Creative Rebellion
Dear Readers, Writers, and Creators
Hello, friends!
It’s been a long time.
I’ve been on a journey of learning, creating, and discovering who I am as an author, creator, and advocate for the power of creativity.
I’ve had personal setbacks as well as unexpected challenges. I’ve interacted with creators of all types and have faced the reality of what it means to choose creative work in a world that defines success by numbers and money.
Today, I would like to share some of these lessons in the hopes that, together, we can challenge and fix a broken system. For you see, I dream of building something that supports creative work of all types in ways that respect creative workers while enriching all our lives.
I dream of a world where creative collaboration and community building are the norm, rather than the outliers
Over the past few months, I've come to realize how important this dream is.
News, news, news
I'm back!!!
The truth is that these past few years have been challenging for many reasons—personal, professional, and political. I'm not here to talk about all that, though.
I'm here to celebrate that I have found my spark again, and I want to share!
What is "spark," you ask?
It is the energy that I feel when I create, help others, speak out, speak my truth, and fully embrace life.
It is creative force that connects us one to another, and to the world that we live in.
It is the ability to express myself in creative ways, whether through theatre, writing, content creation, or any of many crafts I dabble in.
It is the energy I feel when collaborating with others and sharing my work with the world, regardless of any financial gain.
{Don't worry, this is not a sales pitch for a "rediscover your spark" course; I'm speaking from the heart.}
Building Community vs. Finding Leads
This is the question that starts my days a lot lately. Somehow the fantasy of publishing, for me and many others, includes a suddent radical change. A book publishes, people become interested, you get invited on talk shows, people ask you for your autograph, someone wants to take you to lunch, money roles in.
It's all fantasy, really. I learned that when publishing P.O.W.er. The excitement,pride, and energy of seeing my first novel in print, and actually on bookstore shelves, led to a feeling of deflation and emptiness and "now what"?
Actually, I get this feeling after any stage production as well. It's not a feeling of defeat or frustration, it's more like the energy of a slowly deflating balloon. You've poured your energy into this thing, this product, this creation out of your imagination or (in the case of Re-Creating the World) out of years of exploration, practice, and experience. And then, it launches, leaving a melancholy sense of accomplishment and emptiness.
Dear Readers, Writers, and Creators
Hello, friends!
It’s been a long time.
I’ve been on a journey of learning, creating, and discovering who I am as an author, creator, and advocate for the power of creativity.
I’ve had personal setbacks as well as unexpected challenges. I’ve interacted with creators of all types and have faced the reality of what it means to choose creative work in a world that defines success by numbers and money.
Today, I would like to share some of these lessons in the hopes that, together, we can challenge and fix a broken system. For you see, I dream of building something that supports creative work of all types in ways that respect creative workers while enriching all our lives.
I dream of a world where creative collaboration and community building are the norm, rather than the outliers
Over the past few months, I've come to realize how important this dream is.
The Clash of Collaborative Creativity and Capitalism
I know, I know . . . crazy or too close to socialism or something like that.
But seriously, I wish that we could simply exchange goods or labor, rather than be ruled by this fictitious thing called money. Money is not real. I mean, yes, there is physical money, and at one point it somehow connected to the weight of precious metals. But, its getting more and more unreal, as things like cryptocurrency and the stock market thrive on the idea that imaginary money builds more money. In some, since money is now mostly associated with plastic cards and apps, some peole don't even know what money looks like.
Money is simply this thing that people (wealthy people in particular) cling too, when it really means nothing.
I admit, I am not an expert when it comes to economics. I don't understand money, and I never will. What I do understand, though, is that in our broken late-capitalist society, money breeds money, and everyone else gets screwed. The exchange of money for true labor (the workers, the artists, the writers, the actors) is never equal to the money exchanged for so-called ownership (the producers, the CEOs, the 1%) of people who don't really understand the work.
10 Reasons to Embrace Your Creativity
By you, I mean every single one of you. I can hear it now though, many of you are thinking "I'm not creative. I don't have a creative bone in my body."
Those thoughts are born from myths about creativity that come from a society which likes to have control.
How to Start a Creative Rebellion
It's time for a big change, and it will take a creative rebellion to make that happen.
Defining Creative Rebellion
What do I mean by creative rebellion? It's simple really. Throughout history creative people of all types have played roles in social movements. From painting Black Lives Matter large enough to be seen from space,...
