Create-Today with Beth Buffington

I dare you to go offline: 7 Analog Hobbies Your Brain Craves

Your phone is not the bad guy, my friend.

But if your days have quietly gone all screen and with very little offline time, this one is for you. 🎃

In Episode 149 of Create Today, Beth Buffington talks analog creativity: the paper, yarn, glue stick, flour-on-the-counter kind.

If you have been feeling the pull toward some crafty hobbies, an knitting, puzzles, painting, baking bread, or anything that gets you off your phone and out of the doomscroll, pull up a chair.

In this episode:

• How a chili cook-off and a glow-in-the-dark pumpkin, are good for your brain
• What an analog clock can teach you about balancing screen time and hands-on time
• A no-guilt check-in: what does your digital vs. analog pie chart look like this week?
• Why so many people are calling 2026 the year of analog, and what the craft store data says
• The science of hands-on hobbies: effort-driven rewards
• What handwriting does in your brain Crafting and the relaxation response
• A study linking arts and crafts to feeling life is worthwhile 7 screen-free hobby ideas (some free, some small spend):
      - Visible mending with sashiko (plus the quilt a puppy named Raspberry thought was a snack)
      - Become a backyard botanist with pressed flowers and leaves
      - Make a birthday zine starring your friend
      - Give your purse a mascot with an air dry clay bag charm
      - Shoot a roll on a disposable film camera
      - Make a fall simmer pot (kitchen witch vibes, pointy hat optional)
      - Start a handwritten recipe box
• Why conversation gets easier when your hands are busy
• How analog time fits the Revive stage of the Going FourWords™ framework

Your one small thing: make a date with one analog activity this week, written on paper Links

Try the Going FourWords™ Clubhouse for $1 your first month (pen pals, Recipe Exchange, Beth's Best Books Club, quarterly creative challenges, monthly meetups): 

www.bdi-create.today/going-fourwords-membership

Grab the free Going FourWords™ Guide:

www.bdi-create.today

Missed last week? Catch Episode 148 with poetry therapist Bree McLaughlin:

www.bdi-create.today/podcasts/create-today-with-beth-buffington/episodes/2149267564

Connect with Beth

Instagram:
@b.b.buffington_celebratetoday

Facebook:
BDIcreatetoday

LinkedIn:
bbbuffington Pinterest: bdiboss

Because in Beth's world, everyone is creative.

Chapters
0:00 Welcome to analog creativity

0:30 Chili cook-off and a many-eyed pumpkin

2:45 What an analog clock teaches us

5:20 Your digital vs. analog pie chart

10:15 Why 2026 is the year of analog

13:10 Inside the Going FourWords™ Clubhouse

16:45 The science of hands-on creativity

19:50 7 analog hobbies to try

20:55 Mend something with sashiko

23:25 Become a backyard botanist

24:25 Make a birthday zine

25:40 Clay bag charms

26:55 Shoot a roll of film

27:55 Fall simmer pot

29:10 Handwritten recipe box

30:40 Better together

31:40 Analog and the Revive stage

33:15 Your one small thing

#AnalogHobbies #CreativeWellness #GoingFourWords #GrandmaHobbies #AnalogBag #Doomscrolling #ScreenFree #CozyHobbies #Sashiko #SelfCare

Poetry is having a moment. And your busy brain needs it! ✍️

This week on Create Today, Beth sits down with Bri McLaughlin, LCSW, a bilingual therapist, and poetry therapist in training at Connections Health in Evanston, Illinois.

Together Beth and Bri explore how a poem and a few minutes minutes with a journal can calm anxious thoughts, quiet your inner critic, and finally give words to feelings you couldn't name.

