CREATIVE VOCATION: Sustaining Your Creative Practice practice.

1. Introduction: Friends welcome to create him vocation. Sustaining your creative practice. I recommend that for many of us creative practices, one of those things that we, we often think of kind of what I would call the myth of the creative life. The myth of the full-time creative. That once we kind of have this idea, once I get to be a full-time creative, then everything's gonna be fine. Then, then, then one side than we often get stuck in the, once I get to this thing in the future than the myth of the full-time creative, any creative person I know there are barely any very few. Create full-time creative practicing people that I know. Who, who just creating is the only thing that I do with them that as in most of the time, it's spent e-mailing and logistics and invoicing and all these things. And then trying to work out how we actually do the creative practice within that. So what I wanna do now over this course, what I want to invite you into is how can you take your creative practice and one, develop it out of the values that you want to live out of, out of the core of who you are. How can you look at what you want this creative practice to be, the vision or what I'll call the cathedral, on what you want this credit practice to be. How can you grab a hold of that and then let that shape your creative practice kinda in the here and now so that it will be a sustainable thing. So that you can go through the seasons of the creative life with as much tenacity and kind of and adaptability allowing yourself to run with the seasons and the disruptions and the chaos of life, but still be able to develop a creative practice within that, that is sustainable and flourishing and growing. This is, this is the second video in a kind of a three-part and second course, sorry, within a three-part creative vocations Skillshare series. The first one was all about was all about hearing are kind of creative calling and how to holistically, how to create a holistic, integrated creative life. And the next one is going to be how can we take this creative practice and begin to develop it into a career? But right now we're sitting in the creative practice. My name is Joe McCarthy. I'm being a creative practitioner, a, a writer, a poet, performer, an educator for about 15 years and our full-time for about 13 years. My life has been my creative practice. And throughout that time there's a number of different seasons that I've gone through. Hard times, beautiful winter seasons, autumn, fall seasons, spring, summer seasons. I want to invite you into this course to discover how can you make your creative practice, develop your credit practice, and then make it sustainable? Hope you can join me. As we begin to look at the cathedral that we might be building. That is our creative practice. Join me now. Let's go. 2. Building a Cathedral: Welcome, welcome. I'm so glad that you've chosen to join us to come and learn to come and engage, come and develop your creative practice. Now let me start this whole thing off with a story, a fable. There's this guy, let's call him very bizarre. Bizarre is what we'd call him in Australia. We'll call him Bizarre. Bizarre is walking down the road and basil comes up to this, to a building site, right? There's this guy who's, who's working on the building site that he sees on the ground. He's, he's laying bricks and basil comes up, is a curious fellow and he says, Hey, hey Mike, what do you, what are you doing? The guy looks happening as just this is like the worst jar. I'm just laying bricks just like one after another after another. I'm so sick of this thing. I'm just over height. And berries like Banza is like, oh, that's OK. So that's no good. Sorry, mine. And he keeps on walking and he works a little bit further down along the road and he comes to someone else at the same construction side is who's doing the same thing? This lady in he says, Hey, what are you up to? And she looks up and she says, Oh, well, I'm building a bit of a wall here like this. You can see the startup, it's over there and at ends down there there's a made-up there. He's he's done some work on it and it's just it's a bit of a wall, you know, it's a job. It's alright. It's just a thing. I'm a brick layer, so I just, I just get to lay the bricks and this thing says, okay, that's, that's alright, thanks for, thanks for letting me know. It continues down, down the street and, and as is basses way. Once again, curious as to what is bricklayers are doing. It comes to this third bricklayer and he's like, Hey, I might, What are you doing? And this guy looks up and he's like, Man, you should see what we're making here. We are creating the most beautiful, magnificent cathedral that you have ever seen. Like this thing is absolutely stunning and I get to be a part of the slack. I'm laying the bricks. But when there's all these people as hundreds of us on this building site and white, I'll grab out the blueprints. He pulls out the blueprints. He's like, this is where like the narthex is, and this is the, this thing and the bell tower is gonna be here and this is going to happen. This is incredible and I get to be a part of it. I get to be a part of it is like that sounds like a good life and he keeps on working, walking, walking down the road. Thus ends the fable bizarre water guy. What a curious feller about briefly, but hopefully, hopefully you haven't turned off thinking, I thought this was a creative course, not a brick laying course is not about brick laying friends. This is about creativity and hopefully you have picked up what might be at the heart of this fable. It's pretty easy to get. I know that you would have got it, you would have picked it up. What this means, they've got the first-person. First-person cannot see past the menial task and just lay in one brick after another, after another, after another. Just as in our lives, whatever that might look like in our creative lives, one email after another, after another. I gotta do this thing and this thing and this thing in our lives in general, I gotta look after the kids. I gotta do them all. You got to hang out the washing. I gotta do the dishes. Are these bricks, bricks, bricks, bricks. This first-person cannot see anything larger than just the, OH, and so their life is dictated by that. Then you come to the second person. The second person has a little bit bigger picture, they can say, then I'll just lay one break after another after another. But they're building a bit of a wall. And it's not just them, but there's also someone down there and someone down there. It's a little bit of a team of them never be bigger an idea and they have a different kind of perspective. You get to the third person and they're pumped to their lack sacked on this thing. They are doing exactly the same thing as that first-person was doing. That, just land breaks. But their whole perspective that bigger id, the id that they are part of these huge, incredible cathedral building project. That is what spurred them on. So that even if what they're doing is exactly the same as the person down the street. They're doing it with a total different looking through a total different lens, a total different perspective and that changes nothing. He had. It changes everything. It changes everything. It reshapes, it's shapes. It defines how they are engaging in the menial. Just doing this, just doing that. I've just gotta do this. And this is the lesson of the, of the cathedral. And I think some of us were a little bit like that first-person. We can't see what we're building. We just get lost in the monotony of these things we have to do. Some of us began to see a bit more like the second person and some of us, maybe some of us, even like me, I get to addicted in some sense to like the third person is doing great, but I think also I can get so pumped about the blueprints like the vision, we're gonna do this, we're going to do that, we're gonna do that. And I kinda forget in my excitement, I forget to actually come back and lay the bricks that actually the creative practice that I want to build is going to take the laying of this brick and followed by this brick and this brick. The small things that we build in our creative practice become the big things. The only way to make the big things, the big things is to do the small things, the small creative projects, the small creative task. Perhaps we can think about it like this. In some sense, the brick laying is like the small creative tasks that build our bigger creative projects that are out, that are our walls, the walls of this cathedral. And then from there, the cathedral is obviously it's like our big vision. It's the thing perhaps these projects are all coming together to build that dream desire for what our creative practice might be, for what it might look like. So I wonder, what is that for you to kick into this creative vocation, kick into this creative practice course. I think it's so important to have that future vision of what you want this thing to look like. You could split it up in a few different areas and you could say, okay, what would be the Cathedral of my, of my, perhaps you're saying the Cathedral of my creative practice. You could