Welcome to the blog
This is my blog archive. My new writing lives on Substack.
Designing A Creative Workspace At Home That You’ll Love
In a room in our house is my creative workspace. The whole room is dedicated to my creative work, and I have a desk, a bookshelf, an armchair and a shelf filled with plants and notebooks. In there I write my blog posts, I edit my videos and photos, I talk to my coaching clients and think up new ideas.
Since we moved in a little over a year ago, I’ve slowly been shaping this room into a space that I love be in and create. I’ve been thinking about how I want to feel in there and how my workspace can best support me in my creative life. If you’re shaping a creative workspace of your own, these are my tips for making it a place that you’ll love.
What To Do When Your Creative Goal Feels Impossible
Recently I had that feeling again. Impossible. My summer vacation was nearing an end much too soon. (How is it that vacations always feel so long when they begin and before you know it they’re over?) I hadn’t made all the progress in my creative work that I had hoped to make. I saw autumn creeping closer. I looked at where I was and where I want to get to, and the road between felt so very long. It was like time was running but I was standing still. How would I ever get there? Impossible.
I think this is a feeling that most creatives deal with now and then, especially if you’re trying to do something for the first time. We can see clearly where we are now, we can dream up a destination but the road in between is fuzzy, perhaps a bit scary and so terribly long. We might as well be trying to fly, that’s how likely a successful outcome feels.
Ridding ourselves of these feelings completely isn’t very likely - it’s human to doubt. What we can do is to learn how to deal with them, when they invariably turn up.
Why I'm Starting A Youtube Channel
If you’d told to me a year or two ago to start a Youtube channel, I would have laughed at you. Me, the awkward, introverted Swede with an accent I felt self-conscious about? On Youtube, where I never really felt at home? No no, I would have waved you away and went on with my life.
But things change, and here we are. My first video is up and I’m excited to say hello, hi, I’m Elin and I’m on Youtube. And today I want to share why I’ve decided to start the channel, because it’s not as simple as “it felt fun”, though there’s that too. I hope it can spark some thoughts about your own creative life, if you share your work online.
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.
Creating A Map To Guide You In Your Creative Project
I’ve worked on widely different creative projects. From the big work of writing a novel, to honing my photography and growing my Instagram account, to building a creative business. Yet there’s one thing I do in every project, that helps me regardless of the specifics of it. It’s something I see helps my coaching clients so much as well.
It’s to create a map for myself. Of course, it’s not an actual map, but I call it that because it helps us navigate and find direction in our creative work. It’s something - a document, a notebook, a vision board - to develop and reference as you go.
In this blog post, I want to share why I think creating a map is so helpful, and how you can get started with one too.
Making Summer A Season For A Different Kind Of Creative Life
Summers have a special place in my creative life. For me, it’s a time with more freedom and space for creating. I use them to focus on work I struggle to make room for during the rest of the year.
But not all have summers like mine. When I surveyed creatives about how they find creating throughout the different seasons, summer was the season with the biggest variations. It was clear that it’s the season that is most affected by our differing lifestyles - whether we have kids or not, if we live further north or south, how much we travel.
Let’s look at how summer tends to affect us in our creative lives, and what we can learn from it to make the best of this season ahead.
How I’m Building A Creative Business In My Own Slow Living Way
My creative work is a source of joy, calm and fulfillment in my life. As I build a creative business, I don’t ever want to lose that. I don’t want to fall trap to the idea that business has to be fast and hustly, or that a job needs to be hard and stressful.
Instead, I’m choosing a different way, one I call my own slow living way. I’m still in the beginning of my journey, just a little over three months in, but these first few months have really forced me to get clear on my values and define how I want to move forward in building my business. And that’s what I’m going to share today.
Finding The Deeper Message Within Your Creative Work
Every creative idea has at its core a message. Something that makes it bigger than just the individual creation, a contribution to a conversation going on in the world.
Your message is what you want to say with your work, it’s your view of the world and what you want to inspire in others. Finding your message is part of what I call doing the groundwork of making an idea happen, and it’s closely related to many other concepts. Theme. Brand story. Your why, purpose, intention or north star.