In this episode, you'll discover:

• What poetry therapy actually is (bibliotherapy, ritual, metaphor, and group sharing)

• Why you need zero writing experience to benefit

• Why reading a poem out loud, helps you feel and find hidden understanding

• How a five-minute free write, with no spelling, grammar, or punctuation rules, pushes back on perfectionism

• The unsent letter: says the important things you need to say to someone

• The bonfire "burn boxes" from one of Beth's creative retreats

• What psychologist James Pennebaker's research found when people spent a few short sessions writing about hard experiences: fewer doctor visits and measurable changes in immune markers

• How a journaling exercise turns a poem into a mirror for your busy brain’s worries and anxiety

• Easy ways to fit a poem a day into your morning coffee or evening wind-down

• Why reading slowly matters

• Why memorizing one favorite poem provides a comfort blanket you can carry anywhere

• A sneak peek at Poems While You Wait, Chicago's typewriter poets who write you an original poem in about 15 minutes

Going FourWords™ reflection: this episode is a perfect example Release, the stage where you quiet your inner critic and let go of what's weighing you down, so more of your goodness gets out into the world.

Resources mentioned by Bri McLaughlin: 

📚 Bri's poetry book picks: 

For general life issues:

For grief:

For body image and healing from trauma (trigger warning: sexual abuse, intergenerational trauma):

For women's self-esteem and queer poetry:

Resources for Create-Today

🔗 Grab your free Going FourWords™ Guide:
www.bdi-create.today

🔗 Come play inside the Going FourWords Clubhouse ($1 your first month):
www.bdi-create.today/going-fourwords-membership

Remember...Everyone is creative, my friend.
Subscribe for new conversations about... Creative Ideas for Better Living 🎧

#PoetryTherapy #JournalingForAnxiety #CreativeWellness

🎁 Grab your guide for tips on creative investing! The Going FourWords™ Guide, is your plan for a growing your creativity:
https://www.bdi-create.today/fourwords

At 12:01 this morning you got paid. 24 hours, deposited straight into your daily account.
Same as me. Same as everyone. So where did all those hours go? 🤔

Some went to sleep, work, and laundry (the beast that will not be tamed).

But that little pocket of free time?
A lot of it slipps away in five-minute pieces.
A video. A scroll. A recipe you'll never make.

These minutes (lost)... They never felt like spending. (right?) That's the trick.

This week on Create Today, we're treating time like money

We're exploring a better question:
What if you creatively invested your free hours instead of scrolling them away?

In this episode: We look at:

• Why you should consider time as a currency

• How your daily account is a fixed amount...that never gets a top-off

• The surprising research showing our free hours are the ones least likely to refuel us (and that was 1989, before cellphones!)

• The miraculous "Flow" state, explained so you can understand

• How to get into flow with the "10% stretch" recipe (Goldilocks with a paintbrush)

• 3 signs you're in creative flow,

• How to tell a deposit from a withdrawal

• What 45 minutes of making art does to stress hormones, for beginners and pros alike

• Why being creative today makes you feel better tomorrow

• The compound interest of creative self care

• The "creative hangover" professional creatives get

• How to protect yourself from creative burnout

• Why doomscrolling is a vending machine snack, and how it's a long-term investment

• What the research says about creativity, brain health, and a younger-looking brain

• Your Going FourWords™ creative budget: Revive, Realize, Refine, Release

• 7 ways to invest your creative currency (mix and match like a portfolio)

• Your one small thing this week

Time Stamp:
00:00 Your daily deposit of 24 hours
03:00 Time is a currency
05:50 Your first deposit: creative flow
08:00 The recipe for flow
09:00 Why free time drains us
10:30 What flow does in your body
12:30 3 signs you're in flow
14:00 How to set yourself up for flow
16:30 Your Going FourWords™ creative budget
19:00 The compound interest of creativity
22:00 The creative hangover (for creative pros)
24:30 Creativity, stress, and inflammation
26:30 Scrolling vs. creating
28:00 7 ways to invest in creative currency
33:00 How to turn deposits into habits
37:00 The ultimate yield: your brain
39:30 Your one small thing this week

Create-Today Resources:
🎁 Grab your free Going FourWords™ Guide, your plan for a growing creative account: https://www.bdi-create.today/fourwords

Get on the Create-Today email for updates on how you can be more creative:
https://www.bdi-create.today

Remember, everyone is creative, and every creative minute you spend today is a deposit your future self gets to enjoy.