also say what's Slack at the Cathedral of my creative career? If you are a career artists, what does that look like? But what also, what's the, what's the, What's the cathedral, the vision of your life in general are creative practice and our creative create comes out of who we are. And so we must be saying, Well, what's the kind of life that I don't want to leave? What's the cathedral that I want to head towards? What the heading towards is really important because what this is called, this is actually called a Talia logical approach to something, teleological approaches where you have an end, the end product is there and that shapes, shapes you're going forward. So often we think that way it kinda pushed from the past in our lives. But actually when we have a vision for what something could be in the future and then comes back, we, um, what's the, what's the reverse engineer from the cathedral to then work out. Okay, so this is what I need to do now. This, if we go back from the cathedral, you say, okay, so these are the projects that could lead to the building of this cathedral. When I come back from that, these are the little tasks that I need to do the little Brick Lane things to build the inter those projects to then build that cathedral Italia logical approach. We've got the cathedral and we've got the walls and the brick laying. Perhaps you could think of it as. I've got here a little diagram for your creative practice, your creative practice, and then it intersecting with them. Who's the VM there, your crew, your people, your tribe, the people that connects to your creativity. And then there's your creative business side of things coming to it. And then the z, you and your life and who you want to make, all these four things coming together. What is the vision? What's the cathedral? What are you heading towards to live this holistic, integrated creative life? These four things I looked at in a previous course on Skillshare, if you haven't seen it, the creative vocation, living your best creative life, go and watch that and you'll see all about those things. Then we could say, if that's the vision, how do my walls, my projects? Perhaps you've got projects that are just plainly creative things, creativity for creativity sake. Perhaps you also have projects that are a prophet things profit-based. What's going to make? Things that will make you money? Creative projects that our audience, things, things that aren't necessarily going to make you money, but they're going to draw in more of your crowd, more of your crew, more of your tribe, more of your audience, things perhaps like, like a podcast is not gonna make you money, but it's going to draw you in people. And then creative and then sorry, partnership things. Joining with collaborators and partners and organizations. How can you begin to take your creative work and connect in with them? The credit vocation, your creative career, is the next course after this that you can watch to really grab a hold of that stuff. Then we come to the brick laying again. So if this is the case, if this is the project, this is the creative project. I want to do this as a prophet project. I wanna do this as an audience building project, and this is a partnership project, finding a partner, working with them, collaborating. For me. I do a lot of stuff with musicians. I do a lot of stuff with other writers, whatever that might look like for you. Now bring it down to the brick laying with each of these projects. What's the next step? What's the next break? What's the next thing that I need to do to lay the bricks, to build the walls, to build the confederal that I am heading towards this, OH, at the heart of this course, where we go to from here, we're gonna be going into how to sustain what we begin to create out of this creative practice. But for me, this has been the heart of it. What's my cathedral? What do I want my creative practice to look like? How can I then what projects will lead to that? And what Brixton I need to lay to lead to that. Thanks for listening to this lesson. Go on to the next one. 3. Success and Failure: We looked at last week, if you remember. I'm sorry, last lesson at the Cathedral. The vision that we are heading towards, these grand, beautiful thing that we're heading towards. But the reality is, you're going to screw it all up. It's not that I know we have these grand visions and then it's like, do I like that bring brick wrong and I laid that brick wrong. And so the whole wall is now wrong and that doesn't fit in that as a vehicle to change, it's going to change that. You know what I mean? We people who fail, stuff up, who don't do things well. But we have to challenge what success and failure looks like in our lives. What success and found it looks like, especially in this time of pandemic of the last two years, just you surviving through this time. That's enough. That's success. If you're still alive and creating and breathing and in relationship with some people, you've succeeded. Yes. Failure is more than just not succeeding at something, at something. It's not failure. Failure is when you don't grow from an experience. And success. Success is more than just succeeding at something because you might nail something but do it with no heart, no authenticity. That's not success. So what is success and what is failure? The process of failure is just as important as the joy of success. That's what we will start off with. The foundation of this lesson, the process of failure. Failing E is just as important as the joy of success. And we all like, we've heard these terms before, we know these terms, but it's a lot different to know them as to actually live them out. And Danny Shapiro, who wrote, still writing such a beautiful book if you want, a stunning book on creativity and writing. Still writing by Danny Shapiro, she says this, what is it about riding that makes it for some of us as necessary as breathing? It is in the thousands of hours of days of trying, failing, setting, thinking, resisting dreaming, rattling, unraveling that we are almost engaged, alert and alive. Time slips away, the body becomes irrelevant. We're as close to consciousness itself as we will ever be. This begins in the darkness beneath the frozen ground, buried deep below anything we can see something may be taking root. Stay there. If you can, don't resist, don't force it but don't run away and Judah, be patient. The rewards cannot be measured. Not now, the time when you're working on a first book is when the darkness is at its purest and most precious. There's only one opportunity to write in complete darkness. When you are at the beginning, use it and use it well, but whatever happens, any rider will tell you, this is the best part. The loneliest day in the life of a published writer might just be publications day. Those times when the rewards cannot be measured. Success is not publication day successors who you are as you write your thing, who you are as you paint your thing. There are times when the rewards simply can't be measured during this two years. How do you measure? For me the success? The measure of my success these two years is that I've tried to be as present as I can to my kids through homeschooling and throw a lock down through long lockdowns. That's it. That's it. Anything else on top of that? Great. But this is the measure of my success, which really you just can't measure the times rewards can be measured, perhaps letting go of success at the moment for you might be the best thing you can do when the pandemic started and everything happened. I spent quite a while trying to rally, trying to trying to do on my business stuff, get it all happening, going Crap, I'm losing all this money. How can I do this and do that and do that and do that? As well as trying to homeschool my kids, as well as I was doing doing, doing, doing, doing, doing. And it was really **** hard and I had to stop. I had to stop and just say, You know what? My success during this season is looking after the kids when I stopped forcing this thing, when I stopped need it like so much of it was wrapped around my ego. I've been a successful artist and being successful creative person. I've got to keep that off. I've got to keep that up. When I stop doing that slowed down, was present to my kids. That was when my creativity flourished, like I talked about at the very beginning of this course. That was when things blossomed, when my creativity, when in different ways, when I stopped trying to succeed, that's when I found what success was success in this moment and successful change in the next moment and the next moment and the next moment. Changing, therefore, your success changes in the next moment, the next moment, the next moment. Then this also alters our path towards success and our understanding of success. Thomas says we cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being gray. 4. On Work: So hopefully we're not going to have anything as extreme as this two-year pandemic in the future. But luckily, we will have something who the heck knows about whether we have something worldwide or not, you're going to in your life inevitably have a disruption and other disruption, a massive disruption, smaller disruptions and they will either