Last year, 2023, was a bit different for me. All years tend to be different from the next. A few major things that felt like shifts under my feet took place in my life. I graduated with a Buddhist MDiv from the University of the West. I am now a practicing Spiritual Care Counselor. I’m without the responsibility of caring full-time for a four-legged family member, although the grief is still here and I take the lessons of caring for them to care for myself. This has created space for me to travel, contemplate, hike, volunteer, explore, and breathe. My movie poster gigs have almost completely stopped following the Hollywood strikes, and have yet to emerge. Beginning again and again with new ways of relating to art and technology and I’m sure people too. Here I am wondering how to transition my website to this newness. I am still taking photographs, still meditating, still creating. As I lean into this big unknown I only imagine it might be a bit confusing to any onlookers, it sure is confusing for me too.
For the new year, I will be inviting creatives to join in some exploration as well. I have been enjoying leading small groups with mindfulness and creative expression and I hope to have some offerings up. There is also room for one-on-ones for anyone looking for spiritual care. I hold sessions in nature, at my home, or on zoom. More to come on this, what it entails, and how it might be helpful. We are facing staggering environmental challenges and most of my creative friends feel this sensitivity. It might show up as agitation, anger, exhaustion, grief (often unexplainable), or dullness. My work for myself, and others, is to hold space for the inner climate.
I will always remember when I first noticed the seasons and my inner emotional landscape mirroring as a kid. I would spend days in the woods behind our home in Michigan, often alone, and often daydreaming. I found space there to let nature hold my array of feelings and be held by the elements. In the winter it was often snow. The snow has a profound way of clearing space in our minds. Walking and knowing we are leaving footprints, or seeing the beings that were there before us (and the prints that they left) in the snow showed me interconnection. The melting and mud of the winter felt hard. And when the whole field might be recovered with the white blanket again, it was like a fresh start.
This winter is a fresh start and a blank page. I am curious who else is holding this emptiness too? In connecting with other creatives we have a unique power to imagine things all over again. We can often let go of what did not work yesterday, because to be creative, you have to. Our whole process is about starting again and again. Sometimes looking around to see what else might have walked in our path or just making the very first mark on a page with any old tool lying around, we start anew. At times the most challenging part for me is setting aside all of the ways I have done things before. After the repetition of life takes hold, it takes me effort to also release the patterning. Our brains enjoy patterns and our creative mind can often rest in them.
With all of this, I am here now, sharing a little about the creative and spiritual journey I am on in the form of a blog post and without any idea who might be reading it. To me, these are connected and always tied to nature. Buddhism has been a gift in my secular life and it has given me a training I never even knew I was looking for. For the new year, I call on some tried and true patterns that keep me thriving. I will leave you with these.
Write. First thing.
Drink Water. Second thing.
Meditate with others.
Walk in sacred spaces where the animals play.
Spot and look, then wait and look longer.
Eat root vegetables every day to ground.
Look with the intention for joy.
Make eye contact, with self and others.
Give gratitude, especially when things feel hard.
Ask for help.
There is always time to move the body.
Make the bed.
Drink more water.
Make noise, hum, laugh, cry, yell, whisper, animal sounds, sing.
Sleep and put away the scrolling.
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.