Welcome to the blog
This is my blog archive. My new writing lives on Substack.
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.
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.
Getting to work when you’re prone to get stuck pondering
If you make a rough generalization, you can divide people into two camps. You have those who are prone to say hang on, let’s think this through, and those who get’s impatient with the first camp and goes ahead anyway.
Let’s call them ponderers and explorers. You can find them divided up into different roles everywhere. The architects and the builders. The plotters and pantsers. The ones who like strategy games and the ones who like adventure games.
But we can’t always divide up in camps. When doing creative work on your own, you need to be able to wear both hats. And most likely, there’s one mode you’re more comfortable with.
Me, I’m a ponderer.
The lessons I learned from my “shopping ban”
Almost a year ago, I decided to stop buying online courses and workshops.
My fiance and I were looking at making a loss selling our apartment, due to a price drop on the housing market, and already having signed a contract to buy our new house at a fixed price. So we had to save all the money we could.
It’s not like I bought courses all the time, probably a couple a year, but enough to decide it wasn’t a priority until we’d moved.
That’s where my restrictions began, but as we got closer and closer to moving, they expanded to a shopping ban including clothes, books, eating out and pretty much all things that weren't essential.
It was a challenge, but it's one I'm grateful for because it taught me a lot.
Why the end of a project is so hard and what to do about it
I’m nearing the end of the third draft of my novel. It’s been big work, practically rewriting the whole thing, and I’ve been at it for over a year.
When I passed the mid point, I assumed the end would be like riding your bike downhill. Fast, thrilling and easy.
Little did I know it’d actually be quite the opposite - like the tiring and hard experience of riding your bike up a very long hill.
Four questions to help you begin each creative day intuitively
Every day is different. The way you feel, your energy and enthusiasm, your creative work and the challenges it entails. It's all constantly changing.
As a natural planner, this element of uncertainty is something I've always struggled to make room for in my plans, even when I've considered them flexible.
So lately, I've been doing something different. Instead of trying to control what I can't control, I've begun my creative days intuitively.
Why it’s so important to find your own version of doing the work
As creatives, there has always been someone who came before us. Someone who can tell us the right way of doing things, people to glance at as you set out to do your own creative work.
That is all and well, we need guidance when we’re learning. But if we follow others’ methods too closely, it can lead us astray, to something you might not like doing at all.
Ideas that scare the pants off of me and how I approach them
My creative life began in 2016 with a year long challenge: to face my creative fears. If you think that means I’m now fearless, I’ll have to disappoint you. But my fears have changed, and there are new things that scare me now.
In in the end of 2018 when I looked back on the year and set my intention for 2019, one thing stood out to me. There were again ideas I never got around to doing, and just like before it was because they scared me.
Dealing with the urge to overwork
Think of the stereotypical picture of a writer. Either he (because the stereotype is a he, right?) is walking around in agony, stuck in writers block, furiously procrastinating. Or he’s writing in a frenzy, in the claws of his muse, and all is well.
But is it?
My way of crafting goals that are unique to you and your journey
Never do we talk so much about goals as in the beginning of a new year. Resolutions, words of the year and complicated planning models circle around. For some it’s a thrilling time, for others it’s a painful, stressful or anxious period.
Are goals really necessary? No, but for most of us, they do help.