there's still some more growing I need to do.
I need to figure that out more. But this other idea is what is pouring out of me right now. And these are the words that I really wanna say. And. Leaning into that, I said, All right, let's explore that idea. It was really, you know, creativity driven for her, but we were able to find some ways to make it marketable and kind of help make it, you know, satisfy what like her agent wanted and, um, you know, what she knew would sell to her audience.
So I love being able to kind of bring both of those. Um, forces to play in the book process. Um, rather than being like all creativity led, which could lead you into doing some really crazy things, or all marketability led, which could leave you with something that is not really appealing or, um, exciting to audiences at all.
Mm-hmm. , so, yeah. I don't know if that's, uh, helpful, but No, that's great. Yeah, we have, as I told you, a lot of our listeners aren't authors. They're not writers, and we have visual artists and dancers and actors and musicians, and I think that, you know, what I love talking to you about coaching or book coaching specifically is because I think in the writing sphere, there's a lot more access to these kinds of tools.
As a book coach, as a, you know, A creative midwife, you know, we need that kind of support for artists across the board. And that's one reason why I got trained as a coach, because I feel like as a classical musician myself, there wasn't anyone there. I had teachers who were teaching me technique and who were even guiding me in my career, but not all of them were able to meet me where I.
and see what creative offerings I was feeling called to produce and then help me shepherd into making that a career or making that a part of my, my, my artistic practice. And so, I guess, I'm trying to think of a question that can go with this, but like, how might we, cuz you know, I know you, you. Practice music and you, you work with all kinds, You work with writers mainly, but people who are creative across the board.
How might we encourage creative people to access this type of help and to feel, to feel empowered maybe is the right word, to, to know that they don't have to have all of the answers themselves. It's okay to have a partner, a creative partner to help bring you through. Oftentimes rocky or unsettling or unclear process of creating something that you care about?
Yeah. Oh, a hundred percent. Um, I am a huge believer in surrounding yourself with people who can, um, challenge you in all of the right ways. So, um, You know, I shared with you before we started recording that I, um, recently kind of started taking piano lessons again after a 14 year break, . And I did that because I wanted to get back into, um, you know, good habits playing piano and also just challenge myself.
Um, again, and I knew that the best way to do that was having another person involved in the process. I knew that that's not something that. Can do most effectively for myself. But anyways, yeah, I knew that having another person in that space with me, Would be way more effective than trying to figure out how to, um, make myself better without getting that real time feedback.
I think that's one thing, um, that's really helpful, is that when you're even just talking out loud to someone else, they're able to give you real time feedback and help you develop your thinking. I often use the term like with my authors, that I'm a thought partner with you. Um, we. Kind of co-creating this book.
Not that I'm taking credit for it, it is your idea. But my hope and my goal is always to help you take that like seed of an idea or that like really rough gem of an idea and hone it and make it more refined and bring out all of its brilliance that you might not be able to achieve on your own. And I think.
We all as artists know how critical and important that process is having someone else involved with us, um, in making us better. Absolutely. Yeah, that's really well said. But having a trusted partner there to, to walk with you and to, to provide the right questions, right? They're not giving you answers.
They're just helping you realize that the answers are already within you, and it's a matter of living them out or fleshing them out, and having a partner to do that is so powerful. So in the main episode, which by the way if you haven't heard that, it's called How to Celebrate. It was episode three. In season three.
We talked about what is important about cultivating a mindset of celebration. And I told, I shared the story of yours, Ariel, about your, your epic rock claiming adventure. And so I would, I would love to. , you know, a little bit more about your journey as a, as an accidental rock climber and , what that was like for you as you grew and how that spoke into your creative practice.
Yeah, definitely. So, I was definitely an accidental rock climber. That's a, that's a great way to phrase it. Um, honestly, I started rock climbing to impress the guy that I liked, , because he was really into rock climbing and he was like, Hey, we should climb together. And I was like, Ah, yes. All about the adventure over here, , even though I am, you know, more of a homebody and I do music and I've never really been like a very active person.
