Welcome to the blog
This is my blog archive. My new writing lives on Substack.
There And Back Again: The End of the Self-Employed Chapter
It dawned on me when I was making my yearly intentions. I was tired of trying and striving. I was tired of the mental effort of running and building my own business. I was tired of worrying about money and the future. I longed for ease and fun and living life. I needed to not let my business be my everything.
On January 5th, I wrote in my journal:
I’m sitting here writing my 2023 intentions blog post, and I write about how I don’t want my business to consume all my mental energy. And I have to ask myself, do I even want this anymore?
It took me a while longer to admit, but the truth was…no. Things had changed. I had changed. I no longer wanted to be self-employed.
Establishing A New Balance As A Part-Time Business Owner And Full-Time Creative
What does a balanced creative life look like? How do you know you’re out of balance, and how do you know when the time has come for a change? It’s a question I’ve pondered this summer, after a spring ending in worry, stress and the realisation that I had hit my messy middle.
The truth, I suppose, is that there is no one signal to tell your creative life is out of balance. Instead, it’s the many small signs you need to look for. When the little frustrations and worries that on their own are acceptable pile up to something larger, a consistent trend, that’s when you need to look out.
My Evolved Why: Creative Lives That Are Good On The Inside
Why do you do what you? It’s a complex question, with an answer that is rarely straightforward. And sometimes, that answer changes.
This past year, I’ve felt a slight but persistent shift in my work. The signs have been everywhere - from my inspiration pointing in new directions, to resistance to parts of my old work, to a content rut stretching out over months.
I wrote about this evolution of my work in a blog post about navigating the messy middle of building my business. And in that post I wrote that I would spend much of my summer trying to figure out. Well, here I am, it’s the end of summer and what do you know, I figured it out.
I'm In The Messy Middle Again
It was the middle of the night. I had been tossing and turning for hours, my mind in a loop of anxiety mingled with inspiration. There in bed, suddenly a thought hit me. Was I back? Was I there again? Was this my messy middle of building a sustainable, joyful creative business?
I turned over on the other side and gazed at the grey morning light playing behind the curtains. My mind was a tangle of thoughts, ideas, worries and fears. Yes, I thought. That’s it. I’ve hit the messy middle. Shit.
Discover Your Unique Creative Ecosystem
I found what I came to call my creative ecosystem in the midst of creative depletion. It was November of last year, and I had just launched my membership community. Behind me, I had weeks of diving deep and getting this new offering together, creating lots of content around it, and before then, my first six months of running my creative business full-time.
I had no ideas. No inspiration. No creative energy. I had used it all, and none was left. I was creatively emptied out.
Instagram, We Need To Talk
I’m sorry, but it’s not working. I’ve not wanted to admit it to myself, but it’s not been working for quite some time now. And something needs to change.
For months now, maybe even a year, I’ve been increasingly uninspired by my own Instagram posts. It’s not that I’ve grown tired of photography. No, it’s something else, and it’s taken me a long time to figure out what it is. But I think I’ve got it now. I’m tired of showing a polished surface, of being aspirational, and of the lack of realness. think I’ve got it now. I’m tired of showing a polished surface, of being aspirational, and of the lack of realness.
Stretching Your Creative Identity
How do you view yourself as a creative? How do you see your creative work? These are not easy questions to answer. But regardless of whether you can put it into words or not, how you view yourself have wide-ranging effects on your creative work.
From our creative habits, to the kind of work we create, to how we present ourselves online, your creative identity plays a big role in shaping your creative life. It will put up boundaries for what feels possible for you, and it will affect what you feel comfortable doing.
So at times, you might find that your identity, in fact, are working against you. That it has started to feel limiting, like an old skin, and that it might be time to stretch it. This is what happened to me during the summer, and this is what I want to talk about in this post.
Growing Through The Messy Middle
On June 7th, I realised I had hit the messy middle of my 6 month business leap. I had just entered the third month, I had settled into my new reality of working in my creative business full-time and then… things got messy.
I saw how a third of my 6 months had already passed, and I felt like I’d barely gotten started. I realised that after the summer, I would only have a month left, and I would have to decide if I could keep going full-time with my business. So I got stressed, and I got scared. Of running out of time, of not getting the results I was hoping for, of not doing and being enough.
One by one, my fears and mindset issues started rising to the surface. And I wrote in my notebook
Welcome to the messy middle. This is where blocks and fears live, and this is where I’ll get challenged for real in my chosen work.
Reimagining Habits To Balance Intention, Inspiration And Intuition
During the years of doing creative work on the side of a day job, I experimented a lot with my habits. I tried writing in weekday mornings (catastrophe). I tried doing short term work one week and long term work the next (liked it for a while). I tried planning super detailed and not planning at all (neither was good).
From these experiments, I found habits that worked for me. I found a blend between creative work and slow living that made my weekends feel both creative and restful. I learned how much to plan and how much space to leave. This the of exploring what your right habits look like, and it’s something I often support my coaching clients in, and I see again and again just how big a difference a good habit makes.
So I probably shouldn't have been surprised when I went full-time in my 6 month business leap and found that I had to create entirely new habits. Or, when I two months in, realised that my new habits weren't working.
The Scarcity Mindset I Didn’t Know I Had
Impatience is fear, I wrote in my notebook a couple of weeks ago. But it would take another month of being a full-time business owner before I realised that impatience isn’t just fear, it’s scarcity.
Building my business is opening my eyes to just how much of a scarcity mindset I’ve had around my business, and how it’s been limiting the options I see for myself. I’m starting to see that there’s a different way - one of abundance. This is quickly becoming my biggest mindset shift yet of my 6 month business leap. And it’s one that is long overdue.
