170: Self-Care for Creatives

 

Self-care goes beyond bubble baths and candles and massages. It's a crucial practice for creatives to help us create our best work. 

The Creating Strong Characters Workshop is happening March 6 at 1pm EST! Register HERE. 

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Self-Care for Creatives

Hello and welcome to big creative life podcast. Thanks for being here. I did not plan to record an episode today, but we're going rogue. I'm at my coworking co working space and needed to take a break from some editing work that I'm doing on a client manuscript. And was like, You know what? I'm gonna just get ahead of my podcasts. So here we are. We're talking about self care for creatives, which is a hugely important topic, and I think it's one of those things that's easily dismissible. Like, oh yeah, self care, yeah, okay, go take a bubble bath. You know, we talk about self care in these, these kind of generic terms. And I really want to get into what that means for creatives, for writers, because this is absolutely essential for us, and it's worth spending some time talking about what that looks like.

 

Before I do that, I want to let you know about some upcoming stuff happening that I'm very excited about. So just kind of put this on your calendar, if you're if you're any of this on your calendar, if it's anything that sounds interesting to you. So first this episode is going to come out the first week of March. So if you're listening to it on the week that it comes out, I'm going to be hosting a characters workshop that's happening Thursday March 6, at 1pm Eastern Time, and it's going to be on creating strong, engaging characters for your novel. It's an hour workshop I'll teach for the bulk of the workshop, and there's going to be a little exercise that I'm going to have everyone do. And then there's an opportunity to ask questions. So if you have questions about characters, this is your chance to get those questions answered. It's only $39 and as soon as the workshop is over, I will email out the recording to everyone who registered.

 

So even if you can't make it live, if you have to work, if you've got another commitment at that time, but you still want to view the training, then definitely sign up, because you will just get emailed a copy of it afterwards, and it's yours to keep you can watch it as many times as you want. So that's happening Thursday March 6, and then in April, I'm also going to be doing another round of novel jumpstart, which is my program for new writers, and we're switching up novel jumpstart, which I'm very excited about it. I ran this program twice last year, and I learned a lot the writers who participated found it really valuable. But I want to just tweak a little bit of what I'm what I'm doing with this new round to make it more accessible and more affordable and kind of shorten the the time commitment. So what we're going to do, it's going to take place over four weeks, and it's designed for you to write the first chapter of your novel in those four weeks.

 

So what's included in novel Jump Start is number one, you get access to an online course that I've created called idea to book that has everything you need to know to go from Hey, I've got a book idea, not really sure about it yet, all the way through to finished, written and edited book. So obviously, in the four weeks of the program, we're not going to go from idea all the way to edited novel, because that's a lot of work to do in four weeks. And we're not going to do that. The focus is just going to be on getting the first chapter out. But you get to keep access to the course after novel Jump Start is over, so that if you want to watch a training later on, editing or finishing your novel or whatever, you could have access to that material, and you get to just watch it when you're ready for it. And then there's also a weekly coaching call that happens for each of the four weeks, we'll have a coaching call every week where all do a little bit of teaching, but then the focus is really on y'all.

 

So everyone who signs up for novel Jump Start, everyone who participates, will have a chance to share updates, to ask questions, to get coaching, because there are things that come up right when you're when you're starting to write. There are questions about characters and plots and all that, but they're also mindset issues that can come up. So it's a great opportunity to get some coaching. And there's also a discord group that all the writers get access to for the four weeks of the program. Now, when you go to the registration page with more info, which will be up soon, it's not up quite yet, because novel Jump Start isn't happening until April and it's March when this episode is coming out, but it'll be up soon. You'll see kind of an add on, if you would like me to review the first chapter and give you some notes. You can add that on as an extra kind of bonus for you, but I really want the focus again to be just on the first chapter. And I think doing it this way will allow for more people to be in the program previously I capped it, and it's also going to be a lot more affordable.

 

So just keep that in the back of your head if you think it's something that you. Might be interested in, because I'll have more information for that soon, and you'll be able to see the link. I might run it again in the fall, but for right now, I'm i My plans are to do it in April, exact date, TBD, and then we'll see how this goes and see if I want to make a change to it before we run it again in the fall. So those are the two things that I want to announce, and then also just a reminder editing and coaching. I have a six month coaching program if you want more than just write your first chapter, if you want accountability, if you want coaching calls, if you want feedback on the way, a full review of your rough draft. Check out the six month program and then editing. You can always click the link in the show notes to see what my editing openings are for either a manuscript evaluation or copy editing. I think that's everything.