Subscribe for a new conversation on creativity, wellness, and self care every week. 🎧 #CreativeWellness #StopDoomscrolling #CreativeSelfCare

Ever catch yourself thinking, "I wish I were more creative"? You've come to the right place.

 🎨 My guest Vanessa Harnik is an advocate for creatives and she shares her tips and secrets about how you can lead a (more) creative life.

She comes from a long line of artists and makers. She's the granddaughter of abstract painter Paul Feeley and runs a family stationery business.

She happily shares she's not very good at all the crafts she loves. She does them anyway. Her secret to staying creative isn't talent. It's small habits and the right people around her.

Vanessa's advice for anyone who wants to be more creative:

• Start small.

• When "be more creative" feels overwhelming, go bite-sized

• Write down three things you noticed today (a practice her grandfather gave his art students, and it changes how you see everything)

• Try tiny experiments: a small drawing, a little writing, a new recipe

• Surround yourself with creative people, and keep meeting new ones

• Get out of your comfort zone: travel, museums, live music, even a comedy show

• Reach out to someone you haven't talked to in years and tell them what they meant to you

Also in this episode:
• Why you don't have to be good at something for it to count as creative (yes, "Excel craft" counts)

• How to build a creative community: themed dinner parties,

• A 15-year crafternoon, and friends you can text at 5 a.m.

• Making friends in your 50s (hard, and so worth it)

• Why honest friends and advocates make you braver about releasing your work into the world,

• The Release stage of Beth's Going FourWords™ framework and how it fits with Vanessa's message.

• Getting off the couch when binge-watching is calling your name

• How writing a daily Substack helps Vanessa feel less alone, and helps her readers too

• The Note Nest: Vanessa's Little Free Library for handwritten cards, and the stranger in Waco, Texas who wants one for his community

This week's small challenge: tonight, write down three things you noticed today.
That's it. Watch what it does to tomorrow.

How to find Vanessa Harnik:
Read Vanessa's Substack:
https://vanessaharnik.substack.com

✉️ Want a Note Nest in your neighborhood?
https://thenotenest.net

💌 Notes & Queries cards:
https://www.nandq.com

Social Media links:

Resources for Create-Today
🎁 Grab your free Going FourWords™ Guide:
https://www.bdi-create.today

Join the Going FourWords™ Clubhouse!
https://www.bdi-create.today/going-fourwords-membership

Stay in touch with your creativity. Subscribe to the Create-Today podcast!. 🎧

#HowToBeMoreCreative #CreativeCommunity #CreativeWellness

✉️ Think for a moment...it feels sweet to get a handwritten envelope in your mailbox, right? 

This week on Create Today, Beth explains the brain health and happiness boost behind writing to...and receiving letters from a pen pal.

Letter writing is having a real comeback (Pinterest even named pen pals a 2026 trend), and the research on what a handwritten letter does for your heart, your brain, and your stress levels is pretty wonderful.

Grab your favorite pen, my creative friend, because in this episode, you'll discover:

• Why a text takes two seconds to send, two seconds to read, and about two seconds to forget

• What a slow, handwritten letter gives you that a screen can't

• The year-long "Please, Mr. Postman" pen pal study where loneliness scores dropped as people traded one letter a month

• What happened when people wrote just three gratitude letters over three weeks (its some good brain stuff!)

• The brain science of discovering beauty, and why decorating an envelope counts as making art

• Why we worry way too much about our handwriting, our spelling, and whether a letter will feel awkward.

