By the time you're in burnout, it's too late to manage it. You're in recovery mode. And it's a lot harder to recover from burnout than to manage it before it gets bad. In this episode I talk about the two kinds of burnout (why one you may actually want to experience, but the other kind you definitely don't), how to recognize when burnout is imminent, and what to do about it. Also, an update on my path to publication with my novel! Here is Mark Steadman's podcast resource community Podcode Plus ....
Dec 03, 2021•43 min
Have you ever thought you wanted something, but it didn't turn out as great as you expected? Or thought something would make you happy but it doesn't? It's confusing when we get what we think we want but don't feel as good about it as we'd expected. We can begin to doubt that we know ourselves, or that we have the capability to make good decisions for ourselves. The problem isn't that we don't know how to make good decisions. It's that we're basing decisions on the wrong information. In this epi...
Nov 19, 2021•29 min
Jas Hothi is a writer following his dream. He started blogging in 2015 when he left his corporate job, and he is passionate about ‘writing freely’ and making an income from doing so. He recently published his debut book, The Indie Author, sharing the raw and honest stories of writers all over the world who have self-published books. Jas is an INFP, cares a lot about ‘freedom’, and enjoys coffee shops, mini-adventures, and sunny days. In this interview we discuss the self-publication process, why...
Nov 12, 2021•1 hr 11 min
In part 2 of my miniseries on creative rejection I tell you all about my coping techniques, the ones that worked and didn't work (but were still useful!) during my recent experience with creative rejection, and what I learned from it all. Whether or not you are an HSP, this episode will be useful to you! Here are some of the things I cover: Why it's so important that you actually enjoy your creative practice. How to accept the truth that the creative life will always include rejection no matter ...
Nov 05, 2021•40 min
In this first episode of a two-part series, I talk about why HSPs struggle so much with creative rejection through the lens of my recent experience of entering the PitchWars competition (see E41 about my writing journey for more on that). If you are an HSP and feel it has held you back from pursuing your creative dreams, rest assured you are not alone! I'm right there with you. I don't sugarcoat things in this episode. I talk about how and why HSPs have difficulty managing the stress of putting ...
Oct 29, 2021•27 min
Most of us see creativity as something we do when we have the time for it. After all the things we have to do are done, then we'll have the space to really focus on our creative practice. But this perspective of how creativity fits into our lives is one of the major reasons we suffer from blocks. What if instead we saw creativity as integral to a healthy, happy life, something sacred that we always find time for? In this episode I talk about how elevating creative practice to something that is s...
Oct 22, 2021•26 min
Carlos Saba is a co-founder (along with Laurence McCahill) of the Happy Startup School, an online community for people looking to do heart-centered business in creative ways. Like myself, he is a PhD holder who has taken an unconventional route in life. In this episode he talks about his own journey to getting the PhD and beyond, the importance of centering fun in our lives, and the possibilities for doing business if you are a creative or artist that do not sacrifice your creative space and vis...
Oct 15, 2021•1 hr 29 min
Being irrational is bad, right? Not always. Sometimes our culture labels something as irrational because it challenges cultural control. If you find that all the things you thought would make you happy in life don't, and you have a feeling that you're missing something, it could be because you have learned to distrust your own feelings and eschew making decisions based on them...because to do so would be irrational. In this episode I discuss how cultural conditioning works on us and how to get b...
Oct 08, 2021•37 min
So many people don't believe in their own creative capacities. They think that they're not one of the "really" creative ones. But everyone is creative, and everyone has the capacity to be highly creative. In this episode I talk about how we define creativity, what creativity actually is, and what holds us back from seeing ourselves as creative or making time for creativity. My main point? That everyone is creative - it's an actual cognitive function and we all have it. YOU are creative. But crea...
Oct 01, 2021•36 min
That's right, I actually love networking now, and that's saying something for a shy, sensitive introvert with social anxiety! In this episode I give you all the tips I've learned over the past 1.5 years of running my own creative business. The reason I used to hate networking is because I had a misunderstanding about what it actually is. There is a way to approach networking if you are shy, introverted, socially anxious, and/or an HSP that will make networking both enjoyable and effective! Note:...