Um, although I've become much more active, um, through him, and, uh, I love him very much and I'm grateful for the ways that he's challenged me. Um, but you know, you shared beautifully that when I started rock climbing, you know, I would get six feet off the ground and just start crying. I mean, I was terrified of heights.
And something that really helped me through that is my husband has a rule for all climbing. It's when you get to the top, you have to stop and turn around and look out at the view. Often as I was climbing, I was literally crying as I went. And so when I got to the top I was always just like, Get me down.
I'm done. I just wanna go down now I'm done with this. And he would, you know, he's on belay, so he has control over whether I go down or not . And so he would say, No, you need to stop and look out at the view. And so I would stop. You know, take a few deep breaths, compose myself, turn around and look out at the view.
I have seen some absolutely incredible views that I could never see any other way because of this journey. That moment also makes you kind of stop and realize what you just did. So even though it was really hard, even though it was really scary, even though sometimes, you know, it's painful, like my fingers feel, um, raw from gripping sometimes like sharp rocks and stuff, that moment of sitting at the top and looking out at the view, I would always think to myself, Oh my gosh, I just did that.
I just did that and that feeling. That in itself is kind of addictive. You know, that feeling is so powerful and that feeling is what persuaded me to get on the next climb. Even though I knew it was gonna be a struggle, even if I knew there were just gonna be times that I did not enjoy it. I always knew that at the top I would have that moment of just feeling super proud of myself.
And climbing is never something I thought that I could do. When I tell people now that I'm a climber, often they're like, Oh my gosh, I could never do that. And I'm like, I thought the same thing. I truly thought the same thing, that I could never be a climber and I could never do these really hard things, and I could never be that far above the ground and be.
But I've just proven it to myself time and time again by actually doing it. And I know that, you know, I say the same thing with writers and with artists all the time. You know, I never thought I could play some, you know, really, uh, complicated chopan pieces. And then I did it and it just took a lot of work and it wasn't fun.
Um, I never thought that I could write a book, but then I did it. And once you've done some of those hard things, You realize you can do other hard things too. Um, and that has been one of the most worthwhile lessons I've learned from climbing in general. How do you encourage the writers that you work with to turn around and check out the view?
Like what do they do, like practical action that they do, because I know mm-hmm. going through the book, book publishing process myself, the, the fear is this, Well, it's. Done or, well, it's still not on the shelf. Or, Well, I only got feedback from these, these agents and this publisher or this editor and these people didn't even respond to my email yet.
And there's all that like qualification of like, Well, this isn't that big of a deal, or I shouldn't, I don't deserve to celebrate this. Or this is, you know, How do you encourage people to go ahead and turn around and check out that view when they get to the top of even a small. . Yeah. Well, okay, let me back up a little bit.
Um, and come back around to that. So, self-efficacy is a concept that I talk about often, um, with my authors. And, um, I believe that it's critical for all of us. We have self-efficacy in lots of different ways in our life, and we need self-efficacy. So self-efficacy. Essentially your belief in your own ability to meet a goal.
So it's kind of when you say, I know that when I do these actions, I will achieve this result. So if it's, you know, practicing every day, I know if I practice, um, my instrument every single day, I will be able to increase my dexterity, you know, and speed and control or whatever those skills are that you are trying to practice.
And it's the same thing with writing too. Having self-efficacy gives you the confidence and the motivation to keep doing your work. And so there's four ways to build self self-efficacy. One of those ways, and the most effective way is to experience small wins toward your goal. So for example, um, if I spend.
20 minutes practicing this finger exercise and by the end of those 20 minutes I can do that finger exercise with without messing up, you know, without making a mistake. I just experienced a small win and that alone, that moment shows me that I can do, you know, I can take on the next exercise and I can take on the next little goal towards my overall goal of being able to play this chopin piece, for example.
And it's important that you stop and recognize the fact that you just did it right and celebrate that because that tells your brain that you did have a win. So you can't build self-efficacy if you don't recognize that something is a win in the first place, right? So if you accomplish something, but then you're like, Uh, well I'm still not able to play this piece.