Doing Creative Work During The Corona Crisis
I want to start off by saying that you don’t have to do creative work during the corona crisis if you don’t want to. There’ll never be any judgement from me if you decide that this is a time to just care for yourself and let your creative ideas wait.
That being said, if you do want to do creative work, I have written this blog post with the hope that it gives you some help along the way.
Making Spring A Happy, Balanced Season For Creative Work
Spring is when the world wakes up after the hibernation of winter. Our creativity can feel like it’s awakening with the rest of the world, propelling us into a season of new ideas and fresh energy.
This is how creatives described spring in one of four surveys I did in 2019, about doing creative work throughout the seasons. Our energy levels, inspiration and habits are all influenced by the seasons, and they in turn affect us as creatives too.
Understanding these tendencies can help us move forward in our creative lives in a way that is in tune with the seasons. So let’s have a look at what tend to happen in our creative work in spring, and what we can learn from it.
Embracing Slow And Creative Days At Home
We probably all had plans for this spring that were thrown to the side by the coronavirus. All over the world, people are staying home, some voluntarily to help slow down the spread of the virus, others because they’re not allowed to go outside.
In the midst of all the anxiety of our societies struggling to cope, there’s an invitation here to make the best of this short period in history.
To slow down, settle in and embrace slow and creative days at home.
Dealing With Fear Of Failure In My First Month Of Business
I want to tell you a story from my first month of running my creative coaching business. I want to tell it because I know that the fear of failure holds many of us back in our creative lives. It held me back when I started writing my first novel, and I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t dealt with that fear.
In my first month of business, I had another round with that fear, in its new shiny shape: the fear of failing as a creative business owner.
A Checklist For Setting Kind And Helpful Goals
It’s January. Many of us are setting goals for the year ahead. And while we do so, some of us are haunted by the ghosts of past years’ goals, by intentions we didn’t keep and goals we didn’t meet.
For as many goals as I have reached, I have fallen short of at least as many. And even if we shrug and look forward, it doesn’t feel very good. Over the years, I have learned to choose goals that are kind and helpful. Those are the ones that actually help me move forward.
My Two Big Goals And Word Of The Year For 2020
So here we are, at the beginning of a new year, a new decade even. 2020 marks the beginning of my fifth year blogging, which feels a little surreal. But 2020 will not just go to my personal history books as the fifth blogging year, but as a more important one. It will also be my first year of running a business.
Books, baking and knitting for a slow winter holiday
Christmas and the winter holiday has always been a time for slowing down for me. Before Christmas, there’s a hustle and bustle of preparations and last minute things, but after the celebration there’s that hush.
Everyone exhale and relax. The pressure is off, now the days up until New Year’s can become slow and quiet. Perhaps there’s a bit of snow for beautiful winter walks. Or maybe you just stay inside with a cup of hot chocolate and a book.
What to do when overwhelm strikes
One of the most common struggles I see creatives having and hear from my clients is overwhelm. Creative work involves to many different skills to learn and so many things to do, and there’s a plethora of advice out there contradicting each other.
Add to that all of your own ideas and inspirations and you have the recipe for a nice and big bout of overwhelm making it really hard to move forward.
When there’s so much to do, where do you even begin?
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?
Growing the roots of your creative life
I used to do a slight rebrand of my blog every few months. Fuelled by some new inspiration, or a lingering sense of doubt, I’d adjust my course and propel myself in a somewhat different direction.
At one point, I wondered if I’d ever land on something that felt like home for more than a little while. But I trusted that I would eventually find my own voice, style and purpose.
And I did.
The benefits of doing creative work in a slower way
Many of us want to live slower lives, and to do our creative work mindfully and intentionally. I do, and have for a few years now, but it can still be tempting to take on a little too much. Work a little too long. Push yourself harder than you know is wise because you so want to bring to life the thing you’re creating.
We’re passionate about our work after all, and time is often sparse.
In those moments, when we’re tipping the scale away from a slow towards busy-busy, we can all do with a reminder of why. Why the slower way is a good idea, not just because it’s nice but how it benefits our creative work too. How working slower can actually be more efficient in the long run.
This blog post is that reminder, for both of us.