Be Your Own Damn Muse

I've created lots of rules for adventuring for myself over the years.  Try a new coffee shop a day.  Taste test all the burger joints in a new town.  Ways to turn the overwhelm of being in a whole new place with no anchors into a million little games.

The beauty of gamification is it takes all the pressure off. There is no need to have "the most amazing experience."

I'm trying to figure out how to bring the same sense of adventure, where getting lost always leads to the most unexpected discoveries - to my creative projects, where I still put so much pressure on myself to know into the future how everything will turn out. Where I'm fighting the engrained desire to be perfect, to deliver what I think others want, to know what it will all mean in the end.

Which, ironically, is the opposite of creativity. Those pressures are one way we stifle our own creative impulses, because they are always a launch into the unknown. A surrender to the unseen. An act of faith. 


Pssst.... now you can also watch the episode on YouTube !

Come check out the Hot Mess series on TikTok, and watch as I lose my mind - and find it again - writing, producing, and acting in a show!

#CreatingIsHealing🦋

I've launched on an adventure that is equal parts terrifying and exciting, so my brother and I came up with a new word for it: terrixcited.

We wanted to capture how doing the absolute right next thing sometimes also leaves you shaking.

I also talk about what I learned from Cheryl Strayed's advice "not to let your dreams ruin your life."

And what it is to break out of the binary of artist/ non artist, and decide your entire life is an artistic creation.



Pssst.... now you can also watch the episode on YouTube !

Come check out the Hot Mess series on TikTok, and watch as I lose my mind - and find it again - writing, producing, and acting in a show!

#CreatingIsHealing🦋

Been thinking a lot about what made it so hard to come back from the pause I took on this podcast... amidst many physical & mental health reasons, I also battled my perfectionism.

This deep fear that nothing that wasn't perfect, scrubbed clean of all my flaws, could ever be presented to the world.

In an age where everything is monetized - even, maybe especially, our communities and our connections - it feels increasingly difficult to do something messily. To do something before I'm good at it - in order to get better at it.

To be public with my imperfections.
To create something not to be sold, not to cultivate an impressive following.
To follow the desire to express myself without knowing where it will lead me.

This feels like the opposite of capitalism, which in our American culture has turned every instinct, every hobby, every human need - even creativity and connection - into something whose sole purpose is to make money.

And I end up grappling with the "purpose" of creating if I can't show on a Profit & Loss statement its value. 

Worth has become defined by productivity, and by monetary compensation.

How do we reclaim the human imperative to tell our stories? To dance, to sing, to write and perform, to paint and cross-stitch, to build and to garden?


Now you can also watch the episode on YouTube !

Come check out the Hot Mess series on TikTok, and watch as I lose my mind - and find it again - writing, producing, and acting in a show!

#CreatingIsHealing🦋

Sharing where I've been, and what it took to come back to the pod.

How I've been struggling with my physical health ~ and my mental health ~ and how it took turning to a psychiatrist and asking for medication to get me back to myself.

And how finally being well-medicated has breathed new hope into my life.

If you've been struggling, or know someone who has... I want you to know that you are not alone. And that there are lots of ways to ask for help.


Also now on YouTube !

Come check out the Hot Mess series on TikTok, and watch as I lose my mind - and find it again - writing, producing, and acting in a show!

#CreatingIsHealing🦋

Being extra brave today and pulling back the curtain to share how I've dipped into a depression lately.

Depression is something I've struggled with since college, but weirdly, I've never identified as depressed. I've always thought of it more as an anomaly, a aberrant condition I needed to fix.

And I have devoted A LOT of time to "fixing" it.

This week, I've been trying something new.
I've been trying to allow for the depression. To hear it, without necessarily believing all it has to say.

To make space for it, without needing to scrub it clean from my system.

To not have to wait until the depression is "fixed" until I can be a creative - until I can record my podcast, or work on my TV pilot, or do some actor marketing.

What is it to invite this indigo blue of my depression into my work, rather than desperately trying to escape it?

What would it look like to ... dare I say ... befriend it? 



******

If you're struggling with making time or space for your creative practice, I hear you. I'd love to connect. Come find me on Instagram @SamGarlandNYC.


(photo credit: Janae Jones Photography)  

Come check out the Hot Mess series on TikTok, and watch as I lose my mind - and find it again - writing, producing, and acting in a show!

#CreatingIsHealing🦋

My final rant on the absurdity of "New Year, New You," comes from the discovery that as I get older, the goal becomes less and less to become some other, "better" version of me. Instead, I'm constantly trying to remember and return to my forgotten 10-year old self,  who was bullied for being weird.

And I was. Totally weird.
(Still am!)

But that same weirdness is the thing that feeds my creativity, and all my best sparks are in that weirdness.

