Savor, Celebrate, and Enjoy by Kelly Besecke, Ginny Lennox, and Jamie Ridler

A note from Kelly: This past September, I was getting ready for a bunch of activities related to the launch of my first book. I had looked forward to this moment for years, and I really wanted to savor it. So I turned to my fellow creative dreamers and asked their advice. The result was the wonderful Facebook conversation below. This month, we decided to share this conversation in hopes that it may help you celebrate, savor, and enjoy your creative life.


Kelly Besecke

Here's another request for advice from all you fabulous sparklers! The next couple of months for me are filled with activities related to the launch of my first book. I've been working toward this moment for sixteen years! Also, I've been facing some challenges this year in my personal life. So these two things combined have made me just super eager to suck the marrow out of the next couple of months, really savor and celebrate this moment in my life, this accomplishment I've worked so hard and so long for. So! I would so very much love to hear your advice on ways of savoring accomplishments and good times. It would mean so much to me. How do you celebrate and savor your triumphs and dreams come true? Ginny Lennox, I have an idea that you may have a gift for this, but I'd love to hear from anyone!  (thanks!)


Ginny Lennox

Kelly, you made my day. The two words that came to mind when I read your post were awareness and gratitude. Once I became aware of what was really important to me in my life, I began to notice those things more and more. I remember talking to Jamie about living in the moment, since I am such a planner and always thinking ahead. She said it was fine to plan and think ahead and really be in that moment when you are planning, but after the plans are made, to move on to the next moment and be completely in it. (At least, that is what I heard her say.) It was one of those light-bulb moments that has made life so much simpler and exciting for me.

The second thing that has changed my life has been gratitude. Greg got sick six months after I retired and life changed dramatically for us. After adjusting to the changes, I began to look for all the positive things that happened each day. I started to realize what was important to me - it was people, the sunshine, beautiful skies, etc. I don't know exactly when, but each Friday I began to post on my blog what I am grateful for that week. It is a practice I don't think I will ever stop because it helps me focus on and appreciate what is important.

My celebrations are really an awareness and appreciation for the good things in my life, and it truly seems as if my brain has changed so that it spends a lot more time appreciating the good and ignoring the unimportant. A practical thing that I also do is keep a Reminder Journal. When something really important happens, I write it in the journal so that I won't forget the moment. I write only one or two sentences on a page so that the moment is easy to find. I do enjoy this journal!


Kelly Besecke

Thank you, Ginny! I thought of another piece of advice for myself: slow down. It's like what you say about being in the moment, but slowing down allows me to focus on and appreciate the moment better. Rather than, for example, turning all these activities from the celebrations that they should be into a stressful set of tasks on my to-do list.

In case anyone's interested, this little inquiry of mine has turned into a full-blown project: Project Joy. I've been looking into positive psychology exercises, and one of the coolest I've found is to first identify your signature character strengths and then find fun new ways to use them every day. They can be little things. Like for me, one of my top strengths is "appreciation of beauty and excellence," and so I might make a point of spending twenty minutes in a beautiful natural environment or listening to excellent music. Another one of my strengths is "curiosity and interest in the world," so I might listen to music from another culture or explore a new part of my city. Another is what they call "perspective/wisdom," and one site advised using that by taking a favorite quote and living in alignment with that. Fun. Here's another link--this is where some of these examples come from.


Ginny Lennox

Kelly, I think slowing down definitely helps. If you think of each thing you are going to do as a small step rather than a task and then acknowledge what you have accomplished, it might help. Right now, I am small-stepping my way into buying a new computer, which can be overwhelming for me, but it is helping to recognize each step I take to learn more about what I need and (what is most important) how to effectively use it.


Jamie Ridler

Celebration!! One of my favourite topics EVAH!

One thing that we simply don't do enough these days is mark our achievements. You have been headed towards this for 16 years and now you are here! How will you mark it?

I have a couple of favourite ways to mark an occasion (I feel a blog post coming on!) and I'd love to hear everyone else's.

* Make it Memorable. Mark the day by somehow making it distinctive from other days. Throw a party. Go somewhere you've always wanted to go. Let yourself be in pyjamas for 24 hours. (Hey, combine the pyjama idea with the party idea and voila!) Dye a streak of purple in your hair. Make yourself an "I wrote a book" cake and have it for breakfast.

* Make it tangible. Buy yourself an author's gift, something that will always remind you of your very first book. Get a tattoo or piercing. Write yourself a beautiful letter congratulating yourself for a dream come true.

When I got my coaching certification, I had promised myself a beautiful clock that I had seen at Pottery Barn. When I went to actually go get it, I almost backed out. I found it hard to spend the money. I thought, "I don't need this," but I did. Now every time I look at the time, I remember that I invested in my dreams and in my goal to help other people with theirs.

And you see that clock in just about every picture of my desk and my studio!

And Ginny Lennox, I'm so delighted that light bulb is still burning bright!


Kelly Besecke

I love these ideas! And Jamie, I have never before thought seriously about getting a tattoo, but that's the idea that jumped out at me most! I might get a tattoo!  I might get myself a special present, too! Ooh, fun, pondering what that might be!

Jamie Ridler

Oh, yeah!!!



Kelly Besecke is the still un-tattooed author of You Can't Put God in a Box: Thoughtful Spirituality in a Rational Age. Ginny Lennox, a certified Kaizen-Muse Creativity Coach, believes that each and every day is filled with special moments to be enjoyed and treasured. Jamie Ridler is a creative living coach who is passionate about authentic living and making creativity come to life.

Influences by Kelly Besecke

I have a thing for singer-songwriters, and lately I've rediscovered my love of crayons (which as a kid, I used to call "crowns"). The other day, these two loves came together when Dan Wilson, who's an artist as well as a songwriter, posted a drawing he made of the names of artists who have influenced him.

Inspired, I got out my crayons and made this list of my creative influences.

Here they are in categories:

Musicians and Artists: Storyhill, The Beatles, The Monkees, David Bowie, Johnny Depp, Claude Monet, Wolf Kahn, and Stuart Davis

Novelists: Jane Austen, E.M. Forster, J.K. Rowling, Ursula LeGuin, Madeleine L'Engle, Ellen Raskin, Lloyd Alexander

Memoirists: Liz Gilbert, Frances Mayes, Dave Barry

Coaches who write: Tama Kieves, Martha Beck, Jamie Ridler

Scholars: Wade Clark Roof, Joseph Campbell, Stephen Prothero, Huston Smith, Paul Ricoeur, Emile Durkheim, Victor Turner, Robert Bellah

I could go on with friends, family, teachers, and organizations that influenced me, but this is the list of people I was drawn to specifically because of their creative work or their creative way of being in the world. But I couldn't resist also including some places that have been important to my creative life:

Places: Nepal, Wisconsin's Devil's Lake Park, and Austin, Texas

Who are the influences that you've chosen?

Kelly Besecke writes about spiritual meaning, progressive religion, and authentic living. Her first book, You Can't Put God in a Box: Thoughtful Spirituality in a Rational Age, will be out November 1. Kelly is a dreamer, a thinker, and an incurable idealist who loves singer-songwriter music, impressionism, and every dog she's ever met.

Cool by Kelly Besecke

I have a thing for "cool people," and I have a specific image of what "cool people" are like. They're bohemian and iconoclastic. They challenge our ideas of what's normal and beautiful and good. They read Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsberg and D. H. Lawrence, Dostoevsky and Eastern-bloc writers I've never heard of, and if they're exceptionally cool, Zora Neale Hurston and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. They like Picasso and surrealism and dark things. They're edgy. They're avante garde, artistic, brilliant, and discerning. They like Lennon more than McCartney, but they like early, little-known blues musicians even more than that. Their humor is filled with unexpected observations, unique word choices, and original twists of phrase.