 

Yeah, I just sent out an email to my list recently. I was like, hey, you know, I want to keep you all updated of what I'm thinking, what I'm working on, so that you can plan ahead, whether it's budgeting, whether it's just setting aside something on your calendar. Like, oh, I want to attend this training. I want to do this thing. I want people to be prepared and kind of know what's what's coming up. So we're gonna get into in this episode, like I said, self care for creatives. And there's, I can't remember where I heard this, but I heard this quote once. There was something along the lines of the ultimate act of self care is building a life that you don't have to escape from. And I think about that a lot because, look, you can take a bubble bath, you can buy yourself a massage. You can have you can do meditation, whatever.

 

But if your life is insanely stressful. You are at a job that you despise. You are in a toxic relationship, right? Like, if all of these other pieces of your life are really hard and difficult, then these things are just putting a band aid over the real issues. And so I don't ever, I don't think any of these things that I'm going to talk about in this episode are going to fix all of the things that are stressful in our lives. No act of self care is going to do that. But I think of self care as more of a holistic kind of lens to view how I'm living my life, like am I taking time to nurture myself? Am I taking time to do the things that I know make me feel good, mentally, physically, emotionally, and also help me create the things that I want to create, whether it's content, whether it's this podcast, work stuff, whether it's writing, journaling, whatever that looks like, that's how I that's how I think about it. Okay, we're going to go through a few suggestions, few different things to think about here and with self care.

 

Okay, number one, let's just get this out of the way. Right off the bat, the acronym halt, hungry, angry, lonely, tired. This is something I learned in recovery. In early days I'm sober, and I have been sober for 11 years, and in the early days of my recovery, it was drilled into me by people who were more experienced with not drinking than I was that you really have to pay attention to am I hungry? Am I angry? Am I lonely? Am I tired? Because if any of those four things, or all of those four things, are present, I'm much more likely to make a bad decision, right? I'm much more likely to reach for a coping mechanism, and in the early days of my recovery, it was alcohol, and that was what I was trying to avoid. But this can be this looks a lot different now for me, but it's like if I am hungry, if I'm angry at someone, if I'm feeling lonely and isolated, if I'm tired. My defenses are down. I'm much more likely to make a bad decision. I'm much more likely to just feel like absolute garbage, to feel like shit, physically, mentally, emotionally, and I'm not going to do my best work. I'm not going to in a lot of times.

 

Honestly, I'm not even going to want to do work, whether it's work, work like business or just writing, or something like I'm just not going to want to do those things. I'm not going to have not going to have the energy to do those things. So think of this as like a check in for yourself. When you start to feel squirrely, when you start to feel anxious, when you start to feel like you don't want to do the things that you know are good for you, halt. Am I hungry? Am I angry? Am I lonely? Am I tired? And the good news with those four things is there's something you could do to solve like, if I'm tired, I know there's an easy fix for that, right? Maybe it's not possible for me to take a two hour nap in the middle of the day, but I can take 10 minutes and close my eyes and just decompress for a bit. If I am lonely, I can talk to Sam, or I can call a friend or something. If I'm angry, that's something I can work through or address or process. If I'm hungry, that's the easiest one to fix. So think about halt. Do it a little, check in with yourself, because those taking care of our physical needs, that's self care, that's treating yourself well, that's loving yourself. The next thing that I. Is self care, is work life balance.

 

And this sometimes makes me roll my eyes, because I don't know. I feel like women disproportionately get asked this question, particularly women who are parents, because there's this element of like, well, you have to balance your work, and you have to balance your life, and how do we do it? And there's the mom guilt, and I don't know, I feel like this is a question that just that men don't get asked about, like, work life balance. But what this means to me is, am I putting all of my energy and focus into my business, meaning I have nothing left for all of the other areas of my life. Am I not giving attention and love and priority to my family, to my friends, to other areas of my life that are important to me? And I think this is true in the creative process, for creative specifically to like, not just work life balance, but if we're talking about writing, specifically, writing balanced with life, there are some people who can devote four hours a day to writing, and it's no problem.

