This week has been about tools, both in the studio and in the workroom. I’ve been putting together something new, which has had me deep in the workspace: printing, designing, packing, all the things that go with that kind of making. One of those tools is an old Dymo label printer that’s reliable, a workhorse, it’s been around a while. This week it decided to be unhappy, and after some troubleshooting that went nowhere, I finally just unplugged it and walked away. Maybe I’ll figure it out. Maybe I won’t. Either way, it was time to put it down — give it some breathing space, and give myself the same.
Sometimes the tool needs a rest. So do you.
You Are Not a Problem to Solve
Permission this time isn’t about gatekeepers or credentials, it’s the quieter kind. The permission to create in your own cycles and rhythms, to make what calls to you when it calls to you, and to stop when you need to stop.
Creating from your inner life doesn’t run on a linear schedule. It comes in cycles and circles — stretches of high output, periods of quiet, patches where something pulls at you hard and then releases you back. The culture wants to call that inconsistency. A problem to solve with a better system or a more disciplined morning routine. It isn’t.
“You don’t have a creativity problem. You have a permission problem.”
That’s it. That’s the whole thing. When you’re not making, you’re probably not broken, you’re probably waiting for yourself to say yes. And that yes is yours to give.
Take What Belongs to You
Since we’re talking about permission: there’s a book for this.
Take What Belongs to You: Wild Creativity walks you through nine exercises across three phases — inspiration, technique, and permission. It’s built around one idea: your creative authority belongs to you, not to institutions, not to gatekeepers, not to the voice that keeps telling you you’re not ready yet.
By the end you’ll have nine pieces of art. Small, imperfect, and entirely yours.
No course. No schedule. No prerequisites. About what a simple meal out runs, and the conversation with yourself afterward is considerably more useful.
Find it on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GXDWSFV4
The Good Folk Are Calling
I’ve been quietly working on The Good Folk Series — handmade figures rooted in Appalachian landscape spirits, drawing on the Scots-Irish folk traditions that run deep in the history of these mountains. I haven’t talked about it much here, but it’s starting to call louder now and I’m following that.
Three heads are finished so far, with some experimental work on the eyes and a wire-frame body in progress. I’m starting a dedicated Pinterest board to document the process — look for that soon. These figures are going to be their own kind of thing: part sculpture, part field guide, part something I don’t have a name for yet. The Creation knows what they are.
They’re calling…
What have you had to put down lately — a tool, a project, a way of working — to give yourself some breathing space?
I read every one and I write back.
Light Your Own Way!
Monette
PS If the permission conversation is landing for you, Take What Belongs to You starts exactly there, and then hands you the work to answer it yourself: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GXDWSFV4
PPS That Dymo printer is still sitting there, unplugged, with a whole roll of labels that I suspect are crap. Neither of them is going anywhere. The making that needed to happen this week happened anyway, by showing up without every tool working the way it was supposed to. Your creativity doesn’t need everything to run smoothly. It just needs you.