I'm drawn to these people, but they also intimidate me—because, of course, I'm not that cool. An adolescent at heart, I periodically think, "I should be more like them. I should read edgy literature and see art films and try to make my mark and be an explorer of the outside and a pusher of boundaries." Instead, I read Jane Austen and Harry Potter. I seek out stories of good triumphing over evil and love conquering all. And I gravitate to the bright, happy, sparkling play of colors that Claude Monet saw in hay bales and bowls of grapes. Once, I was given a literal pair of rose-colored glasses: I loved them.

Cool people sing with honest understanding of the tragedy and physicality of the human condition; I write with hopeful idealism of the interconnections between people and the unity of the universe. They explore the aesthetics of decay and the things you can see in the dark; I seek out the sun and the spring green of new leaves. Cool people are edgy and challenging; I am reassuring and hopeful.

But here's the truth: What the cool people I'm thinking of really have in common—what's at root, beneath their arcane tastes—is a commitment to authenticity, truth, and honesty. They are themselves rather than some societal version of normal and good. They see people honestly rather than idealistically or cynically. At their best, they identify with and embrace the real—even the real that is dark, negative, and decaying; even human imperfection; even the tragic.

What really makes cool people cool is not their taste in art, literature, film, or music, or even their attraction to themes of darkness, weakness, and tragedy. What really makes them cool is deeper than that: their commitment to truth and authenticity in themselves and to empathetic and raw honesty in their perceptions of others.

And that's what I take in. That's what I try to imitate. What's cool is being who you really are, even if part of who you are borders on someone else's idea of schmaltzy, naive, or pedestrian. None of those one-sided judgments matter. What matters is expressing your truth, your reality, your unique mind, self, perceptions, and feelings, and bringing that out into the great mix of ingredients that makes up the shifting soup of creative expression.

Kelly Besecke writes about spiritual meaning, progressive religion, and authentic living. Her first book, You Can't Put God in a Box: Thoughtful Spirituality in a Rational Age, will be out November 1. Kelly is a dreamer, a thinker, and an incurable idealist who loves singer-songwriter music, impressionism, and every dog she's ever met.

Grazing for Introverts by Kelly Besecke

Have I mentioned that I have a book coming out this fall? Oh, I have? (Insert winking smiley face here.)

Many years ago, when that book was just beginning to come to life, I went through a long period in which I didn't really know what it was about. I couldn't put it into words—and yet, it had me. I knew it was a thing, a nonverbal something—I just didn't have the words for it yet.

I think a lot of ideas start out nonverbal like that—as a sense of something or a feeling or an intuition that hasn't quite made its way into the verbal realm of thought. But for a writer, that can be kind of a drag, because this thing is going to have to find words somehow, and you're not sure how to help them come along.

I began by immersing myself in others' words—I read and read and then thought and thought and tried to make this thing articulate. Friends said "Is it this?" And I'd say "It's like that, but it's not exactly that."

I wrote notes and notes and two- and three- and five-page summaries of my idea. None of them actually communicated much.

But I knew that the thing was there, that there was a book on this thing waiting to be written, and that somehow I was going to have to find a way of pulling it out of me.

After about a year of this searching for words, I was pretty frustrated. I was in grad school, and my adviser, Paul—bless him and his faith in me—did not act equally frustrated. Instead, he said, "Go out and graze." Go out and look around. Get out of your own head, get out of books. Go out into the world, and see what you find that resonates with this idea of yours.

And that's what got me unstuck. I looked around, made scrapbooks of what I found, and went and looked and listened some more to the creative things that other people were up to that seemed to speak to this thing that I had going on.

And then the words came.

Now that I think about it, this is probably good advice for an introvert. Maybe introverts and extraverts can weigh in: I wonder whether introverts like me are more likely to get stuck in our own heads, our own inner processing, and can get unstuck by remembering to get out there and engage with the outside world. And maybe extraverts can get stuck in what's already happening out there and get unstuck by remembering to "go in" and see what their own unique minds make of all that they've seen and done.

Kelly Besecke writes about spiritual meaning, progressive religion, and authentic living. Her first book, You Can't Put God in a Box: Thoughtful Spirituality in a Rational Age, will be out November 1. Kelly is a dreamer, a thinker, and an incurable idealist who loves singer-songwriter music, impressionism, and every dog she's ever met.

Calendars, Lists, and Office Supplies (oh my!) by Kelly Besecke

Last month, I wrote about how with a creative life, you lack the provided structure and schedule that are a part of most jobs; instead, you make up your life as you go along. At the same time, you do have priorities, and you want to make sure to really prioritize them and not just drift, letting circumstances and others' wishes take the place of bosses and job descriptions.

In my effort to give method to this madness, I find myself in a creative relationship with calendars and to-do lists. (Do they love me as much as I love them? I wonder.) I find that every few months, I feel an urge to take a step back and reflect on what my priorities have been, and more than that, what I want them to be as I move forward into the next phase. I journal about what I want or need to give time and attention to. I'm one of those people whose inner life is as organized as my outer life is disorganized, so I end up sorting through all the values and priorities that I journal about and putting them into categories. Which I color-code. And then transfer to two different calendars and multiple to-do lists, using cute bullet points and fonts that don't make me feel trapped. (You have to do this kind of thing with time-management devices; otherwise, they think they're in charge.)

For example, a couple of years ago, I was really struggling with the balance between my creative work—my first book—and my freelancing work, which is the work that brings in money. If I drifted too far to one side, I was all happy, except for every time I swiped my credit card to pay for basic needs that I couldn't afford. Over too far on the other side, I was bringing in money but feeling alienated from myself and like I was watching my life recede. And like most people, I also had other priorities—family; groceries, laundry, car maintenance, paperwork, and all the ordinary chores of keeping a household going; time that I wanted to spend with friends or just at leisure, having fun; my long-postponed quest for a good man (I hear they're hard to find); things I needed to do for my health, such as exercise and spending time in the sun (I get seasonal depression, and the sun is my very best friend in the whole world and my favorite antidepressant. Does it love me as much as I love it? I think I will judge this by whether or not I eventually get skin cancer).

It seems obvious in retrospect, but it was a big deal to figure out how to use the calendar to balance these things. I marked designated days to work on my book, and I stuck to them no matter how worried I was about money. I started with one day a week, and then that didn't feel like enough, so I settled on two. And I had designated days for clients, and scheduled time for chores and leisure. I marked them off on my calendar in their different colors, but I also moved them around when I wanted to. Just having them there helped me make sure that I was attending in a regular way to my two big priorities of writing a book and earning a living, as well the other things that mattered.

Recently, I finished the book. (I finished the book!) Well, for the most part. The manuscript is now with my publisher's production team, and I will have work to do—writing the index, reviewing copyedits and page proofs, and a variety of marketing-and-promotion tasks—but it feels like a whole new phase of things, Whole and New, and I found myself with that familiar urge to step back and reflect on What Next. More and more, I felt that this division that I had constructed in my work life between money work and creative work, as much as it had helped for the past two years, wasn't the way to move forward. The categories are blending. My creative work now includes marketing and promotion, and I want my paid work to gradually move in a more creative direction. Meanwhile, the long-postponed Quest for Love needs to finally get prioritized, and so does a certain kind of self-nourishment that I've sidelined while I've been working two jobs.