What I want most for all of us is a chance to return to our original selves.
To tap into that heart and naiveté and oddball of our pre-adolescent selves.

And find our tribe - there. 
The people who cackle with us, whose eyes twinkle at our devious plans, who want to join the roller coaster of our wild imaginings.



******

If you're struggling with making time or space for your creative practice, I hear you. I'd love to connect. Come find me on Instagram @SamGarlandNYC.


(photo credit: Janae Jones Photography)  

Come check out the Hot Mess series on TikTok, and watch as I lose my mind - and find it again - writing, producing, and acting in a show!

#CreatingIsHealing🦋

Returning to the podcast in 2022, with my own outsized expectations - that got neatly destroyed by a Covid infection and weeks of recovery - has me thinking deeply about who do we actually want to be this year?

New Year, New You is brilliant marketing that shames us into thinking we need to be wholly different versions of ourselves on January 1st, in order to be worthy.

I say f*ck you to January expectations.

I say, if you're still standing, after two years of this pandemic, after the chronic anxiety, the isolation, the exhaustion, all the cancelled plans, abandoned travels, lost jobs, lost opportunities, lost friends and loved ones -- if you are still standing (or hell, sitting) in 2022 -- then Huzzah. You win.

No apologies for what it took to make it through 2021. 

Let's instead look at how waiting for version 2.0 of you is keeping you from showing up in your life -- and in your creative practices - right now.
 
Let's figure out how to human in this world, in this moment in time.
Rather than waiting for everything to be better -- for us to be better -- so that we can find joy and connection and make art. 

******

If you're struggling with making time or space for your creative practice, I hear you. I'd love to connect. Come find me on Instagram @SamGarlandNYC.


(photo credit: Janae Jones Photography)  

Come check out the Hot Mess series on TikTok, and watch as I lose my mind - and find it again - writing, producing, and acting in a show!

#CreatingIsHealing🦋

There's new research that shows the pain centers of the brain light up from humiliation in the same way they would from a physical injury. So much so, that a dose of Advil or Tylenol has been proven to reduce the pain of the emotional injury.

Mind. Blown.

As I'm teaching myself to play the guitar, I'm getting a front row seat to the experience of being bad at something. And though I know -- I know! -- that we can only get good at things by first being bad at them, I think we skip over the fact that the felt experience of sucking at something feels physically painful.

So if sitting down to write your novel, or start a new painting, or picking up a guitar, feels like sticking your hand in fire -- it's no wonder we're not all rushing to do it.



If you're struggling with making time or space for your creative practice, I hear you. I'd love to connect. Come find me on Instagram @SamGarlandNYC.



(photo credit: Janae Jones Photography)  

Come check out the Hot Mess series on TikTok, and watch as I lose my mind - and find it again - writing, producing, and acting in a show!

#CreatingIsHealing🦋

I was obsessed with fairness when I was a kid. I hated the idea that some people had more than others. I thought certainly there must be some way to balance the scales, and make things good for everyone.

While I still believe we must work toward a more equitable world, I am coming to learn that life is random and cruel, as much as it is beautiful and breathtaking.

And we all have things to grieve. Losses, disappointments, heart breaks.
 
Our desire to believe that things can be better -- will be better - can be used as an escape from feeling the truth of what has been lost.

And holding to that fantasy of a guaranteed, better future, makes it impossible to be present to what is true now.
 
And nothing can be created if we are not here, in our present moment.

So, let us begin with grief.

If you're suffering, or having a hard time right now, I see you.
That sucks. It's not fair. I'm sorry.

And if you're feeling like the struggles you're going through are pulling you away from the opportunity to create, I see that too.
That sucks. It's not fair. I'm sorry.
 


If you're struggling with making time or space for your creative practice, I hear you. I'd love to connect. Come find me on Instagram @SamGarlandNYC.



(photo credit: Janae Jones Photography) 

Come check out the Hot Mess series on TikTok, and watch as I lose my mind - and find it again - writing, producing, and acting in a show!

#CreatingIsHealing🦋

Remembering one of my early acting teachers, who thought anything that wasn't performance was just doing laundry and buying groceries, and in essence a waste of life.

I always wondered whether that was part of made him such a charming curmudgeon. Which worked for him, but was not a fate I wanted for myself.

Stealing from Jack Kornfield's book, After the Ecstasy, the Laundry, I talk this week about what it is to not disdain all the mundanity of life's activities, but rather to see the magic of creation in them.



If you're struggling with making time or space for your creative practice, I hear you. I'd love to connect. Come find me on Instagram @SamGarlandNYC.

(photo credit: Janae Jones Photography) 

Come check out the Hot Mess series on TikTok, and watch as I lose my mind - and find it again - writing, producing, and acting in a show!

#CreatingIsHealing🦋