Show Notes
Before you set a bunch of AMAZING creative resolutions and goals this year, STOP!! Think about them and how to ground them into your already busy life. This is how you’ll set yourself up for success and avoid the sneaky shame spiral of feeling like you failed. Creative intentions are 100% recommended – after you listen to this episode to make sure they’re aligned and balanced.
Don’t miss out on the workbook! bit.ly/fnyr
Episode Transcript
Caitlin 0:00
In part five, fuck creative resolutions. gasp creative resolutions. But Caitlin, you’re a creativity coach! Yes, I know. And it’s a trick, because I actually love creativity goals and resolutions and intentions. But I do want to talk about some aspects of them that can be hard to anticipate, if you are just sort of like coasting in on this New Year energy, okay? Because it’s so easy to be like, I’m gonna write a book this year. But without a plan and a framework and like scaffolding to make that happen. Because a lot of creative goals like writing a book or getting published or something like that, you know, having your art in a gallery, doing a public mural, like there’s so many, like creative goals that are gorgeous and wonderful. But that take multiple steps. And so it’s kind of hard to just be like, well, I’m going to do this this year, without knowing where-, like, the steps that you actually need to take to get there.
So yeah, let’s talk about that. Let’s, I love these goals, right, like, let’s write a book, let’s get published, let’s start a creative business, let’s sell my art, let’s do more art in general, these are great goals, I love them. But there’s a lot that goes into them. So let’s be intentional about the time and energy to devote to these goals. So like I said, I think probably like the intro episode to this mini series, like if your goal or resolution is to run a marathon but like, you only have one hour a week of your time, that’s not really realistic, because you need a lot more time than that. So the same can be true of these creative goals.
So you can either solve for the result that you want, or solve for the action that you can take. So if for instance, you want to write a book, realistically, I would say that you can write a book in the span of a year, with like three or four hours a week of writing. I say that this is possible because I have done it. I wrote 104,000 words in 2022. And I wrote one day a week, one morning a week, I call it novel day, it’s incredible. Definitely dm me to talk about that one, because I will talk your whole face off, okay. But if I didn’t have that amount of time, if I was like, Okay, I have two hours a week. And I want to write in those two hours. In this case, you’re solving for the action available. You’re solving for I write two hours a week. So what’s the result I can get from that. And you might not actually write a whole book with just two hours in a week, you might establish a really consistent writing routine, which is a great goal, great intention.
But I want you to go into this very eyes open about the amount of time and energy that you have available for your creative goals. So that you’re setting yourself up for a win. And again, remember, your goal should be adjustable. So if halfway through the year, you’re like, I’m not actually going to finish this book, writing two hours a week, then you adjust and you’re like, let’s just see what happens. That’s a great approach. We love it. We are here for adjusting. And also your goal should be learning focus. So you’re like, even if I don’t write an entire book this year, I’m going to learn so much about how to outline a book and plot development, and how to write character dialogue, and et cetera, et cetera. Now, a lot of my examples here about writing a book because I actually have a 12 month program designed to help you write a book in a year. So that is why I have all of those examples top of mind.
Regardless of your creative goal, It could be very specific, like I want to write a book and get published this year, which there’s a lot of moving parts there. And not all of them you can control because the publishing industry is its own thing, but you can have something like an intention where you’re just like, I want to be more creative. I want to make something creative once a month, you know, and that could be a song or a poem, or it could be a painting or it could be a collage, or it could be like, I don’t know, you do resin art. You could try a new sort of craft every month. And see if there’s one that you really like, for instance, I tried to learn crochet, it didn’t really stick but maybe it’ll stick this year if I try it again. Also, a friend sent me a ukulele and another friend is going to give me lessons on that ukulele. So maybe I love the ukulele. But I’m not going to know until I try. So from that perspective, that’s really more of like a here’s my action available. Let’s see what happens result versus I have this intended result in mind. I will do what it takes to get there approach. So either approach is beautiful and gorgeous, as long as it works for you and is supportive of your creative needs.
So let’s go back, remember those four tips on setting goals. So one is getting to the why or the purpose of the goal, so that you have a connection to it to is doing baby steps 90 days at a time. So for instance, maybe I’m going to spend 90 days learning about ukulele just like a little bit every week, I’m just going to learn some ukulele stuff. At the end of 90 days, if I’m like, I fucking love this, I’m gonna keep doing it a lot more seriously, then great. Now I have a new hobby. Now I play the ukulele. But if after 90 days, I’m like, You know what, I still can’t get my hands to do two different things, a belief that I carry with myself, because I’m still upset that I didn’t get to play the flute in fourth grade, then maybe I’ll move on to a different creative goal. Step three, accountability, staying on task with a new creative goal.