So I have a new calendar, and a new to-do list, with new colors and fonts and fun bullet points. (Okay, really I have two calendars and two lists, one broader and one more detailed version of each. Have I mentioned that I also enjoy pretty office supplies?) Despite its multitude, this new organizational system is simpler, because it has only four categories: Work, Man, Self, Chores. And the simplicity helps me organize in my mind the myriad of activities included in each category, especially work: the production of my book, promoting it and myself as a writer, looking for more creative paid-work opportunities, working with current and prospective clients, updating my freelancing website, and gestating book #2, which will be about exactly this kind of thing: How do writers, artists, musicians, and other creative types balance their creative work with earning a living? I know from my own life and from listening to others, especially musicians, that it's not something that you just figure out once and stick with forever. Circumstances change, other life priorities emerge and fall away, and the musician who's writing songs and touring full-time this year might have been working in a factory, teaching guitar, and performing on weekends last year; might be recording and producing next year; and might be writing commercial music for hire and touring occasionally the year after that.

And so it is with creative living. Organizing a creative life is creative exercise in itself.

(And aren't these cute?)

Kelly Besecke writes about spiritual meaning, progressive religion, and authentic living. Her first book, You Can't Put God in a Box: Thoughtful Spirituality in a Rational Age, will be out later this year. Kelly is a dreamer, a thinker, and an incurable idealist who loves singer-songwriter music, impressionism, and every dog she's ever met.

Square Pegs by Kelly Besecke

Jamie Ridler has a way with words.

I wanted to write something about the feeling of being a square peg that I think a lot of people face when they commit to creative living. But it would be easy for a post like that to come off as whining or "special" or something else that would tap right into our negative stereotypes of artists. Jamie encouraged me to write it anyway, saying, "I think that there is a hunger for some honest reflection on the challenges of creative living." And when I think about it that way—writing for people who are doing this thing and facing that challenge, rather than writing about some kind of "insider" experience for "outsiders"—then it feels easier and more worthwhile.

Because creative living does go against the social grain. A lot of the time, it seems to mitigate against getting that eight-to-five (or seven-to-nine) job that organizes most people's lives. It's hard to direct your own life and follow creative inspiration as an employee whose schedule and responsibilities are determined by others. So committing to creative living sometimes means sacrificing the sense of security, stability, structure, and definition that a job can provide, besides the money.

You live on the edge. You create everything on your own, every day. You never know what will come next. It's stressful. It's powerful. It's exhilarating. It's exhausting. It's creativity.

It's weird to have this thing that you feel like you have to do to be yourself but that doesn't fit the usual categories of paid employment and family life.

The creative process is weird. It can require a lot of down time—gestation time, mulling time, processing time, sitting-and-staring-into-space time. In a busy-busy, get-things-accomplished culture, this can feel like laziness. And when others witness it, they might not know what you're doing. They might not have any idea how to be with you while you seem to be so wholeheartedly doing nothing at all.

Creativity is expressive. It comes from within. It requires introspection. It's personal, individual—just each person's unique stuff being put out there in the world in the form of a song, painting, book, whatever. It's authentic giving, but it looks like self-absorption. Or like arrogance—as if I'm so important, as if what I have to say matters, as if my ponderings are worth the sacrifices of time and energy that could be spent helping others, contributing to something that matters, being productive, being a useful member of society, earning money, getting with the program, and being responsible.

But the thing is, it's what you have. It's what you have to give. This is what I have. This is what I can give, the best thing I can give, the thing that I give most naturally. The thing that I can keep giving and not run dry, run out of stamina and resources. Here you go.

Self-loathing—and its milder forms—is a thing, a possibility. It's easy to feel self-absorbed, useless, lazy, unnecessary, hopelessly out of it, and weird.

I mean, don't give into it, though. As I wrote that last paragraph, I knew that it sounded like words of defeat and depression. It isn't. Because you deal with that while you're living in integrity and feeling like yourself. You're doing your thing, you're in your groove, and you're certain about something. Most nights, you do know what you stand for.

The Creative Dream Journals theme for this month is Finding Home. Creativity is home. Your own process is home. And when you find like-minded others, they're your home. And when you settle in a city (like I have) that celebrates creativity and prides itself on weirdness, you're at home. And while you're in this cocoon, you kind of get the double win: you get to be yourself and be with others who think, "Okay, you're weird—but so are we all, and isn't that great?"

(Lewis Carroll's thoughts on the matter.)


Kelly Besecke writes about spiritual meaning, progressive religion, and authentic living. Her first book, You Can't Put God in a Box: Thoughtful Spirituality in a Rational Age, will be out later this year. Kelly is a dreamer, a thinker, and an incurable idealist who loves singer-songwriter music, impressionism, and every dog she's ever met.

Nine Ways of Thinking about Love and Creativity by Kelly Besecke

1. Falling in love with a creative project. I fall in love with all my creative projects. I'm not one of these people who looks at my work and never thinks it's good enough. That's not because I think my work is so great—it's because I don't have an evaluative relationship to my own work. To me, creating anything—a book, a painting, a song—is like having a child. When people have children, they don't look at them and think, "Is this baby good enough? How well does she match my idea of a perfect child?" At least, I hope they don't. I think people just love their children because they're theirs, and because babies are good. Falling in love with a creative project is like that—you're infatuated with this idea because it's just so cool, or delighted by this painting because it used to be a blank canvas and now it's got your colors on it, and you love it because creative projects are just good in and of themselves.

2. Loving support. Books' acknowledgments sections are filled with gratitude for "the one who always believed in me" and "the ones who supported me in down times and celebrated my triumphs." Some of your greatest supporters might not care about your project at all if it weren't yours. But in an extension of number 1, they care about your project because they care about you.

3. Supportive love. Some people don't love you—don't even know you—but love your project. They really want to see a book about that or a novel that tells this kind of story or a song whose harmonies carry them to their own soul. These people are your audience, but they're also your early supporters. They will do what they can to forward your project, to help it along, to help it reach other interested people. They'll recommend it to others, they'll tell you they can't wait to read it, and they'll tell you what it means to them.

4. Miracle people. People who are both 2 and 3—people who love both you and the work that you're creating—these people are miracles. A true adviser who cares about you and believes in the work you're creating; a best friend who's fascinated by the things you're writing about; a lover who can't believe how beautiful your music is.

5. Love as a creative project. When we think of creativity, we often think of the arts. More and more people are also approaching careers as creative projects, and life in general as a creative project. Loving relationships, too, are an act of creativity—an ongoing creative project for both people or everyone involved. That's the trick about relationships, too. I can sit down and say, "Today, I will write a blog post or begin a painting or take some photographs." But I can't sit down and say "Today I will create a loving relationship." Relationships are cooperative creativity, collaborative creativity, maybe more like making a movie or a play. You have to find someone who wants to create the relationship with you, and you have to want to create it with them.

6. Creative projects as a form of love. Any creation is a gift from you to the world. The book I've written, the blog posts I write, the book I'm planning—I start them for me, because I'm driven to, but in the end, they're always wanting to help people—wanting to share what I've found with people who might wonder about the same kinds of things that I wonder about. The song that you write because it's yours, because it came to you, and that you then hone because you want to hear out loud what you hear in your head—that song brings me life. Your artwork that you make to enrich your days fills my days with beauty.

7. Creative loving. As our loved ones change and go through life, we find new ways of loving them. Sometimes, we might love by listening; other times, by giving practical help. We love by playing, engaging, paying attention, teaching, learning, giving and asking for advice, explaining, offering and asking for help, thinking of fun things to do, sympathizing, touching, smiling, reassuring, challenging, keeping company, leaving alone, asking questions, sharing our worlds, and remaining silent. The creativity comes in learning new ways to love, in figuring out what loved ones want and need, and in discovering your own ways of responding.

8. Self-love. To be your best creative self, you have to respect your own nature and treat yourself with love. What do you need? What do you want? Down time, fun, beauty, adventure, softness, healthy food, unhealthy food, exercise, solitude, companionship, sunshine—whatever it is, give yourself that. And sometimes, creating itself is an act of self-love: I'm looking for a book about this topic, but I can't find it—I'll write it myself. I have a song in my head; by bringing it into the world, I feel like myself. I have a poem inside me; by writing it, I heal.

