Preserve Your Energy to Reignite Creativity
This started out as an essay about quitting and taking a hiatus from writing. After I got that out of my brain and body - and had a good pity party for myself - this came into focus as a reframe….
For myself and other solo biz folks, it became a permission slip to put the marketing, newslettering and content creating down in the name of preservation. By redirecting our creativity and precious time elsewhere, the hope is that we then replenish and restore our work. Let’s try it together, shall we?
Welcoming The Big, Scary Feelings
The morning after the inauguration I couldn’t get out of bed. I hadn’t consumed any news of the events the day prior, yet it felt like dragging a heavy bag of bones just to get myself upright. Then at around 11am I found myself aimlessly staring at my refrigerator not knowing what to feed myself. And then it hit me… Oh this is despair. So I got myself a cold glass of water and welcomed this physical and mental state out loud: Hello Despair, welcome. I’m sure you’ll be staying awhile.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how as brands and businesses we continue to market our work, share our values, and make an impact as we navigate natural disasters, wars, society crumbling, and our regressive political future unfolding before our eyes. My dear friend and colleague Raudhah Rahman articulated what I’ve been feeling in her recent newsletter:
“I’ve struggled with how to balance showing up in this space while carrying the weight of everything happening. I didn't want to add to the heaviness, but I also didn't want to come across as disconnected or indifferent.”
These aren’t isolated feelings just between her and me. This is a very present and real topic of conversation among my co-working circles.
Navigating The Noise
I know that in times of struggle and unrest, more often than not the world needs our art, our words, our participation, and our unique gifts. And I know that there will never be a perfectly peaceful time that allows for the marketing and promotion of ourselves and our work to be received without a heavy acknowledgment of the state of the world.
There is always going to be another horrific thing. We live in a system that is designed to suppress and oppress. As my new friend and fellow writer
Lisa Sibbett said: “We might be living from catastrophe to catastrophe for the rest of our lives.”
And while I know that what we have to share with the world can be an antidote that affects small change, I find myself either feeling like I’m screaming into a vast, empty void or like I’m whispering into an overcrowded, raucous room.
Finding New Creative Outlets
During the pity party for myself, writing this newsletter all of a sudden felt like an obligation, a content calendar that I’m attached to for the sake of being consistent and staying visible. Add to that the days of our lives in the US of A… my creative mind is flustered and unreachable. When I get grounded and quiet all I hear is: STOP. BREATHE.
After stopping and breathing for a second, I started to think about what could be done to funnel time and attention away from online obligations in the name of creative restoration. What are things that feel more tangible, have actual purpose, and just feel good in real life?
Here are some of my ideas:
Making art with my kid
Cooking meals for my neighbors
Attending local Moms Demand Action meetups and meetings
Talking to the other parents at my kid’s gymnastics class instead of scrolling my phone
Going to the library when the Paws to Read therapy dogs are there
Making out with Lee Singer in the kitchen at 11am
Taking an adult sewing class at my local craft store
Straight up asking people to hang out and trying again even when I get ghosted
Reading novels
Being in real live conversation with people who are smarter than me
Checking in on people I love and miss with audio messages and phone calls
Honestly, just laying in the grass staring up at the sky
Cultivate and Nurture Other Channels
Stepping away from marketing businesses and services while still living life can bring about uncertainty and fear. Most of us do actually have to keep working to keep living life.
Being tied to social media and online promotion is not the only way to build a brand or a business. What’s been successful for me over the last 3+ years is cultivating and nurturing relationships through other channels. Referrals and direct connections have been my main source of paying work.
Through co-work sessions, meetups, masterminds, workshops and collaborations I’ve found people to build a supportive ecosystem with. We refer business to each other and most of the time we team up to work on projects together. I want the mental space and energy to keep those relationships at the forefront over meeting a content calendar deadline. This feels like embracing the collective over the individual.
Maybe You’re Feeling This Way Too
It was in a weekly mastermind group I’m a part of where Sally Ekus splashed a big wave of clarity over my face. When talking through the conflict of how to navigate the heaviness of the world alongside this pressure to share and engage, she said:
“In many ways, the demand of these platforms runs the risk of ruining creativity.”
And if like me, you’re working through how to savor what mental and creative energy you have, the thought of losing that to a set of rules enforced by some amorphous entity feels so disheartening.
Our energy and ability to create is such a finite resource, especially in our attention economy. So doing things to protect it, to redirect it in a way that plants a seed for something even more purposeful to emerge, feels like a necessity.
That may mean being in your inboxes less. That may mean sharing a gif that is detached from the current state of affairs. That may mean acknowledging joy instead of disaster.
Our energy, our humanity, and our purpose (and yes, by extension then our brands) deserve the time and space to breathe. Be it for our creativity and, most importantly, our ability to connect with ourselves and with one another.
Keep being awesome and keep being you, because you’re so on brand. <3
This is an article from my monthly newsletter Branding Brain. If you want to receive solopreneur stories, tangible takeaways and more alliteration
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