Sep 24, 2021•31 min
I don't think I've ever been this excited about a Stepping Off Now episode! I share all about my writing journey, including my previous failures to get published (ouch), how deciding not to seek publication of any kind for my work for a number of years helped me reconnect with my creative inspiration, and how I feel about now being back on a path toward publication with my newly completed novel (suffice it to say, those feelings are complicated! I know you expect nothing less from me haha). Plus...
Sep 17, 2021•43 min
We cover so much in this interview that I hardly know how to introduce it! We talk about Samara's journey to Ministry as a non-theist Unitarian, how to be an individual in community, her struggles with autoimmune and mental health issues, how to reconcile chaos and disorder, the links between poetry and math, her possible ADHD (seeking diagnosis), and more. Here is Samara in her own words: Samara Powers is a self-described generalist and aficionado of Dad Jokes, and user of she and they pronouns...
Sep 10, 2021•1 hr 52 min
I figured it was time for an update on my intentional practice of wasting time! I first talked about this in episode 3 , and since then anti-productivity practices like wasting time have become even more important in my life as I grow my creative business. In this episode I get into the backstory of how I started wasting time and its relationship with burnout, both as a symptom and a path toward recovery. My life looks very different post-burnout from what it looked like before burnout, and I di...
Sep 03, 2021•38 min
I have always felt guilty about my strong craving for solitude. Is something wrong with me? Am I a weirdo? Does desiring so much solitude mean I don't deserve to have intimate relationships? The answers to those questions are no, no, and...wait for it...no! In this episode I talk about the role solitude has played in my life from childhood to now, and advance the theory that creative types need significant periods of solitude not only in order to do their work but to feel alive and inspired. But...
Aug 27, 2021•39 min
You know that feeling of inertia we all get sometimes, when doing something, anything, to improve our lives just seems so hard? Maybe you're dealing with exhaustion and burnout, maybe it's fear that's holding you back. Or maybe you just have no idea what your next step could be. What do you do when you are in a period in your life when you're just kind of doing...nothing? This episode is an appeal to see these periods of doing nothing as a valuable and necessary part of a transformation-driven l...
Aug 20, 2021•33 min
In this episode I interview Chrissa Trudelle, a fellow INFP, and we talk all things personality typology! Both being INFPs, we have many points of resonance, but as I'm an Enneagram 4 and she's a 9, we also diverge on many points. You'll hear about how being an HSP interfaces with being certain personality types in the Myers-Briggs and Enneagram systems, the difference between INFPs and INFJs, and what it's like for Chrissa, an INFP, to be married to an INFJ. Chrissa has a science background and...
Aug 13, 2021•1 hr 17 min
So this was supposed to be an episode on identifying what motivates us and using that to guide us through periods of doubt, but it turned into a bit of a manifesto on how I want to do business as a creative. Here it is in a nutshell: I want to fit business into a creative model, rather than trying to fit my creativity into a business model. What does that mean? Stick with me as I continue down this long and challenging road of creative entrepreneurship, because I aim to find out! Also in this ep...
Aug 06, 2021•28 min
I've struggled with depression since childhood, and in this episode I tell you all about it. You'll hear about the two different kinds of depression I have, what they feel like when they hit, and how I'm dealing with a current bout of what I call the "depression flu." I discuss why I think depression is an inevitable and even important part of my experience as a human on this planet, and what it has to do with my creative, highly sensitive personality. Finally, I share my thoughts on how depress...
Jul 30, 2021•34 min
During my decades as creative writer, my greatest struggle has been consistency of habit. I always had to force myself to sit down and write on a daily basis. I started and abandoned writing projects constantly (four novels, at least that many blogs). When I started up my creative business in 2020, I knew that needed to change. I had to find a way to maintain consistency because my plan was to grow my business through weekly blog posts and later through weekly podcast episodes. If I have to miss...
Jul 23, 2021•35 min
In this episode I talk to Dr. Ann Wainscott, a politics professor I met in grad school. Ann is one of the most naturally creative and intuitive people I know, and it's evident in how she lives her life on a daily basis. In this interview she talks about studying to be an end-of-life doula, the rituals she uses to get into creative flow, and how teaching is an alchemy that leads to transformation. This is a DEEP conversation that challenged my ideas about creative identity, what creativity is, an...