Now I like to think that creative goals are just like really fun and so you’ll do them because you enjoy them. But that’s not always the case, especially with ADHD, and especially with building brand new habits. So for instance, my ukulele lessons, I’m going to stay accountable to those because my friend is giving me lessons. So I’m going to have to show up and pay attention. If it’s not something like that, that involves somebody else that again, think maybe like a buddy system, maybe you and a friend are both going to do like some drawings, and you share YouTube tutorials back and forth. And you’re like, I’m going to try and draw in this style. And they’re like, that’s awesome. I just saw this watercolor technique, I’m going to try that. And then you share the results with each other. That’s dope. I love that. I did this thing in November, where I was trying to do a painting every day, and I posted it on Tik Tok, but then it was too much pressure. So I stopped. And also, I decided that I wanted to make a really big painting instead of like 30 small paintings. So that’s fine. We’re not here to talk about me. We’re here to talk about you and your goals.
And tip number four is evaluation. So like I said, like, while I’m doing this ukulele stuff, if I’m like, Man, ukulele really sucks. I don’t have to keep going. Or maybe I could try a different approach. So evaluating 30 days in 60 days, in 90 days, be like, cool, that was awesome. Or maybe that was not so awesome. Here’s how I’m gonna do it differently next time. So creative goals, obviously, I support them. I am a creativity coach, I’m a writing coach.
But what I want you to consider is the context of your creative goal with everything else in your life. Is your creativity, part of your play? Is it fun? Or is it part of your work, which is going to impact like that balance between work life play rest. So I personally find painting like more sort of enjoyable and fun, because it’s kind of playful. For me, I like I like moving the paint around. Poetry is fun. For me, writing is more work for me, because I really have to put a lot of like thought into it. And similarly, like, I think that the ukulele is going to feel like work because it’s something totally new to me. And it’s just going to require being in more of like student mode, than like just kind of playing around having fun doing whatever mode. So think about that.
When it comes to your work life, play rest balance with a creative goal. Because if it’s work, you’ll want to try and cut back on work somewhere else in your life. And if it’s play, that’s great, you probably don’t have enough play. So just, just keep playing, it’s gonna be great. So this kind of thing is exactly what I help you achieve when we work together. So no matter what aspect of my coaching practice, the touch point is here, it always comes back to Creative goals and creating sustainable creative practice meeting your creative needs in a way that is compassionate and balanced. So I have a few ways that I work with people. And I’m just going to give you like an intro to them.
Because, hey, if you’re new to The Neurodivergent Creative Podcast Hi, I’m Caitlin, it’s nice to meet you. And you should know some shit about me. And if you’ve been here for a long time, maybe you need a refresher on what I offer and how exactly I can help you. First way to work with me is The Creatives’ Rebellion membership. This is a monthly membership, all about treating art and creativity as a revolutionary act of human expression. So this is in direct opposition of productivity culture, hustle culture, capitalist status quo, where everything should be monetized and everything should be picture perfect. No, we’re just doing fun shit.
We are doing fun, creative stuff that feels good. And we’re not trying to make everything into a side hustle. So if that sounds like you, you should check out The Creatives’ Rebellion, because it’s dope. Another way to work with me in a more membership setting is the Working Title writing incubator. So this is a 12 month book incubator. And it’s 12 months on purpose, because like we talked about, at the top of this episode, like writing a book takes some time, take some structure, you can do it faster, you can write a book in six months, you can write a book in 90 days, you could write a book in one month, if like you’re just eating and sleeping and writing a book, but it’s 12 months on purpose, because I have ADHD, my clients have ADHD. And it does take longer to fully integrate these new writing habits, especially if you’re a first time author. So that is what working title is about. And it is a 12 month program.
So that’s like Creatives Rebellion is month to month, you can just sort of come in and hang out. And if it’s not your vibe, you can leave working title is a 12 month commitment. So that’s like the difference there. Also, like the price point. So Creatives’ Rebellion is $47 a month currently, Working Title is a $3,000 program. And the final way to work with me is one-on-one coaching, which is where we will meet weekly for six months to work on any creative goal you have really. So that could be like balancing your writing with your day job or XYZ thing. I can’t think of any examples right now I’m, I have one client that I’m working with and she is balancing writing with her day job. So that’s the that’s the example that you get.
But I’ve also worked with people on business development, social media, marketing strategies, stuff like that, I have a 10 plus year background in content marketing. I can do like sort of the business side of things as well as writing and overall creative goals. So if that sounds rad, reach out to me and we can do a discovery call. I don’t have any openings right now for one on one clients, but I can put you on the waitlist and there’s also a waitlist for Working Title. So if you are interested in either one on one coaching or working title, please reach out to me.
And if you think that The Creatives’ Rebellion sounds awesome, which it is, it’s pretty rad in there. We have a great time. You can join that at I don’t have a fun link for it yet. I’ll put the link in the show notes. But it’s it’s a rad time. And it fucks with capitalism, which we love. Okay, I now am going to set you free. Thank you for listening to fucking New Year’s resolutions. And don’t forget that there’s a workbook to work through all the stuff that we have talked about within this little mini series. And that can be found at Bitly/fnyrOn the flip side, y’all
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Caitlin Liz Fisher 