Be Your Own Damn Muse

I picked up a novel on a recent trip (love me a good airport bookstore!!), and as I was digging into the story I found myself intimated by the very idea of ever writing one of my one (a definite creative goal of mine.)

And that had me comparing the lessons of screenwriting - something I've done, and can wrap my head around - with novel writing - something that terrifies me and seems completely foreign to me.

As I've just started a writing course to develop a new TV series, I could compare the ways in which the two are actually quite similar. 

A project never begins with a blank page. It always starts in conversations with your characters: writing about their most embarrassing Middle School memory, their most brutal college heartbreak, the last fight they had with their mom.

The blank page only feels blank when there's been no fleshing out of the world that will never even exist on that page.

Scaffolding is everything.

You have to invest in a ton of prep work - and know some good tools - before you get to the first line of the first page, the first stroke of paint across canvas, the opening chords of your next song.
 

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've missed you!

I've been deep in the weeds, trying to get a proper diagnosis for my chronic stomach pain, and then testing new medicines (that frustratingly, made me feel even worse:/)

I talk this week about needing bandwith to be creative, and how illness -- or anxiety and depression -- can take up so much residence in our minds that it's hard to do anything else.

And I also talk about how the very thing that sustains us -- being creative -- is the first to go, when we have to fight to pay for medical bills, have a roof over our heads, or groceries to feed us.

And how, paradoxically, creativity needs a healthy body to sustain it. As much as I looooove living in my head, the ideas and dreams and stories I want to share can only be felt if I live wholly in my body -- feeling the good, the bad, and the ugly.


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've always had a hard time taking vacations. I always worry I haven't done enough. That I'm losing time on completing the Great Work, on making my mark on the world.

This week, I'm sharing advice from the NY Times column Cultural Therapist, where the writer answered a reader's question about whether it's too late in life to begin a creative endeavor. And the columnist's advice was that the source of creativity is worrying less about time, and wasting it as though you were young and did not know it would ever run out.

Such a neat trick, for making art, and for living.

And I realized in recording this episode that I cherish weekends and their unstructured time, because that's often when I'm most restless to create. To write a script or work on a song or dig into acting prep. There's something about the boredom of having space and time that brings forth that deep need to create.

So now I'm trying to figure out how to apply that same freedom to the larger question of my life, of the span of my career. How do I remove the pressure to be known, to be seen, to be important? 

If you have answers, please do come share them. I'm on Instagram @SamGarlandNYC.



Can I Hold Out Hope That My Best Creative Years Are Still to Come?
~ Ligaya Mishan writing for The New York Times on August 9, 2021



(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 *hate* talking about my battle with my mysterious, chronic illness  because I end up feeling so helpless and frustrated. But I'm sharing about it today because I'm seeing trends in how I think about the endless doctor visits and how I think about auditions and the creative journey. 

It is my sincere hope that none of you deal with chronic illness. But even if you don't, life is often a series of long slogs and little wins, so this episode applies. 

Taking a page from writer & activist Glennon Doyle, who calls quitting "her favorite thing," I discuss Glennon's idea that the only way to keep showing up every day for the work that matters is to care the most in the morning, and not at all by the end of the day. Then sleep and begin again. 

I'd love to hear from you on whether quitting is a source of rest and resourcing, or a place of defeat and despair. And where you get the strength to get up and do the good hard work.

Come chat me up on Instagram @SamGarlandNYC.



Amid Rising Violence in Afghanistan, Women are Exceedingly Vulnerable — Here's How to Help
~ Chanel Vargas writing for PopSugar on August 16, 2021


QUITTING: When is it time to let something or someone go?
~ We Can Do Hard Things podcast with Glennon Doyle



(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've been getting updates from my podcast publisher Buzzsprout that people are listening and holy hell -- that means I'm panicking (of course!). So interesting to watch my brain think I better step up and make this thing good, rather than thinking I must be doing something right.

I talk about my deep fear of offending people, and how I want to control at all times how I'm perceived. Which, of course, is anathema to being an artist.

If the goal is to be engaging, to generate strong reactions in others, to spark conversation and connection, then how do I get out of my own way?

If you have answers, I'm all ears.
Come chat me up on Instagram @SamGarlandNYC.