9. Falling in love sparks creativity; creativity makes you fall in love. I fell in love with the way light played on the water, so I painted it. I loved the texture of her skin, so I drew it. And—in drawing you, writing about him, photographing that flower, I saw your beauty and complexity, and his, and the flower's—I fell in love with what I was looking at. And in seeing that beauty, I saw more beauty everywhere, and I fell in love with life.

 Kelly Besecke writes about spiritual meaning, progressive religion, and authentic living. Her first book, You Can't Put God in a Box: A Thoughtful Spirituality for a Rational Age, will be out later this year. Kelly is a dreamer, a thinker, and an incurable idealist who loves singer-songwriter music, impressionism, and every dog she's ever met.

Now Let's Begin... by Kelly Besecke

I love beginnings—the clean slate of a new year, falling in love with a new creative project, the openness of babies and puppies, the pale green of spring.

I love that these days, new years really feel new. I spent most of my life in academia, where the new year really begins in August, so now I love being on the same calendar as the calendar, and I love the down time that I now have in the space between Christmas and the new year.

In recent years, I've taken this down time to reflect on the ending year and to set intentions for the new one. A couple of yearly rituals nurture this time of recentering.

Every December, Jamie Ridler sends her newsletter subscribers a set of questions for celebration and casting forward—questions like "What were you loving this year?" "What will you be glad to leave behind?" and "What do you want to invite into your life next year?" I copy these questions into my journal and write my answers to them as I fly to visit my family for Christmas, or on the flight home.

After Christmas, for the past couple of years, I've also had a little ceremony with my friends. It's different every year. The first year, it focused on me and the challenge of combining creative work with income-generating work. I gathered music, quotations from books, and objects that spoke to this theme. My friends brought over their own supportive things—the funniest may have been the candle that says "Pagame Pronto" ("Pay Me Fast!"). We listened to the music, read the quotes aloud, and incorporated the objects. Then we made cookies.

The following year, I invited them to bring their own theme ideas—their intentions and wishes for themselves. One of them thought of a project for us: we cut images and words out of magazines and glued them to votive candle holders, so that all year, we could light a candle for each of our themes. Then we made rice-krispie treats.

I don't know what we'll do this year. I think we might create something low-key. It feels like that kind of year. And that's the beauty of do-it-yourself rituals—they give us a structure and purpose that's the same every time, and we also get to make them new every time. So every year, these rituals carry the same meaning: they reaffirm personal reflection, intention, community—and sweet desserts! And at the same time, they offer fresh meaning every year, depending on what emerges from the creative process of reflecting, intending, and living. And baking.

As your 2013 begins, I wish you a fresh start, a supportive community, creative joy, centeredness, true intention—and many yummy desserts.

Kelly Besecke writes about spiritual meaning, progressive religion, and authentic living. Her first book, You Can't Put God in a Box: A Thoughtful Spirituality for a Rational Age, will be out later this year. Kelly is a dreamer, a thinker, and an incurable idealist who loves singer-songwriter music, impressionism, and every dog she's ever met.

Big Wishes for 2013

The team at Creative Dream Journals answered this question....

What is your
Dream
Wish
Blessing
for each other and for the world in 2013?

...here are our collective WISHES and DREAMS for 2013.....

My wish for every person in the world is that they get a big hug from someone who loves them. ~ Kim

My wish is that we connect, learn to listen, share ideas, and create synergetic solutions in our world. ~ Alli

I dream of deep connection with the beautiful women in this circle, and for peace and joy for all the beautiful women (and people:) in the world. ~ Lisa

I wish for all my circle sisters the joy of being inspired and living your best dream. For the world I wish to create together the world we wish to live in. To live with respect for one another. Happy 2013. It's ours to create with what we will. ~Valarie

My wish is that everyone is able to find love in their heart for themself and then is able to spread that love throughout the world so that we can all live in peace. I am also looking forward to getting to know all the ladies of the circle on a deeper level. It will be so much fun watching everyone grow, and dream, and accomplish so many wonderful things this year. ~ Ginny

For the world, I wish for the love that binds us together and nourishes us, and I especially wish for this love to brighten the lives of children, animals, the poor, the sick, and the vulnerable. For every person in the world, I wish happiness! For my dreamer buddies, I wish for exciting, unexpected, happy creative growth as you become ever more amazing. ~ Kelly

May the magic of your heart reveal itself to you. May you find the courage to follow where it leads. This day and all days. With love ~ Jamie

 

Choosing Safety by Kelly Besecke

This week, I went for safety.


I've been a freelance editor and writer for three years. I like it, and it's going well, and it suits me in so many ways, including that I get to use some of my best strengths, work from home, and set my own schedule. But financially, freelancing feels unsafe. You never know, from month to month, where the money will come from, what the work will be, and how much you'll earn. Some months, your income may be zero. I feel more confident the longer it goes well—the more months and years I can look back and say, "OK, I did all right. I brought in enough." But then I look forward on my calendar into next month or next week or next year, and I don't see where the money will come from—of course. It's the nature of the job.

So last month, when a client called and asked me to apply for a part-time, salaried position that would allow me to work form home on my own hours, I thought, "Safety!" I could do this job—I knew I had the skills. What's more, I believed in the mission of the organization and had occasionally contributed to it informally. It seemed like the closest I could get to freelancing in a salaried position. I imagined how my life would change if I could predict this month's income, and next month's, and the month after that. My shoulders relaxed just thinking about it. My mind became easy. I knew that this was kismet—after all, I had gotten the phone call telling me about the job only two days after completing a book manuscript I'd been working on forever, and one day after sitting in a coffee shop and making a long list of my "post-manuscript life priorities." It was a big deal. The timing was amazing.

So I wrote up a resume and cover letter, ran them by my friends, applied for the job, and did some preparatory work. And then, on the appointed day, I picked up the phone to interview for the position.
An hour and a half later, I hung up the phone and said aloud, "Holy cow." I texted my friend Colleen: "Holy cow. Interview over. Not sure I want the job any more." I e-mailed my other friend Colleen: "Holy cow, I'd love to process that job interview with you. Long and short of it: Not sure I want the job any more." (As an aside, if you ever want to know anything about me, apparently all you have to do is Google "holy cow" and "my friend Colleen.")

This post is getting long, so I'll cut to the chase. The interview gave me the sense that the job would be unsafe for me. Not physically unsafe, of course. And not financially unsafe, either—no, that lure was still there. The job felt unsafe creatively. A part-time job, it felt like it would require my full-time focus. It felt like the kind of job that never leaves your mind—the kind that's always with you, that demands all your resources of energy and attention to execute someone else's predetermined agenda.
And that kind of job doesn't support a creative life.

I've made a commitment to my creative life—to writing, and to living in a way that nourishes my writing. My freelancing business supports this commitment, not only financially, but also energetically. It suits me. It dovetails.

So I withdrew my application for the job. With all its financial risk, I chose freelancing. I chose creativity. I chose safety.

Kelly Besecke writes about spiritual meaning, progressive religion, and authentic living. Her first book, You Can't Put God in a Box: A Thoughtful Spirituality for a Rational Age, will be out in 2013. Kelly is a dreamer, a thinker, and an incurable idealist who loves singer-songwriter music, impressionism, and every dog she's ever met.

Celebrating Completion! By Kelly Besecke

Ahh, completion! Praise and sunshine and confetti and glory!

This month, Jamie Ridler suggested that the Creative Dream Journalers write about completion. The timing is perfect for me because just a week and a half ago, I finished writing my first book manuscript and sent it to my publisher. The book itself is far from complete—among other things, I will need to revise it based on feedback from my editor and three expert reviewers—but still, this is completion.