I still haven't reached my overall goal. Not going to be, you know, encouraging. It's not going to make you feel excited or, um, confident in taking the next steps towards reaching that goal. So you have to stop, first of all, and recognize that you did win, and making yourself celebrate even if you aren't necessarily feeling it in the moment.
Is a way to do that. So just like when my husband would like, make me stop and look around at the top of the climb, even though at the moment I wasn't feeling like doing that, it actually did force me to say, Hey, wait a minute. I just did this. I did win . I can do this. Um, so I often in order to kind of force my authors to like stop and realize that they.
Win experience a win. I ask them to think of, there's a few ways I do this. I ask them to think of a really hard thing that they've done, and I did this in that, um, in that meeting that you were talking about. So I ask them to think of something they're really proud of having accomplished in their lives.
And I hear stories like, I asked for a raise or a promotion. I went after my dream job. I left an abusive, you know, partner. I raised kids with special needs. I hear some really incredible hard things that people have done, and I use that to make the point of like, okay. You've done something really hard, and that's way harder than writing a book like
That's way harder than a lot of the things that we're trying to accomplish in our, in our lives. And so if you can do that, you can totally do this. So taking those moments and you, you know, you can like journal about them, you can just have a conversation about them as a coach, I really love having those kinds of conversations with, um, my clients.
It's usually an aha moment for them to go, Oh, yeah. Like that is a big deal, isn't it? Um, other way, you know, other practical ways that I do that I ask people to, um, to do something fun, to relax and celebrate every time they hit like a, a concrete milestone. Like when an author sends a manuscript to me, um, for developmental editing.
I always say in my email back to them like, Hey, I'm confirming receipt of this, and also you just finished the first draft of your manuscript, . Oh my goodness. That's huge. Go do something fun that go, you know? Out to your favorite restaurant, go celebrate with your spouse. Go like, take a weekend away. Don't worry about your book.
From here on out, I'm gonna take over, um, in this process. But you should stop and celebrate the fact that you just hit this really, really big milestone. Most authors don't even get here, so you should, you know, bask in that moment. Um, Another thing that I do is I ask authors when they are setting out on their journey to write a book, I ask them to set rewards for certain milestones.
So set a reward for when you hit like the 50% mark. Set a reward for when you hit the a hundred percent mark set. You know, whatever meaningful rewards you need to, um, And do it ahead of time so that when you reach that milestone, you've already told yourself, this is gonna be a big moment that I can celebrate and win.
And you've already kind of given yourself that permission, um, to, to bask in that moment and to enjoy what you've done. That is great cuz I was, I was about to ask a follow up question about, you know, I'm, I'm imagining what the listeners are saying, and you know what, if they feel like, Oh, well I didn't reach my goal and I didn't finish my manuscript and I didn't.
Make the progress that I wanted to make, and what I heard there was you get to decide how big or small. The milestones are apart from one another. And so I think, yeah, I think if you, if you're saying to yourself, Well, I didn't do that thing, then make the thing smaller so that you can feel that positive jolt of success and celebration to give you that self-efficacy.
To move forward. Make progress. Exactly. Exactly. That's huge. To enjoying the journey along the way. . Um, because honestly, if you don't enjoy it along the way, it's gonna be really difficult. the whole way through. You have to find, um, find ways to make it fun for yourself. I'm a huge believer in finding ways to make it fun.
If it's not fun, why are you doing it? . . Yeah. So what are some ways that our listeners might make it fun regardless of their discipl? You know, I've already kind of said this, but I'm a big believer in surrounding yourself with people who will cheer you on. Um, my husband is a great cheerleader for me. He was a great cheerleader for me, you know, in all my climbing stuff.
But he's also a great cheerleader for me in my writing, um, and my career. I also have a writing partner, so I'm working on a book myself and I have a co-author in that. And, um, I think that's a really underestimated, uh, strategy. But having someone that you write with or perform with, like, I love doing duets on the piano as well because it's fun having someone else there.