be, you can either see them as a blockage to your success or altering the path of what success looks like during that season. I want to read, if you turn to page 351 of the most beautiful pieces of writing for me on work, on career, on how creativity comes in. It's, I want to sit in this for a bit around, around success and around failure. Kahlil Gibran on work from his book, the profit. I know a bunch of you would have read this before, but I mean, you can read this. You could read this every day for a year and still not come to the, still be getting so much out of it. Colored Gibran on work and then apply them and said, speak to us of work. And he hands and saying, you work, that you may keep pace with the Earth. And the sole of the foot to be idle is to become a stranger until the seasons and to step out of laughs procession that marches in majesty and proud submission toward the infinite. When you work, you are a flute through whose heart? The whispering of the hours tons to music. Which of you would be a read, dom and silent when all else sings together in unison. Always. You have been told that work is a curse and labor and misfortune. Or when I say to you that when you work, you fulfill a part of Earth's, this dream assigned to you when that dream was born. In keeping yourself with labor, you are in Truth loving life. And to love life through labor is to be intimate with life's most inmost secrets. But if you and your pain called birth and affliction and the support of the flesh, a curse written upon your brow. When I answer that naught, but the sweat of your brow shall wash away that which is written. You've been told that all life is darkness. And in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary. I say that life is indeed darkness. Save when there is urge. Urge is blonde. Save when there is knowledge and all knowledge is vain. Save when there is work, and all work is empty. Save when there is love. And when you work with love, you bind yourself to yourself and to one another and to God. What is it to work with Love? It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as the fuel Beloved what aware that cloth it is to build a house with affection. Even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house, it is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved would eat the fruit. That is to charge all things you fashion with a breadth of your own spirit. And to know that all the blessings that are standing about you and watching off and I have heard you say is if in speaking in sleep, you works in marble and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone is nobler than he who plows the soil. And he sees as the rainbow to lay it on a cloth in the likeness of man is more than he who makes the sandals for our fate. But I say, not in sleep, but in the oval wakefulness of Noon tied that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks then to the least of all the blades of grass. And he alone is great. Who turns the voice of the wind into a song that made sweeter by his own loving work. Is love made visible? And if you cannot work with love, but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work, sit at the gate of the temple, take arms of those who work with joy for if you bake bread with indifference, a better bread that feeds but half man's hunger. And if you grabbed the crushing of the grapes, your garage distills a poison in the wine. And if you sing, though, as angels and love not the singing, you muffled man's ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night. I hope you loved that pace of writing. It's stunning. It's really stunning around creativity. And also around, for me, around letting yourself off the hook. You know, there's this, while we would say is the myth of. Of the full-time creative, that's success is to be a full-time creative. Kahlil Gibran, it's kinda smashes that then when he sends off, and I've heard you say is if speaking in sleepy who works in marble and finds the shapes of your own soul in the stone is nobler than a few pounds of soil. He sees as the rainbow delayed on the cloth is more than he who makes the sandals for our feet. But he challenges that idea and he says none. And then an inner, whether you are plowing the field, whether you're the brick is labor or whether you're a carpenter or whether you're a painter, whether you're a dance or whether you're a singer, whatever you do, if you imbue it with love is success. Success is love made visible work, is love made visible? Do these things as though you were doing it for the beloved. Don't feel like you have to give up your day job and you are not a successful creative, unless you have a full-time creative career. That is not the case at all. Friends, work, everything you do with love, your creativity, a day job, whatever that looks like, if you do it with love you. Successful. What a beautiful thing to let us off the hook. All of these expectations and pressures that we put upon ourselves. But simply when we work, when we take the things of our hands and craft beautiful things out of them. Whether we are sitting at a computer as an accountant trying to work things out or whether we get to paint glorious things, whatever we are doing, whether I'm writing and performing poetry to the masses or teaching my daughter how to write a bay. And getting really frustrated because she always right to be the wrong way like a day. So I'm again saying B now it's a baby bunny. If I do it in love, It is a success. It is a success. Imbuing it with love. The wind still blows their mind. But I say not enslaved, but in the overweight font-awesome the entire, the women's speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks then to the least of all the blades of grass. He alone is great. Who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own Loving. There is no difference in success if you're carving marble into a beautiful sculpture. Or if you are working at McDonald's. If you're doing it in love, if you're doing it in love, It's really important. I was going to say this another time as well, but it's crucial for us to say, well, I don't have to force my creativity to make money for me. Perhaps I can work and do this and do that. And I can still shape my life around creativity. I can still imbue all these things with love. And I might make some money from my creativity. But whether I do or not, there's something much more important here than I do this with love and that I create out of love. You do not need to be a full-time creative. 5. The 'Full-time' Creative: The method of full-time creative. Let me read you a few words. Is his dream of doing this full time thing went up, pays for your life. It's almost like if it's meant to have reached the nirvana of creativity, the topic again, reaching success. The full-time artist life, though, is a lot less romantic than the myth of the full-time creative life. Most weeks in my full-time Life, full-time creative life, I'd get maybe one day of actual writing, and this is before COVID. And the rest of my time and my creativity was doled out in the same way as anyone else's in between the cracks and the stolen minutes when the boys finally asleep. After I ride the invoices between the 50 emails, I've got to reply to working out trips and logistics, sitting in the car park of a school I'm teaching that day, the green room of another poetry gig. This is reality foremost, every credit person in the world, every full-time credited wherever been honest with me about the actuality of their lifestyle is that they too have to force creativity into the cracks, the small cracks between things because the full-time creative life, it doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. 100%. You can choose in your life. If you can carve aside the time to say, You know what, I'm going to have three hours of creating today, I'm going to have four hours of credit is that we're gonna be talking about blocking out your time and all that kinda stuff later. But what I want to say now is that myth of the full-time creative life. Just this time to write, I'm just going to ride and Ryan, and Ryan, and Ryan and not care about anything else for very few people that can happen. Maybe for some, but for very few. Math is never the reality. Reality. If you are living a full-time creative life for me, reality was the hectic tour schedules, broken relationships, lonely hotels, screwed up business deals, bloody hard work to make it all happen. So even if we're full-time artists, we can't escape normality, the frustration of the every day. We won't ever have an open slather of free time for our creativity. Perhaps you've had during this time in lockdown, I perhaps you've been always craving this free time to be as creative as you want. And then the last two years when you've had that free time, it's like, oh, actually, I just can't create right now. We put so much pressure on ourselves. What if we let it go? What if we let go of our expectations and what this creative life needs to be. And we just did allow it to be what it is. We imbue it with love. It doesn't mean not chasing after things. I'm going to talk about chasing and hustling and the need to approach people. And that if we wait for this success thing