 

They've got the capacity. It's just not an issue for them, but for most of us, that is a recipe for burnout and frustration and exhaustion, to be writing that much and to be pushing ourselves that hard, and you know, like you, you can do a gut check if you're listening to this right now, if you are pushing yourself to the point of exhaustion, if you are saying no to social commitments or just commitments that you have in general, if you are prioritizing your writing to the point where you are neglecting yourself and neglecting other areas of your life, then it's time to take stock of that and see is this, is this? Can I continue this? Is this sustainable? And look, sometimes you have to hustle, sometimes you have to push to get something done. I've certainly had periods of that in my writing life, but also my work life. It just happens sometimes. But I want you to think about your writing as a career. I want you to think about your writing for the long haul, if you are killing yourself to get a rough draft of your book out and staying up till three in the morning and getting four hours of sleep at night, because you have to push a hustle to get this draft done. That's not sustainable. That's not something you should you should be pushing for.

 

I want you to just be aware of the the hustle culture, the hustle mentality that so many of us have internalized, and tying our productivity to our worth, and step back and examine if your writing routine is sustainable, if it feels good. So that balance is essential. And I don't think there's any point in time where I've got it 100% right always, but it is something I pay attention to. Okay, another thing that I consider self care is our boundaries, setting boundaries around your time, your energy. This is essential, again, as women, just like with the whole work, life balance thing most women, not all, but a lot of, a lot of women, struggle with setting boundaries, because we have been brought up in a society, in a culture in America, at least, where women have to be polite and take the feelings of everyone else into consideration and place those needs and those wants and those feelings above our own. And we're conditioned to think that setting a boundary is abrasive or cruel. We don't want to be perceived as bitchy or whatever, but it's just a skill that we have to learn to set boundaries.

 

I have an episode that I did of the podcast maybe last year. It's a ways back about boundaries, so I encourage you to listen to that for some examples of what this might look like. But I think it's essential, particularly if you are in a busy phase of your life where you have to deliberately carve out time to focus on your writing or your creative pursuits, setting boundaries and being really protective of that time is important, and that might mean that you have to say no, or you have to push back, or you have to fiercely protect that time by disappointing other people or letting them feel however they're going to feel. But the good news is, when you set a boundary, you're not responsible for how it makes the other person feel. So it's something that we have to do, and I truly do view that as self care, because it's putting yourself first. It's putting your time first, and saying this is a priority. This is important to me, and I'm going to protect it. I'm going to set a boundary around this. Okay? Do.

 

Next up, something for self care meditation. I do not mean that you have to set aside 30 minutes every single morning to do a formal meditation kind of practice. If that's not something you're into, it's not something you're interested in, fine. Doesn't have to be that can that's awesome, but doesn't have to look like that when I was new in recovery. What this looked like for me because it was, it was suggested to me to do some meditation in the morning before I started my day, as I would take three minutes, I would literally just take three minutes for me. Usually this was before I would get ready for work. Sometimes it was once I was ready and I ate breakfast and everything, and I was about to head out the door. I would do this, but I would set a timer, because that way, when the timer is running, I didn't have to think about like, how long has it been? Has it been five minutes? Has it been 60 seconds? Whatever set the timer, and I would close my eyes and just deep. Breathe deeply. Breathe deeply. Take some deep breaths. I didn't do a guided meditation. I didn't try to focus on anything in particular.

 

It truly was just getting quiet for three minutes, closing my eyes and focusing on my breathing. It was remarkable how quickly I noticed a shift in my mornings when I did this versus when I stopped doing it, or the days when I didn't do it. And it's crazy because three minutes is nothing. I mean, three minutes is it's so easy to do, and yet so many of us don't do it because we're rushing. We're like, oh, I don't have time. I gotta do this move, it's three minutes. We can all find three minutes in our day. It doesn't even have to be three minutes. It can literally be 60 seconds. Something I talk about, when I talk about writing sprints, is doing a moment of meditation and just setting an intention, or doing just some deep breathing. It doesn't even have to be, you know, thinking about the writing session or setting an intention for it. But so what this looks like before I write, when I'm when I'm doing a full session, and I do all this kind of pre writing, all these rituals, is getting my Word doc open so I know where I'm starting.