To challenge you in all the right ways, like we said before, but also just to celebrate, you know, those moments of synchronicity that kind of happen when you're an artist and you're doing something creative with someone else. Those moments when you're like, Ooh, we are on the same wavelength and we're, we're thinking the same thing.
We just did this and it went really, really well. High Five . Mm-hmm. , those kinds of moments are. More fun and more impressive, I guess when you're doing it, um, with someone else, you know, you can have a, a really cool moment on your own too, and then the only person there to see it is you. And, and that still can be cool.
Um, but I'm a big believer in sharing your successes with other people and having people around you, um, you know, to, to experience that and to encourage you as. Right. I agree. Yeah. And I, I love the, the metaphor of rock climbing for the creative life because, you know, there really a lot of it is your own effort.
Like you, you are really legit pulling yourself up a mountain, and yet you're not alone because there's someone else there on the end of the rope. And I really think that that is true in our work as creatives, regardless of our project or a discipline or our level. Because there's, there's a community to be, to be had, even if you're on your own writing a book.
You know, for hours and hours every day, you have people out there who care and who wanna cheer you on and yeah, I think, I think a lot of us have like imposter syndrome thoughts of like, how dare I call myself a writer or I don't wanna let anybody in on what I'm doing because I'm afraid I might fail.
And I think if we're all feeling that way , then yeah, it must not be true . Yes. And so we. We can reach out and find those people that are going to, um, hold the rope and support us and cheer us on and, and remind us to turn around and check out the view. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. A hundred percent. I would love, I always ask everybody I interview, what is bringing you joy lately?
Well, , honestly, right in this moment. Um, besides this conversation, I have been getting so much joy from my Cha Tea. I buy . I buy this really special cha tea mix from a local vendor in Chattanooga, and it's just the best cha I've ever had. And I'm not really even normally a cha person, but I could drink this stuff all day.
And it's so perfect for fall. It just has that like warm toastiness to it and it's kind of sweet at the same time. It's just delicious. So that's honestly bringing me a ton of joy. And the fact that it's the fall right now in Tennessee, the colors are just absolutely stunning. Um, and I, you know, it's my favorite time of year, so I love this.
So where can we connect with you? Where can the listeners, uh, support you and tell us where we can find you? Yeah, the best place is my website. It's ariel curry.com. Um, you can also connect with me on Instagram. My handle is at Ariel k Curry, or you could find me on Facebook, Whatever is the best way to connect for you.
I'm probably on that social media channel. Um, so yeah, I'd love to connect with anyone. A big part of what I do, like I mentioned, is book proposals. So if you are, um, interested in writing a book proposal, Or have written a book proposal. Um, I edit book proposals. I coach people through that process. Um, I go strike book proposals if you don't wanna do it yourself, uh, that's totally fine.
Um, I love doing all of that stuff. The other big thing that I do is I run a group coaching program with Jeff Goines. So his company, um, is called Fresh Complaint. And so if you go to fresh complaint.com/finish, You can learn more about, um, our group coaching program. It's called Finish Your First Draft. So we talk about setting goals, we talk about establishing rewards for yourself.
We talk about, you know, getting good writing habits. And, um, we make progress every single week towards our goals. And we take time in those meetings to celebrate our milestones. We celebrate every single week, any wins, any, any kind of win no matter how. It is, um, we celebrate in those meetings and we hold each other accountable to meeting the goal of finishing the first draft of your book.
Our next cohort is starting in January and we are starting to, um, accept applications for that. So now is a good time to sign up. Great. And that website was fresh complaint.com/finish. Right. Yes. Yes. Okay. Awesome. We'll check it out. Yeah. Thank you so much, Ariel. It was great to chat. Yeah, thank you, Meredith.
As we wrap up this little unit on celebration here on the podcast, these ideas that Ariel left us with are a perfect way to close. So let me ask you, what is something hard that you have done? What is something that you've made it through that you've completed or accomplished in your. What would it be like to let that speak into this moment?
To strengthen your self-efficacy? Let it help you believe that things are possible. It doesn't take the work out of the climb. It just takes your mind off the obstacle list. You aren't one of the people you have to convince that you can do this for those in the midst of a big project. What rewards will you set ahead of time for?