to come to us, if we wait for our video to go viral for this, It's never going to happen. So we, I'm talking about not chasing after things. What I'm saying at the very core, the very center of who we are. Can we, as a beautiful community of mine, says, we need to stop resting from work and start working out of a place of rest in the center of us. If we arrested, if we are content in who we are and in this life, if we imbue our life, we love work out of that place. Work out of that place. We need some new definitions. If the dream of analysts artistic freedom doesn't exist, He's a thought, let's just create any way we'd love. Let's just create any way. The myth of the full-time creative with endless artistic freedom. It really doesn't exist for 99.99 per cent of it. So let's create anyway, let's fill out things with love anyway, and let's make that success. Another guy named Hugh MacLeod, he says the fact that I have another income means I don't feel pressured to do something market-friendly. Instead, I get to do whatever the **** I want you to do it for my own satisfaction. I think that makes the work more powerful in the long run. It also makes it easier to carry on with it in a calm fashion, day-in, day-out, not go crazy and insane, creative bursts brought on by my money worries. Simply put my method allows me to pace myself over the long haul, which is critical. Stamina is utterly important and stamina is only possible if it's managed well. People think all I need to do is enjoy one crazy intense job free, creative burst, and their dreams will come true. They're wrong, they are stupidly wrong. Don't feel like you need to give up your day job. All right. One of my beautiful friends, Rochelle born, who does all the singing in my on all my stuff. For her. She struggled and hustled. And Russell four years to make her creativity pay for her life, to make it a full-time thing. If filter with anxiety and stress. And in the end it killed her creativity for years. She couldn't write a song. She let her go. She worked full-time at a job. She let it go. The pressure of making a creativity pay for her life, thinking that that was success. And in the letting go, she found freedom, that she found her creativity blossom once again and flourish once again so that she could write lots and lots of songs. Chase your creativity because no matter how hard the chase, no matter how hard you work in and no matter if you get there in the end, it's still all worth it simply because you made a thing chase after your creative practice. Do it for the love of it, not for anything else. It's only love that shall give you the persistence you need to keep going with your creativity regardless of the failures and rejections. The nine to five job that you have to hold down so you can pay to live. Let us stop demanding from ourselves and our creativity, this myth of success, let ourselves off the hook. Stop telling your paint brushes and pens they need to provide for you. Simplified down what we're going to talk about next lesson, success as Jim Rhone is nothing more than a few simple disciplines practiced every day. Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines practice every day. 6. Tenacity: We're going to be talking to you about sustainability today. Sustainability, how do we continue on without creative of vocation? No matter what? If you are in this for the long haul, how are you going to sustain that? Shaping our life around creativity, our vocation, around our creativity. There's a lot of resistance that comes up in our lives. Resistance often takes the form of justifications and distractions. Again, both in terms of our creative practice, creative blocks, et cetera, et cetera. If I didn't tell you about credit vocation of shaping a life around creativity. Often, resistance comes in the forms of justifications and distractions. Some of these luck with that creative process and they're legitimate, they're valid families, sickness the pandemic and some illegitimate. There are excuses, there are ways of justifying not engaging in what we know we're called to about where afraid of doing so. But here's the thing, even the valid, legitimate ones shaped the way you go about your credit vocation, but they don't have to be your excuse for not doing anything. I have many valid, valid, legitimate things that I have stopped my creative vocation in different ways over the last 18 months, but they haven't stopped my create, stopped my creativity. And when I allowed myself to stop, to not get hooked on that success stuff like we talked about last lesson. To recognize the success of being with my children. Then my creativity began to flourish once again in beautiful ways. And then my creative vocations strangely did too, in different ways. It looked different. I have two kids that have been homeschooling for the past two years, over 250 days of lockdown. I still, I've been able to release an album, launched my first ever online exhibition of poetry, of paintings, of skateboards. I've written a fiction book in that time. All this kind of stuff that I easily could have not done would have had valid excuses for and would add a whole lot of illegitimate excuses for as well. Because I loved watching Netflix and TV series, et cetera, et cetera. Sustainability for me to sustain my creative practice is to push past resistance. For me to bring about a long haul. Creative vocation is to push past my excuses. To see what happens. Danny Shapiro again, he wrote that beautiful books still riding. She says the middle of a riding life is much slack being in the midst of a book itself. Here we often discover our weaknesses and their strengths. Here we are in the hard, hard work of articulating the story itself and adjust as our lives are shaped by moments, owls and the passing of days. Stories are shaped by sentences, by movements of characters through time. The quiet tenacity with which we enter the stepping stone of each word. This kind of tenacity is not a static state and exotic destination to which you travel and then cross off the list each and every day that you approached the page you are reaching for it. Once again, tenacity. At times it will allude you, at times it will seem to have abandoned you. But in the face of these be persistent dog-eared, patient determined. Remember that this moment, this day is one stitch in a tapestry of days. Remember that you cannot, should not see the shape unfolding before you spend it all anyway, gamble with your whole self. Their job or the creative artist is to show up again and again and again and Gamble and sit down and do the work and get it done and get it done and get it done. And in the process of doing that, whether we feel like it or not, beautiful things begin to happen throughout quiet tenacity. Bit of Entomology. Again, the Latin of tenacity is tenacity us an act of holding fast, Tenex steadfast tinea to hold on this, this comes from tinea equals the root of ten to stretch. Tenacity. This act of holding fast, of steadfast. It comes the root of it is actually to stretch. Holding fast is when we allow ourselves to stretch in flexibility to the season. And the reality that is not holding fast to some dream of what should be, but allowing that quiet tenacity is a flexibility and is allowing movement for change so that when disruption happens, when the season changes, we can still hold on with resilience. Resilience is one of the key values of my kids. Primary schools respect resilience and responsibility. So I talked a lot, I talk a lot about resilience with my kids pushing past, pushing past because I see it over and over again in so many people, this law, this lack of resilience, that when things get hard, we just throw it out. We throw things out way too quickly. Resilient the Latin of resilience. Resilience to rebound or recoil. Resilience. Reebok. Re, resilience comes from Ray which is back and cilia which has jumped, jumped back or elasticity to jump back, to stretch and jump back in to form this potential energy of a elastic band that is being pulled. Elasticity fills a rubber band with potential energy as it's stretched, it doesn't break, holds the energy inside it till it is released. A rubber band has the tenacity and the resilience to stretch to however much tension it is pulled into. The challenge for us is to do this. The challenge for us is to be the same regardless of how pulled and stretched we all by the world around us, does our creative vocation are creative practice or creative business ourselves and our connection with others. Those four things, does it have the resilience and tenacity to stretch to match the tension that's still filled with potential energy regardless of whatever is happening, this is what sustainability is and about how do I remain stretchable with the tenacity and resilience that I need. 7. Rhythms and Rituals: Even as I write this, as I wrote this, these thoughts to share with you now, I was riding them and I received a message from a dear friend of mine saying I just, I feel like my art socks, like no one likes that. Like I'm fooling myself, I should just quit and stop. Literally just as I was writing this. The challenge is that even when you're feeling this decayed, going to not feel like you have to do it