Maybe It's Just Me

Welcome back to, “Maybe It's Just Me.”  I'm your podcast host and founder and host of Creative Work Hour.   Our work on here are advancing thoughts about what creativity is and what it's not.   In the last two episodes I've talked about, “Go Where We Are Celebrated” and “Never, Ever, Ever, Ever Stay Where We Are Being Tolerated. In the S1 E10 finale episode, I give a primer in how to manage being tolerated in a way that saves your creativity if not at least some peace of mind.   What I want to pick up on now, is that even though you're learning and growing in your life and in your work, from time to time you may  have to put up with being tolerated for a time. As in, it is a first choice put up with it because it serves a higher purpose, one that reflects your values an integral part of who you are and an intrinsic part of your creative self.   Take this as an example. Let's say there are some special occasions, like birthdays, holidays, observances, memorial services or even the introduction of a new little one to the family and friends of the family.   It is your idea to participate because to do so expresses your value of being a part of the whole, more specifically being an aunt or uncle who shows your care for the new niece or nephew. Of course, your participation in the celebration involves that there may be some unruly friends or family members that may bring about the sensation of being tolerated.   So how do we take care of our creative lives while we take care of our other cherished parts?   Here’s the trick. You have to hold something back in a type of effort or giving savings account for taking care of yourself. No one is entitled to lucidity. No body. One musts to the allocation of resources for that.   If you want to play a part in a family, then simply account for the expenses of it, no matter whether you play the role of a hero or a scape goat.   This lesson comes in the shape of a the two-sided coin. On one side is the notion, “Go Where You’re Celebrated,” and on the other side, “Never, Ever, Ever Stay Where You're Tolerated.”   So take a running assessment of your values. Keep in mind that mileage varies. Pick your moments when family and/or friends are obviously most important, as expressed by in what ways and how much you participate. Allow the same build up care credits with you. Let the dynamics show.   If you are the one to always hold the line, and the other side disappoints time and again, you may have just solved the mystery to your writer’s block or your stage fright.   Let's fiddle with the outcome that may result in a creative obstacle –   You are present for your mother’s or step mother’s birthday, eh? Perhaps there was a great deal of baggage.  It's understandable. It happens to more people than you’d think.   Or perhaps it's your father’s or step father’s birthday and there’s simply too much history there?   I sincerely hope the ‘being tolerated’ scenario certainly does not apply to you. There are a myriad of personal obstacles that can throw a wrench in the creative monkey works. If your family is thriving, “huzzah!” Good on you. Don’t take any shit over it, because there is plenty in life that can bring obstacles. We will shine a spotlight on many of those in our next season of “Maybe It’s Just Me.”   You know, it's OK to give yourself an out a day off few days off if things have proved to be a bit much Your creativity will thank you for it your mental health will thank you for it the people around you who care about you well thank you for it I think you for it this weather and realize you're not we're kind of all connected and I'm thrilled that you were connected with me for my first season of “Maybe It's Just Me.”   Love y’all! Let’s talk next season. Bye!    

Self confidence is built from blocks of useful self-awareness. Listen to this Part 2 to find out the flip side of, "Go Where You're Celebrated."  

I'm not for everyone. You're not for everyone. It's cool. So it is safe to observe those around you. Be brave enough to recognize if you are the one being tolerated. [Listen to Part 2, Go Where You're Celebrated.]

