A new season of creativity

#10 A much-needed shift in my creative output and consumption

Hi, friend! 💌

Just a short (ish) one from me this week! I’m going through a patch of increased difficulty, and this week, I wanted to check in and have a bit of a ramble about how creativity looks, feels, and is changing in my life.

⭐ Creating

I'm experiencing a period of real creative abundance right now. It seems that writing and creativity are mainly what my brain has chosen to focus on to cope with the escalation of the situation I am in, which I’m over the moon about!

One part of this has presented in the form of sleepy haze 4am-6am Cyrene loving writing poems! Really powerful stuff, y'know when you look at what you created and think "wow". I love this, even when they’re heart-wrenching, and then I adore sharing those poems with my parents. They look forward to it, and ask in the morning "did 4am Cyrene write any poems?"🥹 but not in a pressured way, in a really nurturing way that makes me and my creativity feel held and loved.

I feel extremely lucky to have people who value my passions and eagerly await hearing what comes of them.

I seem to be very focused on writing and creating, and less interested in the “sharing online” part. I’ve been leaning into that; taking stock of my practices and systems surrounding creating, paying even closer attention than usual to my changing rhythms and needs, being more intentional about incorporating more play into my creativity…

…and none of this will mean anything to anyone else, but hopefully I’ll be able to get some clarity and report back a bit more specifically😂. But it has led to:

• Buying teeny tiny 10x10cm canvases (as opposed to my usual A4 and 20x25cm canvases) because I feel will be more able to let loose and play more, be more messy, experiment, and be less measured on these smaller canvases

• But also leaning into creating messy, no-thought, feelings-filled paintings of my usual sizes, too

• Creating a brand new Notion page for writing (to go with my…ahem, many Notion pages for writing🫣) with new intentions and practices to go with it; the simplest way for me to explain this is that it’s a bit like the teeny canvases, but for my writing. This has been beautiful and surprising, and I can already see the ways it will help me to grow creatively. I am excited to share what comes of this when I feel called to.

I basically feel I am entering a new season in regards to my creativity, and I am figuring out how to honour that. I am exploring this and the changes that are happening by finding more ways to be freer and messy and further grab with both hands the beauty of being imperfect, stopping editing before it gets stressful, and encouraging myself to accept that creations can be finished before they feel finished — things I’ve made huge progress in over the last few months but of course, the inner work never stops and that is so okay. I am enjoying it, I am grateful for it.

⭐ Reducing social media

I’ve known for a while that my habits surrounding these apps aren’t always serving me, and I’ve been trying to figure out ways of being more mindful of how I show up and interact with them.

This doesn’t mean using social media less because it (well Instagram mostly) is an essential element of my self-care, which might sound strange, but I explain more in this Instagram post. I am unashamed of what helps me get through all of…this (she says as she waves her hands and gestures in all directions😂).

But I felt like I could use them better — less mindless scrolling, especially through infuriating comment sections, and I noticed Facebook and Twitter do not spark any joy whatsoever😂. They were draining and agitating me, so I wanted to reclaim the time and energy I spend on those, and redirect it to other apps that were going to be healthier for me. I wanted to scroll less through mindless junk, and read more — focus on Instagram and Substack, and reading nourishing pieces from people who I choose to consume the work of, and updates on my internet friends.

Well! In the last couple of weeks, I made an amazing discovery that simply moving the apps around, particularly so that the ones I wanted to spend less time on were harder to get to (i.e. on the 2nd or 3rd page of the social media folder of my phone), and not somewhere they’ve always been, that could make a huge difference.

Why? Because, my friend, I discovered that literally 100% of the time I spend scrolling through irritating comments on Twitter and Facebook is a result of muscle memory. Move them, and I genuinely have 0 desire to be on these apps at all🤦🏾‍♀️.

I cleverly moved the Substack app into the place of the app that I most commonly automatically click on (Facebook), and I now spend more time on here than I did before, replacing something very draining with reading the beautiful words of those I’ve chosen to subscribe to! Bliss!

Ironically, I don’t go on Instagram as much as I would like to — I want to be on there more and I’m trying to figure out a way to do that, but that’s a story for another day.

⭐ Other bits and pieces

I explained some things that were helping here such as reading my own previous writing from here, Instagram, and what I’ve kept private, consuming the work of other people, trying my best to not stay isolated, etc. so I won’t repeat what I said there.

I have been trying my best to catch up with reading the Substacks I subscribe to, but I am still over 2 weeks behind😅. Oh well, I always have something to read when I need it, I suppose!

For a while, I’ve loved listening to instrumentals, especially ones of songs I know already. They are calming, I can sleep to them, read to them, write to them, paint to them, anything. I find it helps to reduce the amount I think and immerses me even more into whatever it is that I am doing.

I try to remind myself every day of why I keep going, and I wrote about a big reason on Instagram last week.

⭐ Paid subscribers

I am over the moon to be able to say that I plan to start sharing posts for paid subscribers very soon. I anticipate that the creative exploration and re-evaluation I have been doing, and this new season of creativity I am entering, are going to feed nicely into this. I’ve been quietly jotting down ideas for this here and there over the last few months, and I am eager to see where this leads.

⭐ I am so grateful

Something I will say is that I am grateful for creativity, I am grateful for my own, and I am grateful for other people’s and the work they share for others to enjoy and learn from. It truly is one of the most significant features of my life that is keeping me going.

I know this letter has been extremely rambly and for some reason difficult to write, but…it’s what I wanted to share with you, anyway! I am grateful if you made it this far!

Lots of love,

Cyrene💘