exactly as you have been to show up again and again. Not because people lack in part because it feeds you, because it's filled with love, because it is what you love. Creativity, courageous, creative, creative courage. That's what I'm trying to say. Creative courage is when you show up again and again and again not to please people, but because you love it to push past, push past. When that feeling of I trust my art socks, I just want to give up. I can't do this. When you're not feeling it. When all those doubts come at you about your creative practice, It's then that the rhythms and the rituals carriers until we can feel it again, as in we keep showing up and creating. And I might look different from the season of struggle than the seasonal flow. But we show up, we keep doing the time, we keep the rhythm. Why? Because you will never doing this for others anyway. You're doing this because your creativity saved you. Because it pulls you through, because it's yours and it fills you with love even if you can't feel that now. So create, create, remember the why of why you do this, not for them, but for you, always for you. And then at some point, the people would take notice when you aren't feeling it. Rely on creative rhythms and practices to carry you through. A lady named Lauren winner. She talks about it in terms of spirituality. So book about her kind of spiritual journey. She says there's on the days when I think I have a fighting chance at redemption at change. I understand it to be these words and these rituals and these people who will change me. So some days I'm not sure if my faith is riddled with doubt or whether graciously my dad is riddled with faith. Yet I continued to live in the world the way a religious person lives in the world. I keep living in a world that I know to be enchanted and not left alone. I doubt, I'm uncertain. I am restless, prone to wander, yet glimmers of holy, keep interrupting. My gay religion is being given a bad rap mainly because religious people suck most of the time. But religion in terms of like, I think we need to bring her some redemption to that word. That religion might just be the rhythms and rituals of a person's faith. That's what religion is really the rhythms and rituals of a person's faith. Rhythm, rich rhythm and ritual can become negative things as well. But here's the thing. I think what she's saying, I live in the world like a religious person lives in the world. I create these rhythms, these practices, these rituals so that when I don't feel it, I'm still doing these rhythms, these rituals, these practices. And so that after time after time after time laying brick, laying brick, laying brick, the wall is built. But I keep on going and after awhile I will fail the phi, I come up again, I'm starting to get glimmers of a holy that keep interrupting my gay. That's the same for our creativity. The way that our creativity is sustainable is through a steady rhythm of small things. Through writing three pages a day, five days a week. Within half a year of doing that, you're going to have a novel, three pages a day, five days a week of doing that, you'll have a novel. I wonder what this looks like for you. What does a steady rhythm of small things look like for you? As you engage in these steady rhythm of small things. It's also sustainability comes through because through the consistent grace of self forgiving. Self forgiving, allowing yourself to not do well at the rhythms, to not do well at your creativity, to not do well at your practice, to not do well at anything for a while and allowing yourself forgiving yourself for when you have not lived up to your own expectations. The consistent grace of self forgiving so that we can look around and see things. Two things that I see. My friend who messaged me, I sent her while I was working on and it made her feel better and a little less lonely. So she's feeling all this about a creativity. She reaches out. We're able to connect over it. Be encouraged to keep going. Something in the device, something divine timed in that she reached out saying, I can't do this anymore. Just as I'm writing this lesson about how we continue to do this and through our words and through our messaging each other. She was, I want to keep going and was filled with a live people. This is the, this is the community of supporters. That's what keeps us going. Community of supporters, those friends, those guiding forces in our life. And lastly, I think it's also about accepting change as it comes. This is how we make our creative vocation sustainable. Allowing change to come steady rhythm of small things, forgiving yourself when you screw it up. Having a community around you and accepting change as it comes just like the changing of the seasons. 8. The Seasons of the Creative Life: Spring the new birth, the new thing, potentiality, the invitation into new projects to develop new ideas are pulled back. Elastic band about to be released. Being released, it's all green and flowers. The budding of certainly knew the flowers that breakthrough the colors are dazzling, rolling metals and rebirth, the seeds that press through the soil, we all begin again, and all things begin again. Seasons come and seasons go. And from spring comes some other summer of beaches. The sun is high, the water is fine, The Sky is the brightest blue. The world is alive with activity. Your creativity is alive with activity. It's the season of touring, of pouring out, of releasing out into the world, of putting out a book in a few months of chasing, of hustling of sunny days of activity of all these glorious, glorious things. Seasons come and seasons. And autumn of fall arrives. There will come a time when the cold wind finds its way to you, Even as the sun beats down on new blowing around the issue between you within you when what has been green begins to orange up and fade away when the feeling of love waivers. And there is a shedding of old skin and I'm dropping their leaves that once fluttered so bright and the blues sky, the wind that now brings in the cold and the clouds and rain, what was beautiful and bountiful. The thing you had so much love for is fading now can you feel it? The leaves dropping now from the tree of your passion, you are being called inside. Cold to stop giving, giving, giving, giving out. It is time to shed what has been, say, seasons come and seasons go and the winter arrive out there cold and frothed a warm clothes. The winter can be a frozen place and it can freeze you in its wake. The winter is also a time of fireplace and miss the skies and ski slopes and snowy fights and turning inward and holding silence and warming each other and letting hot chocolate or whiskey warm your insides of sitting there writing a book in the darkness, turning, creating, painting in the darkness when no one can see you. What I'm saying is this, the winter season is important. Winter is time to turn inward to get off social media, to not put pressure on yourself to be producing something is happening inside you and dad, truly and depth to yourself and subsequently to your artistic practice. And he's being carved deep inside you buy the wintertime, go inward, lay low, close to the fire, huddled down. Seasons come. And seasons go. Seasons. The spring and summer times have action of putting things out there. A rebirth of growth and seasons or boredom of full of winter. Seasons, of contemplation, of going inwards. Our lives must be filled with action and contemplation. Both of them with the spring and summer seasons, with the autumn and winter seasons, the challenge is recognizing what season you are in and giving yourself to that season, not trying to fight it. And say, I don't want these winter season know I need to be doing these summer things, but recognizing things faded away into autumn. And so now I need to come into myself giving yourself to the seasons not chasing after the season you wish it should be, could be, would be if only this, this, this what if you tapped into the season you are in? If it's winter, you hold up believing that there is green somewhere under this snow and that green will come and flow once again into spring. New birth and new creative projects and new amazing things that you can in some or bring out into the world. We need both these things. We need both these things and we need practices in both of these things. Sometimes the cold of winter gets so deep in our bones, we can't imagine life without it. And so we go through the summer. And so though the summer sun is pouring its glorious hate upon you, you can still get stuck in the winter because you think it's still winter? In the woe is me. When you don't look out to see the sun and the beauty when you don't let yourself enjoy the moment. We get so caught up in the things that I made life hard, we forget to let revelry rise up in us. We forget to go to the beach or otherwise to play in the sand. Look up to the heavens, Then God for life that's filled with love. Life lived to the fall and the spring and the summer and the fall. All of them. This is the rhythms of our life. This is the rhythms of the world. This is the rhythms of our life. This is the rhythms of our world. So it's crucial to know what season you are in and what rhythms will