Welcome back to Maybe It's Just Me. I'm your host, Alexandra White. I'm also the founder of Creative Work Hour. So I'm all about living the creative life. And I help people do that every day in our online sessions. So today we were talking about trees. What does that have to do with creativity? Well, each day that we come together to do work, we start with a quick check in of what we intend to work on for the hour, and then we do a meditation. It's like 3 minutes. 2 minutes. It's not long. But it helps us to get to that flow state really quickly. Then we turn on the music that is daily curated for the purpose of flow, and we all do the things that we're doing. We come back 5 minutes before the top of the hour and we check out and just give a quick little report on how it went. For example, "I read," "I wrote," "I got a title for my poem," or whatever it happens to be, right? So today, here's how the meditation began. You are a tree. Among other trees. And you can see with your tree eyes what all the trees look like around you. You see the trunk, the branches, the leaves (if they're still there). But the most grounding part of the tree is beneath the surface, isn't it? And what I've learned about trees fascinates me is it's not just that roots grow in the ground and secure and take in the nutrients. For the tree, the roots are also there for communication with their community, with the other trees, in fact. If there is an infestation in one part of the neighborhood where the trees live. Signals will go out through the root systems that there is a need to jack up. For protection against. The infestation that is further into the wood. I love that. That the whole group is responsive to any one of the wood. And it's just like that when you get creatives together. Even if it were like like by pen pal. Is that how it was done? And it's still being done. Authors write to each other. Poets write to each other. Painters write to each other. That hasn't disappeared. But the communication is what keeps you grounded, and it doesn't need to be time consuming. Like with our little group made up of high bands and other creatives that are just now learning about Hive.io. It's that being sparked by one another makes for a more creative life being sparked by one another's thoughts and remarks. Brings about a creative life that creates its own energy. You know, sometimes we just can't do that. One more thing. But we can if it comes with its own energy pack. Right. So there's the thought for the day is it's not just that we're all connected, but that we're well grounded and healthy routes communicate with each other signal to each other, bring about responses in each other. It's a lively and dynamic thing. Yeah. So think about what do you have? That you want to do. You maybe have not told a soul. But that if you realized or recognized that it comes with its own energy, you just might pull that off! Thanks for listening to today's episode of Maybe It's Just Me.

Let's stategize how to safeguard ourselves or more quickly recover from burn-out. 

I'm Alexandra White. And welcome back to. Maybe it's just me. I've been doing a lot of different kinds of creative work with a lot of different people in different time zones all around the world through six time zones, but just in a single hour. So what is my first? Got a coffee. It's Andy. Spring's cup of tea in the afternoon with a biscuit. And what he means by biscuit and what I mean by Biscuit may not necessarily be the same thing. There's another thing that we do that is particular to musicians music editors or some of that ilk. We do a lab every day online that's called practice not perfect because screw Carnegie Hall. We just want to get back to it. Right. So it's practice not perfect. Today, a New Hivian (someone whose social media is on the HIve.io blockchain)  Her name is. I kid you not. This is so good. Zen pig. Can you believe that Zen pig was still available? Zen pig plays clarinet and she's come back to it after a long time. She's wicked good. And she's playing in this very cool, very cool church in in Pennsylvania with her brother, who is the choir director. They hadn't played together in a couple of lifetimes. And now here they are. She is the cutest thing. Sounds so good. And she is pulling talent out of God knows where to pull that off. It is amazing. Let me tell you what she did today. Rochelle. Played. A medieval piece, something that sounds along the lines of Palestrina and the dissonance. If you were so lucky or unlucky to spend time in a music conservatory or in the music halls, what have you. So we're talking that Elizabethan sound, right? And there's no waltz in that. Like it is just a 1-1-1-1-1 kind of beat structure. And she is just playing the smoke out of that thing and we're just doing it on Zoom. And I've got tears going and I've got hair standing up on my arms. It was just lovely. There's a post that I put in on a Leo thread (a microblog on Hive.io, Inleo.io) where you can see the four of us, Rochelle playing @gregscloud, @bitterirony and me all listening to her. And you can just tell that we are into it, we are into her, we are into the creativity. So what does all of that tell you about what the topic is today? The topic today. (I give you here at the end) is don't go it alone. You literally can do something you've never done in your whole life, or you can come back to something creative that you've not done or our really long time. And even if you are a soloist. Or a composer. You don't have to go it alone because we design these spaces to be the encouragement for community, the community that can just listen to you play a little ditty to say, I don't know, what do you think? Does this hold water? I went with a friend of mine, Joann Alfieri, I know her from New England and we met in London so that we could see this exhibition together. And it was the exhibition of the Rolling Stones. And what I loved about that exhibition is it was just like going back in this time or that time or another time and this part of the world. This part of the world or another part of the world. One of the first bits of the exhibition is we walk into the recreated Chelsea flat, where they all lived. If we call that living on the far wall. Was this built out flat. I mean, you could almost smell the dirty clothes. The rule of the house was this – You could sleep any time that you wanted. But if Mick was up, you were up. because the mews can alight and then go away. And you need witness to that. Don't go it alone. There are people who love you more than they can express, but they could hold space for you while you have your creativity, while you make a brain baby. There we are, folks. This has been, "Maybe It's Just Me."