How To Start A Blog That Feels Like You
This is my 133rd blog post. Just writing that sentence makes me laugh a little. I can still vividly remember the fear I felt when I published my first blog post, how nervous I was of people reading what I had written. I felt exposed, which was scary but also pretty exhilarating. I was showing the real me, after all.
I have loved to write for as long as I’ve been able to. I always wanted to spend my life writing, somehow, and starting this blog was probably one of my best decisions. It has given me a way connect with other creatives, to explore ideas, to practice my writing, to reflect on my creative journey - and now to grow my creative business.
Blogging can be a wonderful medium for marketing, creative expression, connection and reflection. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve talked with a lot of creatives who are thinking of starting a blog. So I thought it would be a good time to dig into this topic and share some of the things I’ve learned from 5+ years of blogging.
Artist vs Expert: Finding Your Creative Identity And How You Want To Share Your Work With The World
A while ago, I had a conversation with a coaching client where we discussed the difference between blogging as an expert and as an artist. She had had a blog in the past that didn’t feel right and she now started to see that maybe it was because she had presented herself as an expert, when she neither felt like one, nor wanted to be one. I suggested she might at this point in her journey want to show up more as an artist.
This spectrum between being an artist and an expert is one that I see many creatives trying to find themselves on. The struggle shows up often because both roles are so common in the online creative world, among bloggers, Youtubers, Instagrammers and creative business owners. Which role we choose will then affect the work that we create and share with the world.
It can take some soul-searching to know exactly what kind of creative you want to be, both when you start out and as your outgrow an earlier role you’ve had. So let’s have a look at what the artist-expert dimension looks like, and where you might find your right spot.
Life Is Always Messier Than Our Dreams
In our dreams, life is so smooth. We dream of getting a call from a publisher saying they want to publish your book, and we imagine our silly celebration dance and holding the book in your hands for the first time.
We dream of marching into our boss’s office and handing in our notice, and imagine how empowering it would feel. We dream of renting a cabin in the woods to work on a collection of art, and we imagine how we spend our days quietly submerged in creativity and nature.
But when we turn those dreams into reality, it might not look like that.
How I'm Navigating Taking The Leap In My Own Slow & Joyful Way
It was at the end of last year that I decided to take a 6 months leave from my day job to work on growing my creative business. It was a decision that forced me to gather my courage. I’ve taken the safe route many times in my life, and forging my own, unknown path still feels pretty uncomfortable.
Since then, I’ve had plenty of time to contemplate how I want to navigate this time ahead. I’ve thought I’ll do anything to make it work. I’ve toyed with ideas for new offerings. I’ve been worried and excited and everything in between.
As April and the start of my 6 month leap draws near, I feel myself softly grounding in my own way of navigating this leap - one that is true to who I am. This is what I always want us to find, our own way of doing our creative work. Let me tell you what it looks like for me in this leap.
Creating A Content Plan That Is Rooted In What You Want To Contribute To The World
If you regularly share your creativity with the world in a blog, podcast, newsletter, Youtube channel or another medium, I bet you’ve sometimes felt at a loss for ideas of what to create next. Perhaps you’ve also struggled to define exactly where to draw the line between the topics you touch upon, and those you don’t.
I’ve encountered these struggles many times myself, and over the years I’ve developed a method for filling my content plan with ideas I’m excited about and that feels true to what I want to share with the world. It’s also a way to regularly check in with the focus of my content, to see that I’m on the right track.
In this blog post, I’m sharing that method.
A Self-portrait Challenge To Show My Face More In My Photography
It was earlier this year, and I was scrolling through my pictures for one where I showed my face. I wanted to update the one I had on the start page here on my website, because I had a snowy one and it was already spring.
I scrolled and looked in folders. Eventually I had to conclude that no, I had barely taken any the past months, and the ones I had I was already using in some other part of the website.
It gave me pause. When had I stopped taking photos where I showed my face? I had used to do it without any hesitation. What had happened?
The Story Of How I’m Redefining My Creative Identity
Ever since I started blogging in 2016, I’ve shared my creative journey through writing. It’s what I fell in love with, and it’s what I’ve built my online presence around. I’ve shared my struggles and what I’ve learned along the way in hope of helping and inspiring other creatives in their journeys.
I’ve always identified myself primarily as a writer in my creative life. That is, until I started coaching and things shifted in a way I hadn’t quite anticipated.
How I’m blending my creative work with living slowly
I do most of my creative work on weekends. My 9-5 job keeps me busy during the week, and I rarely have energy for creating on weekday evenings. So almost every weekend, you’ll find me writing, taking photos, exploring new ideas or talking to my coaching clients.
Being someone who’s also pursuing a slower way of living, it’s important to me that my weekends doesn’t just become two more work days, leaving no space for rest and recovery.
How do we make creative ideas happen, without pushing ourselves too hard? How do we spend our days both doing creative work and living slowly?
How learning to trust my intuition has made me a better creative
Some time during my school years, I became someone who relied on logic.
I was just passing into adulthood when I first took the personality test MBTI. The test told me I was a sensor, not an intuitive, and in a way it was probably true. I had been fed the idea that you should not listen to your intuition or gut feeling. It wasn’t to be trusted. It wasn’t logic.
It has taken me a long time to even understand what my intuition is. I’ve been overthinking and second-guessing everything for so long, I had forgotten what it means to trust my intuition.
Slow living lessons from a tiny island in the Swedish archipelago
My childhood didn’t involve grand summer vacations in faraway land, no trips to see Europe’s big cities or old historical places. I was twelve before I went beyond the Nordic countries.
Instead, there were something else. A tiny island in the archipelago, bought by my grandfather when my mother was a kid. Too small to dig a well, but a simple house was built and electricity drawn out. No tv and, before smartphones and laptops, no internet.