I began researching the material for this book fifteen years ago, in 1997. Five years later, I had a complete PhD dissertation, but my plans for a book got waylaid by other life demands, including a serious health crisis, a career change, three cross-country moves, and the launch of my own editing business. When I began to emerge from this hullaballoo, I spent two years writing a variety of book proposals targeted to different kinds of literary agents and publishers. A year ago, in August 2011, after receiving a bunch of rejections, I heard that my current publisher was interested, and this past January, I signed a contract. Since then, I've split my time between earning a living and writing the book.

And now, I get to take a break.

The day after I sent my manuscript to my editor, I went to a coffee shop and wrote a list of priorities for my post-manuscript life. Then I did a five-day fruit-and-vegetable detox diet. Then I immediately began retoxing by going out to brunch with a friend and then landing at a bookstore, where I'm eating a chocolate croissant while I write this post.

I worked for my editing clients this past week, but I also went river tubing, swam at a spring-fed pool, spent an hour bouncing on a huge trampoline, and went to a potluck dinner at a friend's house.

To my surprise, I also rediscovered my interest in my book's subject matter—spirituality and progressive religion—and attended the first of a six-part sermon series on the world religions at a local progressive church.

I'm playing. My favorite thing to do.

There are projects ahead—remaining work on this book, beginning the next one, and a variety of projects related to my non-writing life. But for now, my project is to play. To relax. To explore. To wander. To rest in that creative space of security—off task mode, no goals, no requirements, just being in the moment. That's how I want to spend what have, for past several years, been my writing days. Refilling the well—an ongoing artist's date—a return to center—a return to me—a temporary reprieve from productivity, for the sake of receptivity.

Since the career change/serious illness extravaganza, I've become a paranoid person. So it occurs to me: by stating my intention to partially abdicate responsibility to task-completion, am I inviting disaster? Will some crisis or set of crises arise to punish me for committing to being carefree for a while? Are true vacations—the kind where you really relax mentally and emotionally—allowed? Will my grand plan to be plan-free for a while get averted by Things That Need To Get Done?
Maybe. But today, I'm happy, and I'm going for it. That's the joy of completion.

Kelly Besecke writes about spiritual meaning, progressive religion, and authentic living. Her first book, You Can't Put God in a Box: A Thoughtful Spirituality for a Rational Age, will be out in 2013. Kelly is a dreamer, a thinker, and an incurable idealist who loves singer-songwriter music, impressionism, and every dog she's ever met.

Following Your Own Inner Wisdom is Freakin' Crucial by Kelly Besecke

I can point to so many people I've learned life lessons from. I've talked about some of them in other posts on this blog, and some are other contributors. But for me, the greatest lesson I've learned is to follow my inner wisdom. It's a cliché, but it's truth, and that's the way to say it.


The best teachers I've had are people who have helped me do this. They modeled integrity themselves; or they actively listened to me and asked questions to help me figure out what I want, think, and feel; or they reacted positively when I followed my own path, spoke my mind, wrote what I wanted to write, and was true to myself.


Following my inner knower is a muscle I have to keep exercising, because it's rarely convenient. She likes to go against the grain, and that makes her both endearing and frustrating, like a toddler, only one with years of experience, insight, conviction, and perspective. So, maybe not so much like a toddler. Maybe more like some other stereotype—a hippie, a bohemian, a ne'er-do-well, a self-absorbed artiste, a layabout. Because my inner knower almost always comes across as lazy, self-indulgent, and irresponsible, on the surface. But she's not. She's just serving a deeper purpose, one that has to do with developing the soul, growing as a human being, becoming more myself, and experiencing life richly.


Just in the past couple of weeks, my inner knower has had to deal with conversations like these:

• My habits of mind say, "It's Sunday. You should be productive today." My inner knower says "No. You need to go to the park and cut pictures out of magazines."
• My tax bill says, "You should sacrifice some of your writing time so you can do more income-generating work." My inner knower says, "You need to stay on the path you're on. You can be creative about this."
• Some insidious voice says, "You need to sacrifice your own best interests to accommodate other people's convenience." My inner badass says "Are you kidding me?! Step aside while I pull out my Tommy gun." (Wow, I didn't know my inner spirit had a Tommy gun till I wrote that just now. I'm pretty pacifist, so I'm both horrified and impressed.)

The thing is, she's right. I can tell because when I don't do what she says, I get depressed, and life feels like a burden. When I do do what she says, the world seems open to me. I'm alive again.


In her great book Finding Your Own North Star, Martha Beck talks about the debilitating pain she gets when she doesn't do what her inner knower tells her to do. She says "I certainly hope that you don't have as antagonistic a relationship with your body as I used to have with mine. I hope you don't develop shooting pains and embarrassing rashes every time you step off your true path. Most people don't. For the majority of my clients, their physical reactions to life choices are much more subtle—sometimes barely noticeable. But they are most decidedly there." I quote this for you, because I'm in Martha's fun club: when I don't do what my inner knower tells me to do, my brain chemistry freaks out and does what it can to incapacitate me and generally make me miserable. Stick, carrot—whatever works, I suppose.


But they used canaries to test coal mines for a reason. Sensitive freaks like me and Martha Beck are just extreme versions of normal people. Jamie Ridler once called it "having a super-powerful inner compass." But everyone has an inner compass, right? It's just that for some people, their inner compass points them toward things like "become an investment banker" or "marry a millionaire," and so their struggles are different. But all of us are better off when we can find a way to go in the directions that our inner compass points. When we do, we're more alive. We're more ourselves. We're absolutely more creative. We make possibilities that wouldn't be there otherwise.


So your teachers rock. Mine do, anyway. But the best thing for you about your teachers is that they point you toward your own inner wisdom. They resonate with something amazing in you. They help you hear, they help you follow. You say "yes." You don't know what will happen. But you know you're living your real life.


Kelly Besecke writes about spiritual meaning, progressive religion, and authentic living. Her first book, You Can't Put God in a Box: A Thoughtful Spirituality for a Rational Age, will be out in 2013. Kelly is a dreamer, a thinker, and an incurable idealist who loves singer-songwriter music, impressionism, and every dog she's ever met.

Play by Kelly Besecke

Creative people need to play with their medium. Writers play with settings and characters and words, painters play with color and line and texture, dancers play with movement and rhythm and shape. It's from this time of play that more focused projects emerge. And creative play keeps the creative person happy and creative—you get new connections in the brain, you get the experience of flow, and you get to feel like your brain is skipping and your spirit is frolicking.

But right now I have another kind of play in mind. I'm writing this on the last day of South By Southwest, Austin's annual festival of film, interactive technology, and music, music, music. I'm not a musician—or a filmmaker or technology person—but SXSW is some of the greatest playing I do all year. I spend the weekend wandering around the city watching my favorite musicians play and sing. I run into other fans who share my tastes, I meet friends, I chat, I eat, and I sit in the sun. I lose myself in other people's playing—musicians, playing for themselves, one another, and me.

The kind of music I listen to and the town I live in have somehow come together to make a family, a network of musical friends. These musicians all know one another, are in and out of each other's lives, and sleep on each other's couches when they're in town for the festival. They're all fans of each other's music, and when they converge in one place, they join in on each other's songs, making a festival of personality and sound. It's like Pepperland.

It reinvigorates me. It inspirits me. Happifies me. Leads me to make up words. Inspires me to write.

An interviewer once asked one of my favorite musicians to tell him what music inspired his songwriting. This songwriter is a music fan with a long list of musicians he admires. But he told that interviewer that his songs more often come from movies he watches than from music he listens to. And his songs inspire my writing. And so on.