sustain you during that season. Martha Graham says there is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action. There is only one of you in all time. This expression is unique and if you block, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world won't have it. It's not your business to determine how good it is and know how it compares with other expression. It's your business to keep it yours clearly and directly. To keep the channel open, you do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You just have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction, whatever at any time, there's only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others. Keep on going, keep on going credo when you can't go in when there's, when it's low battery mode, when it's low power mode on your phone, then recognize that and allow yourself to change just like your phone in a low battery mode changes how it works and how it operates till it's charged again, you do the same. Low battery, low power mode. Allow yourself to be in low power mode and the winter seasons, and then give yourself to the summer seasons with all of you, all of you. 9. Creative Mentalities: There really is a lot of a lot of different perspectives that we have upon what artistry and creativity and what a creative artist and credit professional is. We need to tease some of those out and wrestle some of those out there. Obviously, one of the major first ones is the starving artist archetype of, of a creative. And this is one of those ones that totally needs to be thrown out. Even if, even if it is reality for some, the starving artist that your scrounging for food going from one little thing to another. I don't, I don't think it has to be. I think that we won. The image of a starving artist. Is this, for me? Is this lonely, bedraggled, probably drunken kind of artist? Maybe that's not your image, but that's just what comes to me, my mentality, my perspective. I think the starving artist is a, I think it's awful for us as artists to have that kind of perspective. Much rather I would have, I would love us to have the perspective of I'm a generous artists, whether I'm earning money from my artistry or not, I'm a generous artists. The more I get, the more I can give, the more I get money-wise, the more I can give them more I have in terms of a community, the more than I can give to them. I wonder it's time to, it's time to move away from that starving artist mentality. And other ones will move away from is, I'll, I'll only, I'm an artist. If I'm an artist, if I'm selling my things, I'm an artist. If I'm, if I'm going full-time in my artistry, my creativity, I've made a career of business out of it. Then I can call myself a poet, then I can call myself a painter. I think we need to move away from that too. Grass polar the idea that as you come and as you put paint, paintbrush to Canvas and begin to paint, you are a painter and you'll develop those skills and develop those skills and develop those skills. And it May 1 day become something that is a career, but in no way is your identity as a creative less because you don't earn enough, because you are selling your things, because you haven't written a book, therefore, you can't call yourself a writer I conquer. So call yourself a poet because of a poetry book. Ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous. Let's move away from that and embrace the idea that as I create, I am a creative artist for whatever description that he's, whatever it looks like. Another of the, especially in terms of business that we need to move away from is when I get my break, then when I get my break, when that viral thing happens, when I sell these, then this will happen. Then I'll be able to be not full-time creative professional that I want to be there, my creative business will be thriving. Let's move away from that mentality. We talked a bunch about that in terms of success and failure last week. Well, I think we need to get away from the idea, especially today, that a, an artist that creativity, that you're creative vocation will happen when you get that break. It's totally wrong. It's not about getting that break. It's about something way better, really essentially, it's about building a community of belonging and trust that you get to serve. That sounds a whole lot better and more exciting to me than waiting for some break to come, some breaks it comes so you can get lots of hits, lots of likes, lots of money, lots or whatever it is. Let's move away from that. Let's also move away from that arm. An artist not only no business plan like now, I'll just create, I'll just be creative and if the business stuff happens, that's okay. I mean, I think you choosing to do this course is you say no, I want to actually engage more, not just do the writing or whatever it is, but I really want to make the business side of things a part of my creative vocation, the creative business side of things. And therefore, I think we also need to move away from the artist reverse commercial debate. The idea of selling out and what that might look like. 10. Selling Out: There is a fear. There's definitely has been a fee for me moving more into the business side of things that I'll become a sellout, that I will lose my way and lose my creativity and just think that it can legitimately be a fear because I've seen people do that. But I want to challenge this idea, humor Cloud hemoglobin, I've quoted before in this, he is a creative artist. He's a graphic designer. He's a cartoonist. He's written some great books as well. He says This worrying about commercial verse, artistic. It's complete waste of time. It's not about whether Tom Clancy, Tom Clancy cells, truckloads of books, nobel Prize winner cells, diddly squat. Those are just external distractions to me. It's about what you are going to do with the short time you have left on this earth. Different criteria altogether. Frankly, how a person nurtures and develops his or her own creative sovereignty with or without the help of the world at large is, in my opinion, a much more interesting subject, creative sovereignty. I don't know if you've heard of that term before. I only heard about through the work of Hugh MacLeod. And I've really come to love it. I've really come to love a creative sovereignty is kind of your creative authority and autonomy to be empowered, creative in charge of where you're heading with your creative, with your creativity, rather than being shaped by where other people want you to head and just trying to get the locks, just trying to please the people. Rather it's you owning your creativity in a way that says this thing is mine and I'll create out of it. And I will create beautiful things and I'll create what I want to and what I'm feeling or what I'm calling to whether it's going to sell or not, whether it's going to make money or anything like that. Credit sovereignty is to have complete freedom without the need for somebody else's money or approval over your creativity. That's what Hugh MacLeod is interested in. He, he was, he hasn't really fascinating story as well. He was, had moved to New York City to pursue his artistry, his creativity. And it was all failing, as I'm sure happens for many people when they moved to New York City's seeking to seeking to do this thing. He's sitting in a bar in New York City and there's a business card there. And he just started drawing on the back of his business card. And he draws a few more and he draws more and he just for no reason, like he's not trying to sell anything, he's not trying to make it is just doodling, just creating, just having fun. This thing, this drawing on the back of business cards. It became his thing. It became the thing that actually took his creative vocations credit Korea and centered styling like it became his thing that he could shape his life around. And he found that by being at rock bottom, totally failed. Moved to New York City is sitting there and he just starts doodling on the back of a business card. He says This was so liberating to be doing something that didn't have some sort of commercial angle for a change was so liberating. You're doing something that didn't have to impress anybody for a change. It was so liberating to be free of ambition for a change. It was so liberating to be doing something that wasn't a career move for a change. It was so liberating to have something that belonged just to me. No one else for a change. So liberating to feel complete sovereignty, creative sovereignty for a change. To feel complete freedom for a change to have something that didn't require somebody else's money or somebody else's approval for a change. And of course it was then, and only then that the outside world started paying attention. The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will. How you own sovereign, how your own sovereignty inspires other people to find their own sovereignty, their own sense of freedom and possibility. We'll give the work far more power than the works objective merits ever will. Creative sovereignty to not have to sell, to not have to make money just to create, not have to make it to not have to seek approval just to create for creativity sake and to own that. He's saying that owning of