• The two 12-year-old pen pals, one in Singapore and one in Newfoundland, who wrote for 43 years and finally met for one giant hug

• Seven kinds of people who especially need a pen pal right now, from caregivers and the screen-weary to the quiet ones and the stationery hoarders (you know who you are)

• Easy snail mail ideas to get started: one fun card, one small question, one walk to the mailbox

• Where letter writing fits inside the Going FourWords™ framework

This week's small challenge: pick one person, one piece of paper you love, and write one page. Then mail it and enjoy the wait.

💌 Grab your free Going FourWords™ Guide:
https://www.bdi-create.today 

Find a pen pal in the Going FourWords Clubhouse
(try it for $1, then $9/month):
https://www.bdi-create.today/going-fourwords-membership

Subscribe to the Create-Today podcast for a new conversation on creativity, connection, and self-care every week. 🎧

Here's what happens when you just "see what happens".

Deborah retired after 38 years in government, tried knitting, watercolor, and acrylics (turns out she’s not a patient painter), and somehow ended up running her own publishing house with two crime-solving cats and a squirrel who thinks he’s a rock star. 🐾📚

This week on Create Today, Beth sits down with Deborah Shoemaker, author, and founder of Feather Mountain Expressions, to talk about what happens when you actually chase the question "I wonder if I could do that?"

In this episode, you’ll discover:

• Deborah’s own personal spin on Beth’s Going FourWords™ framework and why it took her a full two years to get there (completely normal, by the way)

• The “rabbit hole rule” that keeps her Canva and Pinterest and videos from turning into a thousand saved pins she never opens again

• How two real housecats inspired Salt & Peppa, a pair of pizza-shop detectives solving mysteries above a Brooklyn pizzeria

• How one bedtime story grew into an entire fictional world, squirrel included

• What a mentor told her when she got her first online hater and how that one reframe changed how she shows up online

• Why she fired an executive coach who told her to “calm down,”

• The focus trick she uses to manage her big creative energy (picture a garden hose and 20 buckets)

• The telemarketing job that gave her confidence she still leans on today

• How she tested her very first digital product by making her own son buy it for a dollar

• How she learned about email lists and grew her list from zero to 350 subscribers

• How you should be measuring your own creative progress

Whatever your version of "I wonder if I could?" is, my creative friend, consider this episode your permission slip to go find out.

Ready to get your creativity rocketing to new heights?

Get your free Going FourWords™ Guide:
www.bdi-create.today

Come and play inside the Going FourWords Clubhouse (as low as $1 your first month):
www.bdi-create.today/going-fourwords-membership

Meet Salt & Peppa for yourself:
https://www.salzandpeppa.com/

Find Salz and Peppa on Etsy:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/SalzandPeppa?section_id=59661031

Loved learning about how you can CREATE-TODAY?
Subscribe for new conversations on creativity, connection, and living well every week. 🎧

This week we explore the creativity in sending greeting cards, and the unbelievable goodness they deliver to a chaotic world.

Last week we learned about: “Thinking of You Week” (September 21–27, 2026)
AND then…how to prepare for the challenge of: 7 cards to 7 people in 7 days.

Don't miss Part 2 of this series.
This week Beth shares a fabulously fun way to multiply the number of people in the world who will GET a card during Thinking of You Week.

Here's the quick peek: Don't prepare alone. Gather your people, and make it a party!
Join this conversation as we focus on the GOOD all the Thinking of You cards will shower on our world…

You'll discover how you can ratchet up the goodness into a tidal wave of happiness… 🎉💌

The treasures inside this episode:
• Why turning your card-writing prep into a Prep Party is a way to have fun AND increase the awareness of Thinking of You Week.

• Why a solo good intention rarely finishes the job — and why a "prep party" with your family, friends, neighbors, or book club dramatically increases the odds all seven cards actually make it to the mailbox

• Beth's 7 ways to turn your Thinking of You Week prep into an evening people will actually want an attend. From a stationery bar (think coffee bar, but for cards) to turning address-hunting into a group treasure hunt

• How to create a party about matching up penpals with another letter-loving friend. And how this can a fun thematic way to support Thinking of You week.