 

Everything set up. I've got my drinks, got my timer ready to go for how, however, however long I'm going to write. And then I take 60 seconds and I just do some deep breathing, or I think about the writing that I'm going to do, the scene that I'm going to work on, and then I start writing that's 60 seconds. But something about that that pause allows us to get ground, it allows us to focus, it allows us to be aware of our physical bodies, and there's something so incredibly valuable about that piece of it in particular. Because for me, I don't know about you, but for me, I live up in my head so much as someone who has anxiety and ruminates a lot I live, I can live up in my head very easily and feel like I'm just not fully present for my life. And so doing the 60 seconds, or the three minutes or five minutes of meditation helps me get grounded and feel my body and get more plugged in and connected, which is essential, and then everything else gets like 5% better. It's not a cure all. It doesn't solve everything. Doesn't solve my anxiety, but it it truly makes a difference.

 

So I encourage you to try that. And if you're one of those people who thinks that you can't do meditation or you're bad at it because your mind wanders, I want to reframe that for you as it is your brain's job to think thoughts. If your brain was just completely empty for minutes on end, that would be a bad sign. Something would probably be wrong, or you're just a master meditator who's been doing this for decades and can truly achieve that, but that's almost no one. So it is your brain's job to think thoughts. And if you think thoughts while you're meditating, congrats, you're human. It does not matter. The thoughts would race when I would do those three minutes early on, and I would just constantly bring my awareness back to my breath. And sometimes that meant I would increase, uh, take deeper breaths, and, like, really do that, like, a full, deep breath, and sometimes it was just regular breathing. Um, it's okay. Just with love, direct your awareness back to your breath. No sweat, you're gonna think thoughts. You're not bad at meditation, I promise.

 

 And I think this practice of meditation, and really what it is, is mindfulness and bringing our awareness back to the present moment helps so much in the writing process, because it's very easy for us, with the voice of our inner critic as writers, to get caught up in Well, how am I gonna write this scene that's coming up, or what are people going to think of this one? What are beta readers going to think of this one? What if I get canceled because readers don't like this thing? Yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's very easy to go ahead and just like jump ahead to the future, to catastrophize, but doing this mindfulness practice and being in the present moment when we're writing really has. Helps. It allows us to just focus on the next thing that's in front of us. And it just, I think it just makes the process more easier and more enjoyable as well, like the writing process.

 

So meditation, mindfulness, huge proponent of those things, even for people, if you're listening and you think you're bad or you can't do it, just try, okay, another bit of self care that I want to talk about is a gratitude list. And you might be rolling your eyes and like, oh, this falls under the category of like, bubble baths and gratitude lists. And just hear me out. Okay, it's along with meditation. Gratitude is a practice that transformed my life when I learned this as a tool in my early recovery, okay, I was on a text chain with some friends for or sorry, an email chain with some friends for like, five or six years, where we would just email gratitude lists to each other. And when you do it every day, which some of the people on the email thread Did, did it every day, I didn't I did it maybe I don't know, three or four times a week. It forces you to get specific, because I can put like, if I do a gradus gratitude list, now I can put like, Sam, you know, my husband. I can put Audrey, my daughter. I can put, like, having a house living in Charleston where the weather is nice, like, I can put general things on there. And yes, I I'm always grateful for those things. But when you do it often, it forces you to get specific.

 

So, like, I did a gratitude list this morning. I just did three things because I have a notebook where it's like a planner slash journal, and I can put things that I'm grateful for, and there's only three spots in the in the journal, I could make more, but I just put three down there, and I put that. I'm wearing my favorite sweater right now, like it just came out of the dryer last night. I still haven't folded that load. That was that I got from the dryer. So it's I pulled it out of the dryer this morning, and I got to put it on, and it's soft, and it's soft, and I like the color, and it just made me feel cozy. Like that's a little bit of a little piece of gratitude. You can also do this with your writing. So a gratitude list of like, what are you grateful for? What do you appreciate about your work in progress, about your writing style, your capabilities, your strengths as a writer, what are you grateful for?

