It's spring! The actual spring, not the calendar-says-so version, and honestly, the pull to be outside is winning. Even when I'm in the studio, there's something about a truly beautiful day that makes staying inside feel like an argument with nature I'm not going to win. And I don't think I should even try.
We are living, breathing spirits, you and I. Connected to The Creation, not as a metaphor, but as a natural, physical fact. Trying to ignore that when the world is cracking back open, when the light has changed and the air smells like something new has started, doesn't serve our spirit. And it definitely doesn't serve our creativity.
So: permission given. Go outside. Take a walk. Look at things. It counts.
Dandelion Burst
What the "Shoulds" Cost You
Inspiration is a funny thing, and I say this from a place of having little to to nothing to write this week (until I did): it takes relaxing. It takes letting things go a little. Let The Creation replenish you, fill you back up. When you're wound up and constricted with the "have tos" and the "shoulds," you miss the subtle signs and whispers of your own creative soul. The good ideas aren't louder than the noise; they're quieter. They require a little stillness, a little space, a little willingness to not be producing for five minutes.
That's not laziness. That's how this works.
The Inspiration That's Already Yours
If you're in a place right now where nothing feels interesting and the creative well seems dry, I made something for you. Take What Belongs to You: First Steps is a $7 workbook built on one idea: your inspiration isn't missing. You've just been looking in the wrong places: outward, toward trends and techniques and what's supposed to interest you, instead of inward, toward what actually catches your eye.
The workbook has three guided exercises that will guide you to uncover your personal creative source, worksheets to capture what genuinely interests you (the weirder, the better), and space to make small art right in the pages. By the time you're done, you'll have three pieces of art that are undeniably yours, small, imperfect, and entirely from your own creative source. Your creative source doesn't need anyone's permission or approval. It just needs your attention.
Come Walk With Me
And if what you're really looking for isn't a workbook but a companion, that's what Walk With Me is. Not technique. Not a system. Just permission to be yourself, encouragement when you need it, and the company of someone who wandered off the prescribed path and found real joy there.
What I want you to know is that it's genuinely two-way. I check in with members actively during the month, and when you write to me, with questions, thoughts, things you're working through, work in progress, I read it, I think about it, and I reply in detail. I take an active interest in your projects, your process, your creative life. The word there is active. This isn't a place where your message goes into a void. It's a correspondence with someone who actually cares what you're making and why.
All of that is $9 a month: less than most coffee shop stops, and the conversation is considerably better.
What's stirring for you creatively right now? Hit reply and tell me, I read every message and I write back.
I See Your Light,
Monette
PS — If the creative well is running dry right now, First Steps is a good place to start. Three exercises, 90 minutes, three small pieces of art that came from you. $7 here.
PPS — I have been finding increasingly creative reasons to be outside. Today's excuse: the dandelions have reached full golden explosion and the newly minted bees of the season have arrived to glory in them. I may have lingered there longer than was strictly necessary…