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
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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
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THIS PORTION OF THE PODCAST IS GOING TO BE IN MY BOOK! :)
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.