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This is my blog archive. My new writing lives on Substack.
My 2021: The Year I Took My Creative Work Full-Time
What a year it has been. Vast, challenging, pivotal, transformative. It’s difficult to grasp, and even more, explain what a fundamental effect this year has had on me. Who was she, the Elin who entered 2021, filled with fears and hopes? She feels oddly distant, not because I don’t remember her, but because so much has shifted since then.
But let’s go back to her. Let’s go back to the beginning of 2021, and to the Elin who had made a choice that would transform me into the person I am today.
Why A Membership?
I explored so many ideas. I knew I wanted to work with groups of creatives, but I wasn’t sure how. I thought about courses, programs, I held workshops, and while all felt interesting… they didn’t feel like the thing I was searching for. Then there was this idea that kept resurfacing, and I kept pushing it away, but it came back again. Finally, I decided to listen to it, and that’s when it all clicked.
A membership. A community of creatives, following the seasons and the creative process together. I started exploring this idea further, and everything just fell into place. This idea made sense on so many levels, in a way that no previous idea had. In this blog post, I want to tell why it made sense, why this feels like the thing I’ve been searching for, and why I believe membership communities can be so incredibly powerful.
Good Conversations, Life Lived And The Messy Process
I first noticed it in summer. I was reading Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney, and it was resonating deeply. Then it was Cait Flanders' podcast Opting Out, where she talks with the listener as if with a friend. Finally, I was feeling overall quite uninspired on Instagram, with one exception: @conversationswithcharis, who was sharing her life on a narrowboat.
These things that were inspiring me, they had something in common. They talked about life lived, about the complexities, the ambiguity. Things that don’t fit in your average box. Neither offered any clear answers, practical tips or how-to guides. No, they shared the experience, the process of life and creativity. They were based on conversations. And I found them wildly inspiring.
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.
The Crossroads Between Security And Freedom
In April, I started my leap. For 6 months I would be on leave from my 9-5 job to try to take my business full-time. The goal was always to turn my creative business from a small side business, to something I could keep doing full-time. But I knew there was a big chance I wouldn’t get all the way in 6 months time.
At the end of summer, a little over a month left of my 6 months, I knew I had to choose. Would I go back to my job, maybe fewer days a week, or would I keep going full-time? Neither option was perfect, and I found myself at a crossroads between security and freedom.
Six Ways My 6 Month Business Leap Changed Me
When I decided to take 6 months off from my day job to try to take my creative business full-time, I thought a lot about how it would change my business. I thought less about how it would change me. Yet as I’m now nearing the end of my leap, I can see that those changes are the most important ones.
In creativity and business alike, your beliefs, identity and mindsets are going to play a huge role in your work. It will affect what you create, how you create and, in extensions, what results you get. So today, I want to tell you about six ways my business leap has changed me, and how that in turn is affecting my creative work and business.
Your Creative Path Exists Inside Of You
We all grew up following worn paths. From one school year to the next, we were following in the footsteps of thousands, no, millions of kids before us. We were told what to learn when, we were taught the right answers, showed the way forward. Sure, our interests shaped the path a tad, but we were still kept well within the boundaries of the predictable.
So it’s not surprising that in our creative lives as well, we look outside ourselves for a path to follow. That’s what we were taught to do, after all. The opposite, to find your own path, is something we have much less practice in.
But when it comes to creativity, the path isn’t out there. It’s inside of you. And this is what I truly want to help creatives with. To find, trust and follow that path inside.
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.
The Dream Of Writing
For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to write. Growing up, my bookworm mom fed me with stories to read, and my best friend's mother was a children's book author. Together, my friend and I nurtured the dream of one day writing our own books.
A couple of weeks ago, one of my coaching clients told me she wanted to start working on a book. She's an artist and doubts her writing skills, but she admitted that she had been dreaming of writing a book for some 10 years now, and she wanted my help to finally get started with it.
After our conversation, I got to thinking.
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 Design A Website That Feels Like Home
My first attempt at designing my own website was not pretty. You might look at my website now and think it looks nice and not quite believe me, but I’m telling you, it was ugly. It had a border at the top that looked like wood, on it was a logo involving a turquoise feather, and some of my headings were hot pink. It was a mess, but it was a website, and I used it for a couple of months before I redesigned it into something slightly better.
As a creative human sharing your work online, your website is your digital home. And it should feel like one - your own, comfy, cosy and beautifully decorated home. It should reflect who you are, and invite others to hang out and get to know you better. Your website is where everything comes together.
What A Slow And Creative Life Looks Like
What does a slow and creative life look like? I remember one of the first times I asked myself that question. It was the summer of 2017, and I was sitting by the sea at my mum’s summer house on a tiny island in the Swedish archipelago.
I was coming out of a year and a half of intense creativity. After years of struggling, I had finally managed to open myself up to creativity and allowed myself to pursue my ideas. And the ideas were plenty, so plenty that I was feeling increasingly scattered and overworked.
A longing for a slower pace had started to grow inside of me. I looked out over the sea, the curved, warm rock behind my back, and listened to the wind rustling the reed. And I imagined what a slow and creative life might look like.
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.
Figuring Out Who Will Love What You Create
I was never one of the popular kids at school. But I had great friends and didn’t have to care very much about what everyone else thought of me. I hung out with my friends and as long as we got along, all was well.
Trying to build an audience, especially on social media, can feel like a popularity contest. You see the big ones with their thousands and thousands of followers, and you feel small and insignificant.
But in reality, building an audience for what you create is much more like finding those great friends. The ones who really get you, who are gladly paying attention and who will love what you create. To find those people, you first need to figure out who they are, and that’s what we are going to explore here.
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.
Shaping A Slow Creative Habit That You Love
In my work with my creative coaching clients, we often begin in the big questions. What they truly want from their creative life. What their work is really about. What their big dreams and goals are. What’s holding them back.
Step by step, we go through those big questions and draw smaller and smaller circles. With most of my clients we eventually find ourselves here - exploring the daily creative habits. Because when it comes down to it, that’s what both creative projects and life is. A long series of small moments.
I wholeheartedly believe that we should make our daily creative habits as joyful as we can. To figure out what that means for you, I’d like to ask you a couple of questions.