that, once he stopped chasing all of this success idea and just owned and had that creative sovereignty, that authority that I'll just do what I want to do that when people started to take notice, that's when he's Korea, started to actually take off when he stopped caring about the Korea as much. 11. Creative Sovereignty: Creative sovereignty comes about how do we do it? How do we uphold our creative sovereignty and also be the best businesspeople that we can be. Comes about through a few different things. One, create with the assumption that you won't get anything for it. So great place to start creating from create. Your creative practice should be one that is not defined by just trying to do things to make money out of it, create with the assumption you won't get anything for him. But then also, you gotta do both. You must do both if you unpaid work, that is, if you want to build a career in terms of earning money from your creativity, if you want unpaid work and you've gotta do both the paid work and the personal work. That's just for you. If you'd give up the personal work, you'll inevitably lose your creative sovereignty. And as many credit business people that I've seen do this, many people who go into creative career who kinda lose that personal work thing. And they just make to create for other people. And I think you begin to lose the magic of your creativity, of the beauty that comes out. So I think you've got to do both. You've got to have that paid work, but you must, you're going to work out how to have that paid work through your creative vocation. But your creative practices for creativity sake is just as important to both. Hemoglobin has art suffers the moment other people stop paying for it. Also, I think the way that you can have your creative sovereignty, creative autonomy over your own work and authority is to be able to contextualize your work. But don't dilute your work. Contextualize your work, but don't dilute your work. One of the amazing things for me that I've seen in my poetry is I get to go into lots and lots and lots and lots of different communities and organizations and churches and people and poetry community like lots and lots of different stuff. Like some of it's pretty crazy in terms of out to their luck. And I've found that I can bring my creativity to those places and people will still accept me weirdly, one weekend I might go to like a hyper right-wing conservative Christian conference. I might then the next weekend I'll go to the Christian gain Network Conference and the next weekend I'll be part of a creative community that had nothing to do with Christianity or spirituality or anything. The next weekend I might be in a pub sharing with people the next weekend. I'll be like whatever peoples I tend to be able to speak into. Interestingly, whatever people's perspective about politics or religion, sexuality, whatever it might be. Part of my calling I actually see is to be there on those edge points between communities to speak into them. And in that place, I absolutely contextualize what I say. I'll even change the words of my poems to contextualize to the audience that I'm speaking to. But I'll never dilute or the heart of what I'm saying. I'll never dilute the heart of what I'm saying. And so the way that I kinda, the way that I kind of think about it is this. I'm like the first draft of something is for you. The second draft is for the projects itself. So you do the first draft of your creative, whatever it might be, and you just get it down there. It's for you. You're growing, you're loving it, you're moving, you're dumping it down into the page. It's, it's churning up. You're not carrying about editing or about what an audience thinks or anything. Then the second draft is for the project itself. So you take that damp and you've crafted and you work with it. This is all if you want lots of this stuff, it's all in the clearing in the forest course that I've done. Second draft is for the project itself. You work on the project itself. And then the third draft, that's when you make things for the audience. That's when you can contextualize it and say, Okay, I've got this poem. I know that. Say for me if I go into a conservative Christian group or a progressive Christian group, I can tailor some of my words and I can phrase things in different ways. I can put things in different ways so that it connects with them and moves them forward. If I'm performing my poetry, the performance of my poetry is for the people that I'm serving up for me. So we're going to work out the best way to communicate that. So I'll contextualize what you do absolutely. But you don't have to dilute your message within that owning, owning your creative sovereignty is about holding on to the heart of who you want to be in your creative practice. And then as the secondary step, create just for you and then bring in the ideas of so how will this work with an audience? But start with just you don't worry about the audience as you start to create. Obviously this might change and has a commissioned poetry. I'll do a whole lot of commission poetry for organizations and for people. And so from the get-go and thinking about them as an organization, about the brief that they've given me about whatever it might be. And that's totally fine. That's part of my paid work. I put that in my paid work category, but my personal work that could then become an income generating thing. I will still make sure I start by just creating for creativity sake my animals that I started painting that became part of my human project. I never thought when I started painting those animals that I would then make an exhibition out of it and bring it all together to become a thing. I didn't think that at all. I was just painting. I was just having fun. I was only later that I'm like, oh, actually maybe I could do something with these things. So we creative sovereignty crowd with the assumption you won't get anything for it. Do both the personal and the paid work hold both of those together, contextualized but don't dilute. 12. Creative Sovereignty (cont): For good ideas, should have a lonely childhood. This is how humor Cloud puts it, that if you want to retain creative sovereignty of your work, good ideas should have lonely childhood. This is kinda the idea of that first draft or that I was talking about Hugh MacLeod. He says, You don't know if your idea is any good the moment it's created and neither does anyone else. The most you can hope for is a strong gut feeling that it is and trusting your feelings is not as easy as the optimist say it is. That's me on the optimist. There's a reason why feeling scare us. Because what they tell us, what the rest of the world tells us are often two different things. If you try to make something just to fit your uninformed view of some hypothetical market, you will fail. If you make something special and powerful and honest and true, then you will succeed. He asked, let me repeat that because it's so wonderful if you make if you just, if you try to make something just to fit your uninformed view of some hypothetical market you will fail. But if you make something special and powerful and honest and true, you will succeed. That's what creative sovereignty is. Five cellular work in a self integrated way. Cellular work in a self integrated way. What is self integrated way? It's, it's the integration of our inner life and out alive. Whereas there's often a separate line here that's like that. Parker Palmer quote I said at the very start I pass steep price when I live a divided life fraudulent, anxious about being found out depressed by the fact I'm denying my own self-hood. A fault line runs down the middle of my life. When it cracks open things around me, get shaky and start to fall apart. The integrated creative life is how to bring these things together. My inner life, my world, my inner values, and who I want to be and what my creativity is gonna be about the things I'm going to take a stand on, the things I'm going to resist, the things I'm going to say no to. And then how that plays out. It's like when I was offered a commission, I was offered to do a commission poem foray was a national advertising campaign for Schweppes, the drinking company, the soft drink company. And they wanted me to write poetry and then do the voice-over to go on a nationally televised ad campaigns. So it's quite a big kind of business deal is really good, like really, really good money. One of the highest paying money jobs that I would've ever had. And then they sent me the brief. And it was five it was five poems. And all of them were based around Schweppes cases. They were the main Partnership for the major horse racing company in Australia for the, whatever it's called, the guys that run the Melbourne Cup major horse trading company. And I against the horse racing, to be honest, I don't think it's very good at as a thing as a whole. I just can't support it. I can't do it. The gambling industry that it supports the cruelty, the horses, the all that kind of stuff. If it's against my values and my ethics. So when I'm offered this huge this huge job because of my values, I said no to it. I said no to it. And I lost that job and I didn't get it because it didn't match my