Martha Beck encourages a creativity technique she calls The Kitchen Sink, which boils down to this: when you're stuck or frustrated, do a whole bunch of unrelated things and see where they take you. I do this even when I'm not stuck or frustrated, just because it feels so good and is so good for me. I sink down into right-brain floaty space, where I follow my impulses. It looks like this: I read books about personality type, peruse Johnny Depp fan sites, look out the window and watch the treetops and clouds dancing with the wind, look at a picture-book of 1960s advertisements, get in the car and go buy food I don't usually eat, and spend some time people-watching. In other words, I play.

It's good to play on my own projects. But this kind of playing, the SXSW/Kitchen Sink kind of playing, is about getting outside my own main gig and into an even more right-brainy place of wandering, meandering, floating, making connections, seeing different kinds of things from new perspectives. It's like clouds drifting, changing shape, doing slow somersaults, coming together, sticking together, coming apart and sticking again to make new and bigger clouds. Moving, moving, moving, drifting, and things come together.

Play is all there is, I want to write, as yet another brilliant singer-songwriter closes her set and the audience gets up for beer and food and CDs. It's one of those statements that isn't true, but is, in the moment—the kind of moment when everything that really matters comes together, the kind when you know that this—this—is what it's all about.

So I thank my musicians, because their playing helps me play. My favorite musicians, Storyhill and Carrie Elkin, have introduced me to so many others who make for me (and for them) a musical community. Here are a few of them: Danny Schmidt, Sam Baker, Raina Rose, Justin Roth, A. J. Roach, John Fulbright, Dustin Welch, Chuck E. Costa, Robby Hecht, Devon Sproule, Paul Curreri, and Anthony DaCosta. To all of them, and to you: long may you play.

Kelly Besecke writes about spiritual meaning, progressive religion, and authentic living. Her first book, You Can't Put God in a Box: A Thoughtful Spirituality for a Rational Age, will be out in 2013. Kelly is a dreamer, a thinker, and an incurable idealist who loves singer-songwriter music, impressionism, and every dog she's ever met.

Brave by Kelly Besecke

"Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." - E. L. Doctorow

I had to start off with that quote because it's the only way to be honest about my story. It's too easy, with the conventions of narrative and memoir, to say, "I quit my career to pursue a creative life" or "I decided to move across the country and start a freelancing business" or "I decided that I would work part time for clients and part time on my own writing"--as if I had some kind of plan, as if these "decisions" were conscious conclusions born of logical analysis and practical reason rather than the unanticipated outcomes of inner prodding, sudden intuition, and continual experimentation.

The truth is messy, and E. L. Doctorow's quote captures it perfectly. It's an inspiring quote--it means you don't have to have a plan, you don't have to be able to see that far into your own future to be able to move forward. And it's a daunting quote. As we all know if we've ever driven at night in the fog--perhaps on unfamiliar roads, perhaps through the mountains--it's stressful. You have to be on high alert at every moment, paying close attention, all your senses at the ready to spot the truck that suddenly appears out of nowhere and the turn in the road that could either take you where you want to go or spin you off deeper into the fog.

In 2009, I left my stable career as a college professor and moved away from Ohio, where I had lived for six years. I had no plan. I had only a little savings. What I had were vague ideas. I had been thinking about this change for nearly four years, and I had devoted a lot of those four years to "What am I going to do?" in both its panicky and its practical forms. I had a sense that writing and editing might be good directions for me to go, and also that some kind of part-time or non-career-oriented ("working in a bookstore") job might make sense, too. And that's what I had: no plan, but a set of ideas that felt right.

Now, in 2012, I live in Austin, Texas, where part of my work is freelance editing and writing for clients, and part it is writing my first book, which I sold a couple of months ago to an excellent publisher for very little money. For the three years between then and now, I've been driving through the fog at night. Now the sun is coming up, but the fog hasn't dissipated--or some other metaphor to say that I'm not, at the moment, in a state of high alert and abject terror, but I am still in transition. I still don't know just where I'm headed. I still have ideas.

And so finally I come to the real topic of this post: Courage. Confidence. Bravery. Throughout this journey, kind people have sometimes told me that they think I'm brave. In response, I make my usual joke about the fine line between bravery and foolishness--or maybe I try to explain that I felt like I had no choice; that this was the only way forward for me. But I like hearing them call me brave, and I take it in. It's good for me--a heroic version of my story to counter the sense of bewildered scrambling that's my usual go-to.

This month, "brave" came together for me. Jamie Ridler, the owner of this blog, encouraged contributors to write about courage. Joe, a colleague from my professor days, visited Austin and told me over crepes that it was incredibly brave to break free from academia's "find a job and retire there" culture, to think about what makes me happy, and to act on it.

And then what made it all click: two friends independently reframed the meaning of brave for me. In an e-mail message, Erika told me, "Your commitment to being who you are even when you have doubts, concerns, etc. is what real confidence looks like. Sounds crazy, I know, but the confident ones stay true to themselves even when doubt is present." Colleen said, "People admire you for being true to yourself, even when it is hard. For expressing your feelings, even when there are tears. For saying what is on your mind, and for thinking deeply about your life and what it means."

All this, and Erika's and Colleen's words especially, have made me rethink brave. They've made me rethink insecure, too. Usually, when people say "brave," "courageous," or "confident," I picture some kind of Prince Valiant, dauntlessly going forward with his chest out and his mind clear, certain in his every action and decisive in his opinions. Or maybe I picture a runway model, poised and commanding: "You will admire me." But that's not what "brave" is. That's not even what "confident" is. Not for me, not now.

Years ago, at her PhD defense, my sister Leslie took the opportunity to thank the many people who had helped her along the way. I remember her thanking our parents for their love and support and then adding, with her wry smile, "I just thought of this--I'd also like to thank my parents for a certain stubbornness that I think has served me well in graduate school."

I think that for me, that "certain stubbornness"--a family trait whose friendly face is perseverance, dedication, focus, and commitment--is what brave looks like. The kind of brave I am, the kind of confident I am, comes with a variety-pack of fear, including insecurity, uneasiness, terror, worry, hypervigilance, panic, self-consciousness, and fun-filled images of "old, sick, alone, and broke"--or worse, "burden to my family."

But I'm stubborn. I stick with it anyway. I have an inner pull toward authenticity that won't let go; I'd disappear without it. The path of courage, of confidence, of bravery, for me, isn't about going forward fearlessly. It's about going forward stubbornly--continually returning to the path, continually finding new ways to return to it in the face of life's obstacles. I just have to, so I do it. I find a way.

Brave isn't what you feel--it's what you do. You feel fear, you experience doubt, and you pay attention to what they tell you. But fear and doubt don't run the show. You do. You're true to who you are, and you do what you know to be right for you. You drive through the fog at night because the road calls you. You're yourself--your whole self. And you're brave.

Kelly Besecke writes about spiritual meaning, progressive religion, and authentic living. Her first book, You Can't Put God in a Box: A Thoughtful Spirituality for a Rational Age, will be out in 2013. Kelly is a dreamer, a thinker, and an incurable idealist who loves singer-songwriter music, impressionism, and every dog she's ever met.

Feedback: What's helpful at different stages of a creative project? by Kelly Besecke

Valuable feedback

For me, valuable feedback comes from people who are totally on board with what I want to do and just want to help me do it. This is the kind of feedback I try to give to other writers. I think of myself as on the writer's side--their ally--and my goal is to figure out what they're trying to do and help them do it.

The contrast--feedback that isn't that helpful to me--comes from people who position themselves as challengers. Sometimes, challengers might question the value of the project or disagree with the way I'm thinking about it. Other times, their feedback might be along the lines of "Why don't you do what I want you to do, or what I find valuable, or what I would do if it was my project, or what I'm used to seeing from other writers?"