Hi,  I'm Alessandra White. And I'm coming to you with this little podcast that I like to call, "Maybe It's Just me." Today we're going to talk about "HALT and Inform." You may have heard of this acronym before called HALT. I find it very helpful and I wish I had found it much earlier. I'm going to share it with you or remind you of it if it sounds familiar. Halt. In self-care, in self-awareness, there is a little pause that we can take. What I like to call a breath mark. And in that breath mark. There is a pause to just make a simple evaluation. Am I one of these four things? Am I, "H," hungry or hangry? LOL Am I, "A," Am I angry? Am I, "L," Am I lonely? Am I, "T," am I tired? And of course, you can mix up your letters any way that you like to come up with whatever kind of combo mood you might be in. And it's all okay. It's called HALT We got that rabbit in the hat. But the other side of that. I never read about. But I believe in it. One HALT, Two,  inform. And they're two sides of the same coin. When we had a kid in the house, there was a little policy that we came up with that saved us all. A lot of hurt. And it went like this. It's okay to be grumpy. Grumpy happens. It's okay to be moody. Moody happens. It's okay to be hungry. Angry. Lonely, tired. That's all fine. The responsibility comes in In- form. And the way that I used to say it is, "Let a sister know!" And likewise. And I still do it to this day. In fact, even when I'm hosting creative work hour, if I am in some kind of a state or combination of HALT, I will say, "I didn't sleep," or. "I'm pissed off, and I'm not sure I can do the meditation today. Somebody else want to take it?" It's fine. It's fine. People love that. They find it endearing when you can own up to shape your in. Not in a whiny way, not not complaining way, but just like, "Okay, here's where I am. I'm owning it. There's no drama here." It's just "I'm going to let you know because I'm a nice person. I wouldn't want you to get in harm's way. This will get you a long way in your creativity because this is the relationship you have with yourself. So, HALT and inform. I hope you found that helpful. If you want to come and join us in Creative Work Hour, you can learn about us at LU.MA/CreativeWork. That's "L U dot M A Forward Slash Creative Work."

Hi. I'm Alessandra White and we are back with Maybe It's Just Me. This is a little podcast that's brought to you in 30 bite sized pieces where I'm going to talk to you about creativity, the stuff that gets in the way, including how we get in our own way and how we can free ourselves up. Today, I want to talk to you about being stuck creatively and the kindness that's required to get it flowing again. Because being stuck, well, it's a frustrating experience, isn't it? And frustrating is a soft word. Four angry. Angry about being blocked at the goal of getting the damn creative thing done. It's a demanding ness that's characterized by that bratty kid with s that doesn't want to wait their turn. But sometimes the body, the mind and the muse doesn't want you having your turn yet. This has been one of those days for me. Now I'm recording this for you and it is 6:00 in the evening and I have been trying to get this thing done for 10 hours. So this is the perfect example. I've been frustrated. And then I just got angry. And at that point, I recognized my state. So I took a breath. I'm like, okay, let's just back off of this little. Let's dial it down. Let's use kindness. What does that mean? Well, let's pull patients out of the box, wherever that is. Because the patient gives you a chance to take time to attend. And to open one's hands on one's lap. To slowly blink. To let the eyes moisten. To let the breath slow down, to let heart rate decrease. And in so doing, we show up in a way that we couldn't do before when we were smacking around irritated that it wasn't getting done. But here we are. Less than 60 seconds has passed since I told you what time it is. And there's plenty of time left. There's plenty of time. There's plenty of space. Don't let it be stolen away from you by making it scarce. Let's try this. Instead, let's consider another great creative, the artist Agnes Martin. Agnes was a minimalist. And she also experienced her own history of mental illness. Sometimes she would break with reality. And the thing about being in a state of broken reality is you don't know which end is up. Literally, you don't know what's real and you don't know what's not real. But to Agnes's great credit, despite what state she found herself in, there was a ritual that she observed no matter what. Each day, she would seat herself before canvas. And she would attend the time and the space with it not knowing. Not knowing which thing was real, which thing was not. She would simply show the f up and sit. And wait and wait it out in the not knowing. Likewise, when we're stuck, we may not know what's what. Then when we do, we may irritatingly charge in there and find ourselves dead wrong, messed up. So I'm going to go straight to it. I double dog. Dare you? That's right. I jumped right to the double dog. Dare I double dog dare you to pick kindness over impatience. And to allow yourself to sit. And wait. For the thing to do to come to you the obvious next thing, and then allow it to compel you to begin. This has been the getting unstuck episode of Maybe It's Just Me. This episode has been brought to you with love by the community of Creative Work Hour. Join us any day at 3 p.m., UTC 10 a.m. Eastern. You can visit us at https://Lu.ma/CreativeWork That's Lima Uniform Dot Mike Alpha Forward slash creative work.