Jason Bateman Helped Justin Theroux "Keep Sane" While Becoming Super Famous When Dating Jennifer Aniston
~ Emily Kirkpatrick for Vanity Fair on April 23, 2021


(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🦋

Kicking off this week's episode talking about a subject I usually avoid - my chronic battle with GI issues. It's not something I like to dwell on, but often lately, as I try to heal, I've been feeling worse more days than not. So I'm working on showing up when I'd rather curl up in bed, and pushing through some of the bad days.

(I say this in full consideration of Simone Biles' bravery in NOT pushing through at the Tokyo Olympics recently. I believe we all have to be experts in when to stop and rest and guard our health, both physical and mental.)

Today's topic then turns to discovering where you do your best work. Is it a noisy coffee shop? A quiet library? A dance studio dedicated to your choreography? A light filled room that holds your paint supplies and canvases? Is it a local park, or your rooftop?

I'd love to hear your tried and true creative spaces -- and what new ones you're experimenting with. Come chat me up on Instagram @SamGarlandNYC. 


Also consider:

Cave Day
A place to gather with other creatives for deep focus work sessions facilitated daily on Zoom

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
~ Steven Pressfield

What if Remote Work Didn't Mean Working From Home
~ Cal Newport for The New Yorker on May 21, 2021




(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🦋

This week, I came back from time off visiting family to a backlog of things I haven't done slamming me in the face (the bathroom needs cleaning! the day job has deadlines! two auditions need taping!!!!).

So I drew inspiration from Anne Lamott's  classic book on writing, Bird by Bird, in which she ruminates on  the constant struggle to stay present in our work, and to not let fear and anxiety keep us from putting pen to paper.

Pulling from Anne's recent podcast interview with Tim Ferris,  where she talks about her sobriety, had me thinking about the lessons of staying present that we can learn from the 12 steps that apply to the great uncertainties of being an artist. 


I'd love to hear from you over on Instagram at SamGarlandNYC.


Anne Lamott on Taming Your Inner Critic, Finding Grace, and Prayer
~ as interviewed by Tim Ferriss


Sandra Bullock goes to rehab in 28 Days, one of my favorite films.



(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 perfectionism has roared back to life this week, leading me to pause and ask why. I realized that feeling unstable in some personal aspects of my life has me trying to clamp down and control my creative projects -- in an attempt to recover a sense of safety. 

So I talk this week about how catching our patterns can be an invitation to do the work: teaching our lizard brain that we're safe, that we've got this, that we can take risks and survive.

I've also started dipping my toes back into a writing project, developing an idea for a short form TV project. Working off a compelling visual -- but not much else -- I created a way to sit down and face the blank page. By making a list of all the things I do not know.  

I'm also talking in this episode about Quality Questions. How our brains are built to find answers to whatever we ask them. And how we can use that to our advantage. 

Would love to hear how you're tackling (or avoiding!) your latest creative projects.
Come chat me up on Instagram at @SamGarlandNYC.

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Sharing here this powerful resource exploring the abolition movement, which has greatly informed my own antiracism education & activism:

The Emerging Movement for Police and  Prison Abolition
Mariame Kaba, a New York City-based activist and organizer, is at the center of an effort to “build up another world.”
~  Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor The New Yorker on May 7, 2021




(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🦋

Back from vacation and confronting what makes it hard to jump back into our creative practices after a break.

And then I dive into hacking your brain with stickers. Yes, stickers. Those beautiful little suckers can light up your brain with dopamine, and so gifting yourself with them when you've completed a creative task helps your brain associate pleasure with work.

Do that enough times, and your brain starts to crave the work.

And if you're not gaga for stickers... tell me, what does excite you?

Seriously, I want to know. Come find me on Instagram at @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'm sharing my slightly embarrassing, yet totally unapologetic, crush on Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex. Her dedication to women's rights, her lifelong commitment to philanthropy, to uplifting the voices of the underrepresented, her style and poise and grace under incredible circumstances... I could go on.

Crushes - whether on celebrities or slightly cooler friends - can be wonderful fonts of inspiration.

They become problematic when we see in them some better version of ourselves, and by comparison, make ourselves feel less than.

A Golden Shadow is someone we look up to and then use against ourselves. When we feel not capable or ready to share our work, our vision, our voice - because we believe someone else is already doing it, and doing it better.


(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🦋