 

We have this negativity bias in our brain where we're like so focused on what isn't working or what we want to change, or thinking about the future, that forcing ourselves just really is my tissue sitting in front of the camera. Sorry, y'all if you're watching the video, forcing ourselves to look at these things and to shift our perspective into gratitude is one of the most powerful things that we can do, and I think it's a form of caring for yourself and realizing how much is going well and how much is working and the progress that you're making and celebrating that progress. Because when you are writing or creating something, it is not just about the end goal. It's about all the steps along the way, and shifting your perspective through something like a gratitude list helps you appreciate all those steps along the way, even on days when it's hard and you want to throw in the towel and you feel like it's just not working.

 

Okay, my last piece of self care little advice that I want to mention is just romanticizing your life. This is something on social media that I'm sure you've seen if you're on social media, consuming content at all, if you're scrolling. And a couple years ago, this was, like, introduced, and everyone was like, oh, romanticize this, and romanticizing this. And they put, like, esthetic clips together on on social media. And that's all fine and dandy. But what I love about that, I don't really do that type of content, and I don't, I don't think about it in terms of esthetics for social media. But why I love that so much, is it? It's all about the little pieces of your day, the little pieces of your creative routine, of your writing process, of your book, it's kind of the it's like the mindfulness piece of it and the gratitude piece of it in action. Because when you're romanticizing your life, you're looking at all of these little pieces and celebrating all of these things.

 

Like me romanticizing my life is is looking at the sweater that I'm wearing that I picked out of the dryer this morning. And being like this is so cozy and wonderful and like, I don't know, my writing nook, I have these string lights that are up. They're pretty basic. They're not that exciting, but I love them because they I turn, I keep the light turned off. Next to my desk, I just have a little lamp that has, like, really soft, warm lighting. And I have the lights, and I have a really creamy keyboard where, when I type, it's a really satisfying sound. So all of that contributes to the vibes of writing, and then the vibes contribute to this feeling of like, I'm just romanticizing writing. And this is true, even if you like, don't, don't think about the content piece of it. Just think about how do you want to feel? You. Um, what can you appreciate? What little moments can you take stock of?

 

And I think what it is is is it's pausing. It's pausing and noticing what nourishes you, what makes you feel good. What little moments can you take with you that just sort of soothe you or nurture you, or are a form of self care, because it's so easy to get caught up in the day to day and what we have to do and the grind. And you know, if you are an anxious girly like me, you know how easy it is to ruminate and think about the things that we haven't achieved yet and the things that we want, and worrying about how things are going to go or how we're going to get there, or whatever. And doing this romanticizing these little rituals or these little moments helps shake us out of that.

 

Okay, so those are the tips or the things I think are important when it comes to self care. And yes, you can find a million listicles or social media pieces of content like carousels that are like self care, that include things like the bubble baths and the exercise and the whatever. So there are endless opportunities to just get, like, general forms of self care out there. But I think for creative people, these in particular, are like, I don't know. They're just essential. We have to treat ourselves well. We have to give ourselves a lot of compassion and grace in the process. I mean, just as both as human beings, but also like just going writing something, or going through the creative process, because it's hard, it's difficult, and you need to take time to just kind of, you know, parent yourself, or be gentle with yourself, or however you want to think about it.

 

Okay, so again, if you're listening to this episode, the day comes out or the day after, then there's still an opportunity to sign up for that characters workshop. I'll put a link in the description in the show notes, so you can check that out if you want to. And if you're listening to this after that the workshop, you can still you can purchase the replay. I'm gonna have that available. Sorry, I just got a notification about something, um, I'm gonna have that available, available so that you can purchase it. I did a characters workshop, gosh, I don't even know, probably, like, four years ago. And so this is going to be kind of similar to that, but I'm going to update it and have some new content in there. So if you have been following me since then and attended that workshop, first of all, thank you. I love that, but also it is going to be a bit different. There's, there's some different content in there, so hope to see you all there. It'll be fun. And also think about novel Jump Start, kind of put that in the back of your head. I'll share more about that soon. Okay, be good to yourselves. Take care of yourselves. We got to look out for ourselves as creatives and be kind to ourselves. So all right, we'll see you next week.

Katie Wolf