When I'm working on a creative project, I'm interested in developing it, not altering it to be something different. Just like a person--human beings are better off when you support them as they more fully become their own unique, amazing selves.

Feedback at the beginning of a project

In the beginning stages of a creative project, I'm very very selective about who I seek feedback from. A new original project is like a little sprout making its way up from the ground, powerful with potential, but vulnerable. It needs warmth and care and time to grow solid and strong. In the early stages, the only feedback that's helpful to me is "What a cool idea; here are some possible resources for you."

At the beginning, a project is really between me and me. There's something I'm trying to figure out and develop within my own mind and spirit. My engagement with the outside world is all about exploration--taking things in that help me learn. The feedback that matters is internal: What's speaking to me? What feels promising? What's drawing my attention? What do I see in the outside world that resonates with what I'm trying to figure out?

Feedback at the end of a project

The moment I'm in right now is the end stage of a project. I have a book that I started long ago, and I'm fortunate to have a publisher for it; now my job is to finish writing and revising it for publication.

At this stage, I know what I want to say, my ideas are solid and well-formed, and the project is fully fleshed out. I've learned what I wanted to learn, I know what I think, and I'm confident about it. Now, the project is to communicate what I've learned and what I think to other people.

At this stage, feedback feels like collaboration. I've been honing this project mostly on my own, and now other people are invested in it. My editor, and the press he represents, have years of experience and expertise in helping books reach readers--helping people communicate. So when he tells me, "I think you should make x, y, and z changes," a little voice inside me says, "I don't want to. It's my project, and I like it as it is." But a stronger voice now says, "I want to communicate. I want to reach my audience. And this person has ideas about how I can do that effectively. Excellent!"

Communication isn't the same as self-expression. Communication is about reaching people, and it's cooperative. The image in my head is an equation: feedback = audience. My editor is representing a particular audience, a particular set of people who we both hope will buy and read my book. To communicate with my readers, I have to think about where they're at, and how I can share my ideas with them in a way that they will find compelling.

I still hold on to the core of my vision. It's almost impossible not to at this point, because the book has grown up into something solid--it has its own reality now. But it's solid enough now to interact with the outside world, and that means conversation and relationship. Now, feedback means that I'm connecting, I'm communicating, I'm reaching other people. And in the end (but maybe only in the end) that's what I want my creative work to do.

Kelly Besecke writes about spiritual meaning, progressive religion, and authentic living. Her first book, You Can't Put God in a Box: A Thoughtful Spirituality for a Rational Age, will be out in 2013. Kelly is a dreamer, a thinker, and an incurable idealist who loves singer-songwriter music, impressionism, and every dog she's ever met.

Creative Dreams and Money (raw beginnings) by Kelly Besecke

I want to write to you about money and creative callings. But this topic is so full and so present for me that my thoughts and questions don't yet cohere into anything like a focused blog post. The place to begin, then, is with my disparate thoughts and questions. For now, I've organized them just enough to give you some broad categories. Please chime in! What are your thoughts and experiences on any of these topics, or on the broad topic of money and creative dreams?

The Day Job

• Day jobs and the creative process. Creativity happens during down time, when our minds are free to wander. We get our best ideas during breaks from periods of focused effort. We work hard on our creative project, and then we take a nap or a shower or a walk, and ideas come to us. But when we’re working a day job, our minds can end up devoting all that great unconscious creative energy to the concerns of the day job rather than to our own creative projects. Creative work, then, requires us to free our minds from our day jobs. It requires us to take a mental break from our paid work, then shift focus to our creative project, then take a break from it to allow our ideas to gestate, then return to focused work on our creative project, and then return to our day job. How do we manage our lives so that we can do all that?
• The happy day job. How do we find or create day jobs that we love, that feed our creative lives, or even day jobs that we just like well enough and that don’t take away from our creative lives?
• Self-employment as a day job. If you’re self-employed in your day job, how does that affect your ability to pursue a separate creative calling?
• Distributing our energy. We can put our energy into finding or creating or developing or tailoring our day jobs so that they support us financially and creatively. And we can put our energy into developing our creative careers so that we can earn money from them. And we can put energy into actual creativity—writing, painting, dancing, making music, however we express ourselves creatively. How do we decide where to focus our attention on any given day, week, month, or year?

Making Money from Creative Work

• Money dreams. "Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow." How has this dream played out for you?
• Creating and business. If you’re trying to earn money from your creative work, how do you manage the different requirements of creating your art, music, or writing versus running a business that sells your art, music, or writing?
• Different logics. Often, being in business involves being strategic and goal oriented. We might develop marketing strategies, work to establish ourselves as leaders, set goals, and prioritize sales. The creative process often involves a more process-oriented logic: we follow the muse, go where the project leads, do what's intrinsically motivating, and allow things to unfold naturally. When does it make sense to follow which kind of logic?
• Self-employment as a creative worker. How do we learn how to sell our creative work and manage a business built around our creative work?
• Hiring help. When do we hire help with the business side of creativity, and what kind of help do we hire?

Money, Creativity, and the Life Cycle

• Waiting for retirement. What happens when you postpone seriously pursuing your creative work until retirement?
• Parenting. If you’re pursuing a creative calling, keeping a day job, and parenting, then you’re working three careers. How do you manage?
• Gender, marriage, and family. What’s it like to pursue a creative calling as a single/married woman/man with/without children?
• Age, creative work, and money. What’s involved in being a "starving artist" in your 20s versus in your 40s or your 60s?
• Different strategies for different parts of the journey. How do we structure our creative careers differently as our lives change? For example, at different points of our lives, we might pursue a creative calling full time, we might go into debt to support a creative calling, we might work unrelated day jobs, or we might pursue careers that put our creative skills and talents to work on other people’s projects.

Struggle and Costs

• Debt. When do we go into debt to pursue our creative dreams? What kind of debt do we accrue? How do we manage debt?
• Managing time and energy. Pursuing a creative calling and a day job means pursuing two careers, in addition to our personal lives. How do we manage our time and energy so that we’re meeting our needs and staying happy and healthy?
• Financial worry. When our creative callings cost money, or send us into debt, or entail the uncertain income and increased costs of self-employment, we can get into a habit of worry. What do we do about this?
• Learning by example. Sometimes, the stories we hear about creativity and money run to extremes: it’s all either “starving artists” or “the universe pays me to do what I love.” But many creative people’s journeys are more complex than this. What true stories have you heard? What stories could you tell?
• Compromise. Sometimes we compromise our creative dreams for increased financial stability. Sometimes, we compromise our financial security for the sake of our creative dreams. Our day jobs may feed our creative work or take away from our creative work or both. How much of these different kinds of compromise is wise? How much is necessary?
• Work that costs money. While we hope to make money from our creative work, initially it often costs money, and this period of investment can go on for a long time. How do we decide how much money to invest in our creative dreams?
• Faith and trust. What roles do faith and trust play in the serious pursuit of a creative calling? How do you nurture your faith? What enables you to trust? Are you ever reluctant to trust that things will be okay? Is it ever unwise to act on faith? Are you ever better off not trusting and not having faith?

Kelly Besecke writes about spiritual meaning, progressive religion, and authentic living. Her first book is You Can't Put God in a Box: A Thoughtful Spirituality for a Rational Age. She's a dreamer, a thinker, and an incurable idealist who loves singer-songwriter music, impressionism, and every dog she's ever met.

Am I following my bliss if I don't feel blissful? by Kelly Besecke

Many of us who are following a creative calling resonate with Joseph Campbell's advice to "follow your bliss." But following your bliss doesn't always feel blissful. How do you know when you're on the right track and when it's time to rethink?

