Art Happens Between
"Art happens between you and something—a subject, an idea, a technique—and both you and that something need to be free to move."
— David Bayles & Ted Orland, Art and Fear
How can you create space between you and what you’re creating?
Can I Make A Living Doing What I Love?
Maybe! But is that the most interesting/useful question? In this week’s newsletter I talk about the unmet needs, loving our Tuesdays, and honouring the tension that comes with pursuing work we love.
Advice I’d Give to Someone Who’s Starting
Whether you're starting a new business or pivoting within an existing one, read an excerpt from this week’s newsletter for the advice I'd give to someone who's starting.
What Helps, What Hinders?
Read an excerpt from this week’s newsletter for this Pema Chödrön quote, as well as three tools for decision-making.
What Makes a Business Sustainable?
Read an excerpt from this week’s newsletter and mind map out loud with me what’s worth considering when building a sustainable small business.
Four Ways to Get New Work
When it comes to getting new work, there are four broad approaches I like to go over with folks. In these approaches, you’ll notice we’re simply playing with direction, focus, and energy:
Moving toward what we want vs inviting what we want toward us
Being direct vs indirect
Applying wide vs narrow lenses
Read the article here.
NEW: Office Hours Are Now Evergreen
This year I’ve changed Office Hours from being a seasonal offering to an evergreen one.
Learn more about Office Hours, check out Maker Rate (my take on sliding scale pricing!), and book your session here.
Tension as an Invitation
Tension asks us to listen, not eliminate.
What is this an invitation to?
Three Questions for Building
"Which of these has more life? Which of these is more a mirror of my self? Does this object make me feel my humanity is expanding—or contracting?"
— Christopher Alexander, The Nature of Order
Questions to ask when building a product, a website, an object, etc.
Meaning and Relationship
Where there’s a lack of meaning, look for a lack of relationship.
Meaning is created in reference to another thing. What is this connected to? What does this fit within?
Presence Without Exchange
I’m currently taking the Center for Courage and Renewal’s Foundations program, which introduces us to the touchstones, principles, and practices that underpin a circle of trust (Parker J. Palmer’s work). In it, we’re getting to practice different styles of communication:
Communication that’s not about information exchange
Speaking to understand yourself, rather than to help others understand you
Presence that’s not about effort
“Hearing each other into deeper speech”
As someone who “advises” and essentially asks questions for a living, I am both challenged and enlivened by practicing new ways of speaking/listening.
Three Questions For Writing
“Is it worth saying? Is it said clearly? It is said beautifully?”
— Parker J. Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness
Making Edges Meaningful
“You don’t get to choose whether or not you’re going to be taken to these edges. You will be taken to those edges. The only thing we have to ask ourselves is what we require to make it meaningful.”
— Francis Weller, Kosmos Journal (h/t Trace Bell)
What to Do When Everything Is Important
Just because everything is important doesn’t mean everything is a priority.
We know this, and yet, it can be so hard to figure out where to put our attention and energy. Here are four approaches—and a few key questions—to help pull focus and prioritize.
Read the article here.
The Freedom to Choose
“The quality of our lives, day to day, is measured by our freedom to choose to stay or leave. That freedom comes when we have abundance enough and safety enough to let go of what is broken and reach for something new.”
—Emily Nagoski & Amelia Nagoski, Burnout
Wanting and Surrender
“We set ourselves up as arbiters of what is good when often our standards of goodness are driven by narrow interests, by what we want.”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
AND,
“If we never surrender, we only ever get what we think we want.”
— Grace Allerdice
What’s available to you beyond your current understanding of what’s possible?
An Approach to Leadership
“Find people who are inclined to agree with you and lead them. Amplify their best desires and figure out how to take them further.”
— Seth Godin
Leadership that is for rather than against.
“One Thing” Thinking
It’s unlikely that anything will be caused by one thing, explained by one thing, or fixed by one thing.
We are living systems. Explore accordingly.
Do I Like This Enough for Other People to See It?
It all begins with an idea.
“All that’s in your control is making the thing to the best of your ability. You’re making an offering to God. We’re making the best we can make, to the best of our ability, out of love and devotion.”
— Rick Rubin
A guiding question when sharing your work. Do I like this enough for other people to see it?