• A sobering finding from the U.S. Surgeon General's 2023 advisory on our loneliness epidemic, and why it makes this small gathering even more important!

•The published research showing that one act of kindness ripples outward three degrees of separation, and roughly triples in size along the way

• A fun thought experiment: what would actually happen if every household in America took on the 7 cards, 7 people, 7 days challenge in the very same week

• Why Beth is spending this Saturday with her grandchildren to have a party that will include: cards, pens, and help to get each of her grands create their list of their 7 people.

Your homework:
Pick a night. Pick your people. Set out some cards, pens, and something delicious, and make getting ready for Thinking of You Week (September 21–27) a great reason to get together with people you love! 

Catch Part 1 – if you missed it! That's where the list-making details are explained and shared.

Resources inside Create-Today!

Grab your free Going FourWords™ Guide:
https://www.bdi-create.today/fourwords

Find creative fun inside the Going FourWords™ Clubhouse
(as low as $1 your first month):
www.bdi-create.today/going-fourwords-membership

Subscribe to the Create-Today with Beth Buffington podcast for new conversations on creativity, connection, and Going FourWords™ with your creativity.

🎧 #ThinkingOfYouWeek #ThinkingOfYouWeekChallenge

Send 7 Cards to 7 people in 7 Days: Surprising Science on Why It’ll Make you Happier

Every now and then as you flip through your mail – junk, junk, a bill, a catalog... you'll find one...
an envelope with a handwritten address.

Stop for a moment and think about that little flare of joy that flutters in your heart. You know what I'm talking about. 

That's what this episode is all about. 💌 The joy a rectangle of paper provides in the humble greeting card.

And here's why. It's almost Thinking of You Week (September 21–27, 2026), and Beth is kicking off a two-part series on the creativity and the science behind sending a greeting card.

This week, she explores why sending a card might be one of the simplest, research-backed happiness boosts available to you. And it's easy to concentrate on this month because September 21-27 is Thinking of You Week.

In this episode, you'll discover:
• The origin story behind Thinking of You Week. It started as a Lenten challenge from photographer Leonard Smith that grew into an international movement backed by the Greeting Card Association
• This year's official challenge: seven cards to seven people in seven days (and why "vague intentions rarely turn into actions")
• Surprising numbers behind why we are a card culture (even though we are so darn digital)
•Americans buy an estimated 6.5 billion greeting cards a year
• 7 in 10 card buyers call them "essential," not just nice-to-have
• The UK neuroscience research showing a handwritten card lights up the brain differently than a text or email and provides roughly twice the happiness of a social post and three times that of an email
• Why a University of Chicago study says you're wrong about how awkward your card will feel.
• The science-backed twist: the person who sends the card often ends up happier than the person who receives it
• A simple "Who's On Your List?" exercise to help you figure out exactly who needs a card from you this month (including why the person you're most hesitant to write to is probably the one who needs it most)
• Beth's 7-step plan to actually pull off seven cards, seven people, seven days
• Homework for this week: Make your list of seven people and find their addresses

Part 2 is coming next week, and it's all about making the cards and other treasures about the humble greeting card.

Discover more from Create Today
(AND, get your free Going FourWords™ Guide):
www.bdi-create.today

Try the Going FourWords Clubhouse
($1 your first month):

www.bdi-create.today/going-fourwords-membership

🎧 Subscribe to the Create-Today podcast for the latest chat with about creativity, connection, and living well every week. 
#ThinkingOfYouWeek #ThinkingOfYouWeekChallenge

Timeline:

00:00 Why Cards Matter

03:08 Thinking of You Week

04:11 Origin and Challenge

06:33 Card Culture by Numbers

10:15 Sponsor Going Forwards Clubhouse

13:18 Science of Receiving Cards

16:32 Giving Feels Even Better

18:48 Pick Your Seven People

22:28 Seven Step Prep Plan

27:32 Final Takeaway and Next Episode

You're Not Too Old (And It's Not Too Late) to Get Creative Again

Psychologist Ilene Berns-Zare joins Beth to unpack the real secret to resilience, creativity, and thriving at midlife and beyond. 🌿

In this episode of Create Today, Beth talks with psychologist, life and leadership coach, and author Ilene Berns-Zare about what it actually takes to build resilience, reconnect with your creativity, and stop believing the story that it's “too late” to reinvent this next chapter.