Welcome to Maybe It's Just Me. I'm Alexandra White and I'm the founder of Creative Work. Our it's a handcrafted creative studio that I've hosted in excess of 1000 times since 2021. I believe that good mental hygiene is easier to keep in check. Just by learning a few basics about what I call creative health. So I'm here in this podcast to share with you a few essentials to help demystify what it means to live a creative life, but to live one that is dynamic rather than dramatic. Today we will be addressing perfectionism. Last fall, I tried my hand at podcasting. Oh. It was torture. It was it brought up a level of perfectionism. Good grief. My heart still hurts from that, but I learned a lot. I find that really all we need to do is not be perfect, not wipe out mistakes. But in fact. Simply. Be willing to be happy. With moving the needle a little. Another creative friend, Wai Ling Fong made me aware of, "1% Better." So this is a perfect example. The episode that I did yesterday was on Vulnerability Hangover. I recorded it. I needed to let it go. But I felt this tight regret in my gut. And what was that about? Oh, well, that was about. I realized that I had not opened the episode. I just started talking. So I felt like I needed to go and get it back, go pull the episode down, pull it down and make it over again and make it better and give it the intro and..."No! Don't do it," a wiser part of me said. So today all that is share with you about is that I was tempted to just stall and not try again. But here we are. And this is me admitting (to) the crappy trait of perfectionism that all of us have. And that I can actually be okay with myself sitting here next to me – all caught up in it. So here's the trick. When you know perfectionism is happening, don't push it away. Bring it in close. Pour it a cup of tea. Say, "you and me, we're in this together. And I know that there's something that you're exceedingly good at that I'm going to need in if you're okay, just to relax a little bit. Even a little while I work. When you need to tell me something, I'll be able to hear you." And together, that's how you get creative things started, or resumed, maybe even finished and shared with the world. Welcome the perfectionism! Don't push him or her away. Bring them on the ride. Come on! It'll be fun!

Hi. I'm Alessandra White and I am back. Is your host of "Maybe It's Just Me." I recorded the trailer yesterday. I nailed it at one minute. Yay me. I also nailed it with a good old -fashioned piece of risk taking. It was only two words. It was only a 60-second clip. And yet those two words opened me up for a vulnerability hangover. Oh, my. It it's still rocking and rolling. So let's just talk about vulnerability hangover for a minute. You know, the shame, the dread because you said something and now you wish you could go back or do you wish you could go back? Are you proud of yourself? Are you ashamed of yourself? Let me tell you what a vulnerability hangover really is. It's evidence that you took a risk. And at this time of your life, you have survived some shit. Okay, so, you know, in broad strokes, your left, from your right, your up, from your down. So at this stage of your life, if you're taking well, calculated risk. You're probably on to something, so give yourself some credit and take the vulnerability hangover for what it is. It is evidence that you were one brave bear, that you took a chance on yourself. Because guess what? You're a very good bet.

This little podcast is coming to you in 30 bite sized pieces, and it makes up for, in authenticity, what it lacks in length. It's about me being real with you, my fellow creative. I'll share some moments of discovery, some that'll be funny, some that may be surprising, but all of them will be wrapped up in my nutty approach. I want to see if they resonate with you – here on this tiny podcast that I'm calling. Maybe it's just me.