Guest post by Christiana Peterson. When art is your career, it is easy to lose sight of the reasons for creating in the first place. When the art you love becomes enmeshed with publishing, promoting, money, marketing, and trying to sell yourself in order to sell your work, it can be a messy weaving that becomes difficult to untangle.

I tried repeatedly to instill a systematic, unchanging routine into my life, I felt frustrated, incompetent, and inconsistent. I am a person who requires a rhythm rather than a system or schedule. Many artistic women (definitely not all) are both rhythmic and flexible. Here are 7 questions to help you perfect your rhythm.

He didn’t get what I was going on about and he told me as much. At that moment, I realized I was on a unique journey. I needed something more. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was ready to start living a more sustainable creative life through my spiritual journey.

Forty-two hundred miles of driving for three weeks took my family and me from Kansas to the Adirondack mountains. It was a crazy amount of driving for any summer vacation, but all that beauty and time away did two things: they enlarged my creative focus while also narrowing it.

The phrase “staying on the hurt line” is from a classmate's mom in a class I took at the beginning of summer: Art in a Time of Crisis. What does it mean to remain on the hurt line? Is it somewhere between joy and pain? Is it a bittersweet truth that life is both hard and beautiful? Yes, yes, and so much more.

Whether her form is good or not, an artist can do nothing less than dive in. Sitting on the side of the pool is not an option.

Here are 10 things that kept me from caving to creative burnout in 2021. Instead, I found sanity, and quite miraculously, ways to thrive, even in the midst of a pandemic and starting grad school.

The podcast is live! I made this show to help creative people like you come fully alive to the pursuit of joy. Here are a few episodes all ready for your listening pleasure.

You were made for this. To take whatever is in your hands and make something. Also, I’m ANNOUNCING my new podcast!

Creative bursts come, and I believe they can for you too. Many activities labelled self-care double as artistic practice. Check out these five creativity restoring activities and fill up your tank again.