Jul 16, 2021•58 min
Would you believe I didn't understand flow until recently? I could tell when it happened - it's that feeling when you lose track of time and your surroundings, and your creativity just flows - but I didn't know how to make it happen. It seemed like I had no control over when it did. I just had to hope I'd get lucky when I sat down to write. I was determined to figure out how to facilitate active flow so I could have more control over my creative process (if you're wondering why I call it "active...
Jul 09, 2021•46 min
Being a grownup isn't supposed to be fun. Sure, there can be fun moments here and there, but mostly it's about responsibilities. Somewhere along the way we lose our ability to get lost in creative play. Do you remember when the magic of childhood started to fade for you? I do. In this episode I tell that story and many more about my own painful journey to adulthood - and how the goal of my life now is to reclaim my childhood sense of fun and joy in being creative. A big piece of the puzzle is gr...
Jul 02, 2021•37 min
My work on this podcast and on my blog is all about examining our implicit assumptions about ourselves and the cultures we live in, and in this episode I tackle a big topic: why I think despite all the introvert advocacy online in the last decade, being an introvert still carries a stigma. I think understanding and acceptance of the character trait of introversion is still nominal at best. I want to change that. In this episode I talk about a big paradigm shift that occurred recently for me in h...
Jun 25, 2021•31 min
I have long wanted to have Lauren Sapala on my podcast, because she is one of the major reasons I even have a creative business! She is not only my writing coach, but also my business mentor. Lauren is the person who taught me about intuitive writing, which I've mentioned here and there in my podcast and explored more thoroughly on my blog . In this episode, we discuss what intuitive writing is and how Lauren discovered the difference between rational and intuitive styles. Then we talk about how...
Jun 18, 2021•1 hr 4 min
Are you secretly waiting for your own golden ticket or letter from Hogwarts that will show you, once and for all, the path of your destiny? Many of us spend our lives hoping that we'll be chosen somehow, and that it will change everything. That was me, until I realized that no one is going to choose me. I was going to have to do it myself. Learning how to choose yourself can change everything, but many of us struggle to advocate for ourselves like that because we either don't believe we have the...
Jun 11, 2021•30 min
You've probably heard of flow - aka being in the zone; being in your element - but did you know that flow can be active OR passive? Active flow is that state you enter when you're totally immersed in the moment and the activity you're doing just...flows. It can happen during creative practice, athletics, just about any activity. But what about the rest of the time? Is flow all or nothing? I don't think so. I believe there's such a thing as passive flow that we can cultivate in our lives to make ...
Jun 04, 2021•41 min
Ah the dreaded creative impasse: that feeling you get when you've seemingly hit a dead end with your project and just can't see a way forward. What should you do? Trash the project and start over? Force your way forward? Hate on yourself for yet again being a creative failure? None of the above! In this episode, I talk about a recent impasse I experienced with my novel and how I've decided to deal with it. You'll hear about why experimental types are prone to creative impasse, and I give you som...
May 28, 2021•31 min
Jill Patterson is a road and gravel cyclist who has been making a name for herself on the circuits the last few years. After a year's hiatus from races due to Covid, she's ready to maintain her dominance this year! We discuss how she got into competitive cycling at the relatively late age of 30 while living in Japan, how she never imagined she would grow up to be an athlete, and how she found the courage to make the decision to leave "normal" life behind and create a life for herself around her ...
May 21, 2021•1 hr 4 min
If you've ever worried whether your creative work is good enough to share, or how you're supposed to get it noticed at all, I have some answers for you. You may have heard that it's perfectionism that holds us back from sharing our creative products with the world, but I think perfectionism is a distraction from our actual problem: we don't know how to judge the value of our own work. For most of us, putting our work out there can feel a lot like dropping it into a hole. It doesn't matter if the...
May 14, 2021•33 min
Money is always such an elephant in the room, don't you think? In the field I now find myself in, where we are all are trying to make a living based on creative content we put up online, people seem hesitant to speak publicly about the specifics of their own financial situations. I want to change that, and here's why. As a content creator, I make my money from people who are willing to give it to me in exchange for my work and services. It's a very personal, one-to-one type of financial transact...
May 07, 2021•36 min