values and my convictions. When something doesn't feel right to you. Don't be afraid to say no. Don't be afraid to say no. There has to be that line between what you are willing to do and what you're not going to do. It's crucial that line which McLeod said demarcates your creative sovereignty between your inner values and your entrepreneurial drive between what you're willing to give up control of, what you aren't, between what you will do for exposure and what you will not the creative domain you now hold. And everybody is different with this of where this line is for them of how to match up the inner values with their outer creative business. And it's important for you to know how you're going to. It's a really important so that when you were offered the things, you can say Actually no, that's against like for me, one of the things that I just mentioned that he's exposure for some artists, they will say no to anyone who won't pay them. If someone says, or you can have exposure because of this. And that's, that's great. And I actually approve of that and say yes enough of artists doing things for exposure. Yet, there are some organizations and things that I want to support, either because I want to support them or I know that it actually will bring good exposure, then it actually will, that it will put me in front of a new audience. And I know that I can, if I can connect with those audience, that's going to bring money in the long run, like it's going to bring people along who might do my courses, who might, who might buy my books and projects, who might get me along to speak at one of their conferences and paying whatever it might be. I work out the line for that, but I need to know what my line is and you need to know what your line is around that. For some people you might say, I know for some people they would say just wouldn't speak at the conference as you speak at Joel. Because I feel like if I spoke at a conference of a conservative right-wing, something I feel like that would be against my own values. And some of the things that a group might be on about might be against my own values. But I know that my calling is to go in there and to challenge that group in the same way as I know my calling is to go into a bunch of progressive, leftist, whatever is, and to challenge them, to move them forward. And so for me, that line, for me of creative autonomy, that line for me of owning my own sovereignty, a line for me of owning my own creative vocation. It's gonna be different to your line. The integrated creative life. Making, what we make as authentic to ourselves as we can, not defined by markets, by ups and downs, but rather fed from the roots of the tree. How do we do this? How do we do this? Here's how I've done it. 13. The Integrated Creative: Id and how, what I've come to that's helped me a lot is the idea of convictions and values playing out into the choices and the practices we have. Let me just grab it like these beneath the surface, beneath the surface of the decisions we make in the practices we have. Where the roots of our tree go down into, I would say is our convictions. Convictions of the core things were on about. There are cold beliefs. And these core beliefs, these core convictions, they then play out into our values, the values by which we live our lives. These values then above the line, what it looks like in our creative business and practice affects the choices we make and the practices that we engage with. So one of my convictions might be the equality of all people, that every single person is equal, is equal. Every single person should be treated equally. This means that the value that I carry into my creativity, my credit vocation, my creative business, my creative practice is one of inclusivity and being supportive. Inclusivity and being supportive. And so one of the choices then I will reject offers from businesses with exclusion policies. That's the choice that I have made. If they have policies that exclude certain people that I'm going to reject, that. I might still choose to speak into that community if I have an ability to, but I'm not going to I'm not going to take them on I'm not going to be their advocate. I'm not going to I'm not going to support them publicly out there if they're inviting me along. Like I said, if there are invited for black and white, very conservative query that there's a few things about what they believe that I disagree with, and they invited me along to a conference to speak out and I'm still gonna go and speak as part of who I am, you might not do. So there's part of who I am a fall a lot intentionally about this. But I'll reject offers, money-making offers from businesses with exclusion policies. And in terms of practices. For me, out of my conviction that equality of all people and the value of being inclusive and supportive that comes out of that. One of the practices that I've said is that whenever I released suddenly new releases and marginalized voices, whenever I release something out into this world, I will publish something out into this world. I make sure I personally ring someone who is of a voice that doesn't have the platform that I might have and say, I wanna do whatever I can when, if you're creating something that you want to bring out into this world, I want to stand aside you and help your voice to get out into this world and platform you will voice and do whatever I can to uphold you and build up what you're releasing into this. Well, if I released the book, I go to someone and say when you bring that book out there for you, I'm going to do whatever I can to stand alongside to get you out as much into the world as I can. That's one of the practices that I've bought into my my thing, my stuff. For you. This is the question of what is your brand stand for? What does your brand stand for? Two things to finish up with. We've gone through all of those five things. The sixth thing about creative sovereignty, holding all this together, all business vocation should strive for greatness. That's excellence and quality, and also goodness. That's hard, says Hugh MacLeod. All businesses vocations, strive for greatness. Strive for greatness. Make the best **** thing you can make, like excellence and quality be the best artists that you can be. Don't back away from that. At the same time. Engage with as much goodness as you can and hot that you can bring your heart into this. We have all of those credit with the assumption you won't get anything for it, both paid and personal work contextualized but don't dilute. Good ideas should have lonely childhoods, the integrated creative life and greatness and goodness. 14. Conclusion: Friends, I really hope that this course has, has given you some creative sovereignty, some autonomy, some ownership of your creative practice that you may have. Starting with that cathedral grabbed hold of that vision, worked out in your convictions and values and the practices and choices that you make to come out of that. And then through that worked out how you can, what are the rhythms and practices to put into place that regardless of whatever seasoned creative season you might find yourself in, you will be able to whether those storms and continue to develop and continue to flourish in the creative practice that you have. By choosing, owning, who you are, what you want your creative practice to become, and then beginning to live that out. This is the second part of the creative vocation Skillshare series. And the next one is inviting us now that we have this sustainable creative practice, now that you're developing that, what would it look like to take this a step further and begin to make it your Korea. How could you begin to take this credit practice and develop it into a creative career, whatever that might look like for you. Not necessarily that myth of the full-time creative, but still being able to take this and to make money from it and to develop how can you, how can you take what you've just learned about what you were just kinda gone at about the creative life you want to be. And how can you bring that into work and career in a way that will help you sustain that. That's what the next one is going to look at. If this is your thing, if you're interested in and love this kind of stuff. I am the Director of the School for creative development, where we go through creative practice and creative business and the creative process and the art of crafting story is one of our modules and the creative journey is one of our modules, all these different things. The beginning in, in 2023 is the first time that it's starting. But it's a community of people journeying through how to take these different creative ideas. Some that I've shared here in this course and make it a practical reality in your life. So you can check that out at school for creative development.com or just go on and have a look at my things at Joe McCarthy.com. It's been so good to get to hangout, to talk about cathedrals and debunk some of those creative mentalities that we have. And to talk about taking the whole number, a creative sovereignty. I hope it's been a beautiful experience for you. Thanks so much for joining me and hopefully I'll see you in creative vocation. The creative career.