I used to be a professor, and now I'm involved with online communities of people who pursued an academic calling and for different reasons are reconsidering that path. Many of these people have come to resent the "follow your bliss" mantra. It was given to them as career advice, and many of them heard it like this: "You're passionate about French literature (or East Asian history, or ethical philosophy), so pursue that. Keep studying that, get your PhD, and a career as a professor will come together for you." They followed that advice, imagining a glorious future immersed in the life of the mind. But then things started to go wrong. Maybe graduate school was a nightmare. Maybe the academic job market was so tight that after years of trying, they were never able to get a job as a professor. Maybe they were able to get that job, but found themselves miserable in it. Maybe they eventually lost interest in their field of study and felt stuck in a career that didn't speak to them any more. Where was the bliss they were promised? Wouldn't they have been happier if they had done something more practical?

Following a creative calling, too, can bring up questions about the bliss factor. Maybe I love making art, or writing, or singing, but to pursue it seriously, I have to compromise other things that make me happy. How much sacrifice is worth it? A touring musician might give up the stability of home and family to keep on pursuing a musical calling. An artist might work a string of day jobs that drain her energy to support the art that feeds her soul. A writer might sacrifice her personal life so that she can work full time and finish her novel on nights and weekends. An actor might find himself in middle age and without any kind of financial stability because he prioritized his unpaid or poorly paid creative work.

So what becomes of bliss? Is following your bliss a cruel joke?

The only answer I know is to use that word "bliss" as a kind of navigational tool, like a compass. We have to keep on returning to it, keep checking in, keep adjusting our course. We have to remember what following our bliss really means--to remember that French literature, or being a professor, or publishing a novel, or making a living as actor, is not the real goal. The real goal really is bliss: happiness, creative fulfillment, self-expression, and a rich life that nourishes all of who we are.

So we make sacrifices to pursue what we love--we take risks, we give up resources, we endure training, we confront fears. But we consistently check in with ourselves. Am I happy? Do I feel like myself? Do I have what I want and what I need? I know what I wanted a year ago, but what do I really want now? And if things feel off, then we adjust course.

Adjusting course probably doesn't mean giving up the things you love. Instead, it means finding ways to have all the things you love. So you keep on reading French literature, or teaching, or making art, or acting. But you don't sacrifice the rest of your life to do that--you remember that you're a whole person with your own unique human needs, and you tend to all of them. And you don't assume that there's only one way to be happy doing what you love, or only one career path or lifestyle that will allow you to do what you love. You use your creativity and your support system to make for yourself a life that incorporates all the things you need and love. It's hard work. But if you keep on adjusting course, keep on checking in with yourself and taking your needs seriously, and keep on making real happiness your priority, then maybe the bliss will be in the journey.

What are your experiences following your bliss?

Kelly Besecke writes about spiritual meaning, progressive religion, and authentic living. Her first book is You Can't Put God in a Box: A Thoughtful Spirituality for a Rational Age. She's a dreamer, a thinker, and an incurable idealist who loves singer-songwriter music, impressionism, and every dog she's ever met.

A Treasure Chest of Your Past by Kelly Besecke

Some interviewers are truly excellent at getting to the core of the person they're interviewing. Not long ago, I saw an interview like that--the interviewer, Isabelle Giordano, was so thoughtful about her questions that she was able to get to the heart of the person she was interviewing. As a bonus, the interviewee was Johnny Depp, who's terrifically thoughtful. You can check out this 1993 interview here and here.

Midway through the interview, Giordano opened a bag and started pulling out things that she knew would have meaning for Depp--CDs, particular movies, books, photos, and other things that represented his passions or turning points in his life. He said "This is like Christmas!" By asking him to reflect upon these "Christmas presents," she connected him, herself, and viewers with his inner life, with what's meaningful to him, with the foundations of his identity and his creativity.

A treasure chest of meaning. What if we all had our own treasure chest full of life's gifts to inspire us and remind us who we are and what matters to us?

So I composed my own. What would be in my treasure chest? What people, books, things, places, and images would I want to gather together to represent the important parts of my life history?

Here are a few of the things I came up with:

• A picture of Nepal, where I lived for three months during college
• Tubes of oil paint
• A photo of my oldest niece, who I took care of when she was a baby
• A picture of Devil's Lake State Park, in Wisconsin, where I used to go a lot during graduate school to think and to get inspired
• CDs of Bill Moyers' interviews with Joseph Campbell, which inspired my first book
• Tama Kieves' book This Time I Dance, which was a spiritual lifeline when I was crumbling out of my old job and wanting to go in a completely different direction that I couldn't foresee
• Monet's "haystacks" series of paintings
• A postcard of my college

The list goes on--my favorite music at different points in my life, a couple of movies that affected me deeply, people who inspire me, things that have meant something to me.

If you like this idea, you could make your own list like this. You could write about what the different things in your treasure chest mean to you, and you could even gather everything up and put it in a box to leaf through sometimes for recollection, re-centering, and creative inspiration.

Kelly Besecke writes about spiritual meaning, progressive religion, and authentic living. Her first book is You Can't Put God in a Box: A Thoughtful Spirituality for a Rational Age. She's a dreamer, a thinker, and an incurable idealist who loves singer-songwriter music, impressionism, and every dog she's ever met.

How to Be a Fangirl (or boy) by Kelly Besecke

I have been a fangirl my whole life. At the age of four, I began a three-year obsession with The Monkees. I could sing all their songs by heart. Every afternoon, I sat wide-eyed and mesmerized by reruns of their TV shows. I daydreamed about The Monkees.

Now I'm forty-one, and I'm still like this. Mostly musicians, sometimes actors, occasionally authors. Mostly men, occasionally women. They captivate me for a while, and I listen to their music over and over, watch all their movies, memorize their books, and spend hours searching YouTube for interviews with them.

But I'm proud of my fangirldom, because I know exactly what I'm doing. Once upon a time, when I was very young, I heard this advice: "Women should become the men they want to marry." I thought this was brilliant. Because what we're drawn to, what we're attracted to, is really ourselves--deep, essential dimensions of ourselves that we want to more fully integrate.

So my obsession with The Monkees was about humor and energy and friendship. My teenage obsession with David Bowie was about crossing boundaries--breaking out of old confines and moving into forbidden territory. In my twenties, The Beatles were all about my creativity--some colorful, right-brain freedom to let my mind wander and create beauty. Right now, I'm cultivating a sense of centeredness, confidence in expressing my own unique perspective, authority over the conditions of my life, and a natural commitment to my own truth--and I can tell you anything you want to know about Johnny Depp.

So how to be a fangirl? Just give in, as you would to any other passion. Find the people who draw your attention, the people you admire, and immerse yourself. Absorb them. Find out what it is about them that's so captivating, and know, without a doubt, that those qualities are your own. They're who you really are--the aspects of you that you want to more fully express, the colors of you that you want to brighten, your greatest gifts and truest purposes, about to come into the sun.

Kelly Besecke writes about spiritual meaning, progressive religion, and authentic living. Her first book is You Can't Put God in a Box: A Thoughtful Spirituality for a Rational Age. She's a dreamer, a thinker, and an incurable idealist who loves singer-songwriter music, impressionism, and every dog she's ever met.

Meet the Dreamers: Kelly Besecke

  

Kelly Besecke

I'm a professor-turned-writer who writes about spiritual meaning, progressive religion, and authentic living; I'm also a freelance editor for scholars, students, and nonfiction writers. My first book, You Can't Put God in a Box: A Thoughtful Spirituality for a Rational Age, is coming out in 2013 with Oxford University Press. I'm working on a second book, which I've nicknamed "Bliss and Money," about the many ways that people combine creative commitments with earning a living. I'm a dreamer, a deep thinker, and an incurable idealist who loves singer-songwriter music, impressionism, and every dog I've ever met.

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