As you plan whatever you're doing in your life, when will you turn around and admire the view? And lastly, what can you do to make your creative practice fun? What group can you join? Who can you partner with to create or even just celebrate your progress? I'm struck by Ariel's courage and bravery to return to the piano.
This is her playing, by the way, her favorite composer show pen. So I'm left with that question. What would I. If I wasn't afraid of failing, what doors would unlock for me if I started working on my self-efficacy, like I work on my own OBO technique. Thank you so much to Ariel for joining me today and for being that synchronicity that I needed.
I will share Ariel's website and social media handles in the show notes as well as that book coaching group. She mentioned that she leads with Jeff Go. As always, if you have any thoughts or comments for me about the episode or a question to be answered in future shows, please click the link in the show notes and be in touch.
I absolutely love. From listeners next week, I will be back with another full length episode, so make sure you subscribe and follow at Artists for Joy so you don't miss an episode. Until then, take good care.
Hello Merideth Hite Estevez the creator of artists for joy podcast here. If you are new around these parts, you have tuned in to one of our very special bonus episodes that go live on the opposite weeks from the core full length ones. In each of these I give you a little pep talk, offer you some self-coaching questions to help you go deeper with the topic from the episode prior.
Last Friday’s show was all about celebration, how cultivating celebration as a core value in the creative life helps deepen your capacity for goodness. It helps you enjoy the process and long game that is being a creator or artist. If you haven’t heard that episode, pause this one and jump back one in the feed.
Today’s music features the piano stylings of Sam Chan playing Mendelssohn Faure and Grieg. While you listen, consider the following:
First question, how are you benefiting from not celebrating? I know that sounds crazy, but have a look at your current mindset–if it is one of pushing forward at whatever cost, of denying yourself the ability to celebrate until you are perfect/ a NY times best seller/ prove your frenemies wrong? And hey, maybe this mindset does serve you…mine did for years…it keeps you singularly focused, it helps you achieve at a really high level…but…
And here’s question two…what other benefits do a different mindset have? For example, if you celebrate every small step along the long journey of your creative work, I know for a fact that you will be less likely to burn out, to feel like you are able to rest without that pesky voice chatting about how much there is still to do…
The celebration mindset is one of joy and delight. It was one that will deepen your capacity for goodness in your life. So first, look at the ways that your current mindset is serving you or not, look at what you currently believe about pausing to turn around at the top of a climb and check out the view. I can tell you all day to celebrate, but for you to really shift the way you think you have to first recognize the way you currently think.
Now, as you are listening to this music, I want you to make a list of as many things as you can that are cause for celebration today this minute. Not, once I climb that hill I can celebrate this or that, no, what can you cheers to right this very minute without lifting a finger.
Here are a few of mine: Nothing is too frivolous by the way
–I am celebrating how much I have grown since this time last year
–I’m celebrating that I thought we were out of coffee but I found one of those little single serving grounds from a hotel stay in the back of the cabinet
–I managed to get this recording done a whole day before it goes live
–I got clarity around a creatie problem I’ve been facing, even if it means there is a lot of hard work ahead
–I watched my son add another word to his rapidly expanding vocabulary, this one: apple
There are lots more, but see, celebration is just gratitude, it’s outloud joy, its choosing to notice all the goodness that’s right there in front of you. It doesn’t mean that all the hard, annoying, frustrating stuff goes away, it just means you are choosing to call out of the goodness. To accept it, to be proud of yourself even if you still have a very long way to go.
Celebration is a powerful tool for creatives because it allows us to find joy in the journey, even in the hardest moments. Shifting your mindset means digging out of the current rut your wheels are stuck in, it means building a new path by consciously choosing joy each and every moment. Notice how your outside circumstances don’t need to change for you to celebrate. There are things to savor and delight in right here. It isn’t always easy especially if the current rut is deep, but during this music I hope you’ll make your list of all you have to celebrate, and let it start to shift, even just a tiny bit, the way you approach yourself and your creative output.
I will be back next week with another full length episode. Until then, take good care.