In this episode, you'll discover:
• Why resilience isn't something you're born with
• “Big C” creativity (the art you set out to make) and the everyday
• “Little c” creativity you're already using without realizing it
• How to reclaim your creativity at midlife, even if you've told yourself “I'm not creative”
• How a single reframe – being told she was a “developmental writer” – that gave Ilene permission to finally write the book she'd been putting off for years
• A simple morning gratitude-and-savoring practice that quietly builds real resilience over time
• How to give yourself permission (and self-compassion) to prioritize creativity in a busy, chaotic season of life
• Why the smallest step – even five minutes – counts as progress toward reinventing this chapter of your life

About Ilene:
Ilene Berns-Zare, PsyD, PCC, CEC is a psychologist, life and leadership coach, and author of You're Not Too Old and It's Not Too Late: Weekly Practices for Meaning, Mindfulness, and New Possibilities at Midlife and Beyond (MSI Press).

She writes the “Flourish and Thrive” blog for Psychology Today and is adjunct faculty in Georgetown University's Transformational Leadership Program.

How to contract Ilene Berns-Zare:

Ilene's book & coaching:  ibzcoaching.com
Ilene's Psychology Today blog: psychologytoday.com/us/blog/flourish-and-thrive

Resources from Create Today: (Get your free Going FourWords™ Guide):
www.bdi-create.today

Subscribe to "Create-Today with Beth Buffington" for a new conversation on creativity, resilience, and living well every week. 🎧

Have you been ghosting your creativity?

If your sketchbook, camera, or craft table has gone quiet, this episode covers the real signs of creative burnout, the science behind why creativity keeps you steady, and how to start treating creative self-care like the vital sign it actually is.

In this episode of Create Today, Beth Buffington unpacks creative fitness: the idea that a consistent creative practice belongs on your health checklist right alongside sleep, diet, and exercise.

You'll hear the science behind why creativity lowers stress (a Netherlands study comparing gardening to reading before a stressful task), why creativity comes before happiness rather than the other way around (Dr. Tamlin Conner's two-week flourishing study), and why skipping creative play leaves your brain stuck in fog (attention restoration theory and “soft fascination”).

Then Beth walks you through her Going FourWords™ framework, Revive, Realize, Refine, and Release, applied specifically to your creative vitality.

That includes a super simple, two-minute creative reset you can do today and seven signs that you might be ghosting your own creativity without realizing it.

Join the Going FourWords™ Clubhouse for just $1 for your first month, then $9/month, and get Beth's Best Books artsy book club, the Recipe Exchange, and an ongoing creative community challenge: https://www.bdi-create.today/going-fourwords-membership

Subscribe for a new episode of Create Today every week, and if someone you love has been ghosting their creativity, send them this one. Maybe you work on it together.

Time Stamp:
0:00 Have you been ghosting your creativity?
4:00 What creative fitness means (and why your body keeps score)
7:00 The science of creative burnout: gardening vs. cortisol
9:00 Why creativity brings happiness, not the other way around
10:00 Creative fog, explained: attention restoration theory
13:00 Revive: a two-minute creative reset
17:00 Realize: 7 signs you're ghosting your creativity
20:00 Inside the Going FourWords™ Clubhouse ($1 first month)
22:00 Refine: building your creative storehouse
25:00 Release: the Zeigarnik effect and letting go
27:00 Creativity is self-care, not a reward