Hey {{First Name | there}},

Last week, I wrote about the fear voices I hear when a new idea arrives. The chorus of “Who do you think you are…”

While writing a paragraph in which I shared the different flavors this voice has, I had an unexpected experience.

A voice in a different tone came to mind, and it said, “Who are you to not…?”

A whoosh went through my body. Tingles crawled up over my shoulders and spread down to my fingertips.

Yes, I thought. This is the whole point. It’s not about me.

Who am I to get in the way of something beautiful and good coming into existence? Who am I to say that I am not skilled enough, connected enough, or resourced enough when the invitation arrives?

Who am I to treat ideas that come to me as my personal intellectual property?

Rather than seeing myself (yourself) as someone who needs some type of external power or gatekeeper to qualify my ideas, I can flip those fear voices on their head.

I can invert the fear to find my power.

Who am I to not try?

Who am I to not trust?

Who am I to not write the essay?

Who am I to not pitch my services?

Who am I to not write the book?

Who am I to not plan the gathering?

Who am I to not make the call?

It turns out, the fear can actually be a signal for exactly where to find my power. By doing the thing the fear is trying to block/protect me from.

Creative inspiration comes from the source of all power. It is direct access to God, channeled. And, if acted on in good faith, all resources and serendipitous possibilities are available.

In theory, I believe this.

My life reflects this belief, too.

And yet, the human experience makes this really hard to hold onto day in and day out.

It’s like a lake on a clear calm day where the water is glass. You know that level of clarity is possible, but most days it’s rippling, or churning or crashing. You can wait for it to calm and clarify again, but it may take some time. You can improve your chances by waking up early.

What you can’t do is force it still.

And I’ve been learning over the past few months that the churning isn’t failure.

It’s not even a regrettable state.

It just is.

It’s life. It’s the weather. It’s the things we can’t control. It’s the experience of humanity in a life that unfolds way beyond us.

The lake is still the lake.

We can celebrate and soak in the clarity and calm when it’s there. And then trust those moments to sustain us when it’s not.

And maybe, even, appreciate it (possibly even enjoy it?!) on the days it’s not so inviting, because it makes the whole experience of life more rich. Contrast, tension, full spectrum — these things add to the human experience.

This is where a theory I've been tinkering with for a few months comes in.

I've been calling it the love and creativity hierarchy. Imperfect name, but what it means is simple: love comes first. Not love as a feeling, but love as the generative force underneath everything. The source that creativity flows from. The compass I return to when I don't know which way to go.

I've built so much around the belief that creativity is the linchpin between the world as it is and the world as we want it to be.

I didn’t realize love was essential to this understanding until life kept giving me opportunities to recognize it.

This happened in the form of friction.

Ripples, choppy waters, and toppling tidal waves, to go back to the lake metaphor. I know lakes don’t make tidal waves ;)

If I were to sum up the past 3 months, I would say it has been a juxtaposition of life and death. Three deaths, a new baby, severe illness, a long-awaited wedding, and the extremes of these experiences mirrored in so many smaller moments.

A friend who needed me. A Marco Polo sitting unanswered. A moment where what I was being handed was a choice: show up for someone, or do the work. Again and again, in small ways and large ones, I was being asked the same question. And I was getting more and more sensitive to it, because the stakes around me were so high.

Where do I put my energy? Towards the creative work? Or towards people I love?

And now, that question is even more acute.

Because my capacity is genuinely lower than it was before I got sick.

The answer to where I put my energy changes on a daily, sometimes hourly basis. I need to be in tune with body to listen.

If I’m not, my mind spins on it. What do I do with all these projects? These visions that felt so true to me — are they still true? What do I put down? What do I protect? I make backup plans for the backup plans. I try to figure it all out in advance.

And that is where I have to stop and name what's actually happening.

That spinning sounds like planning. It sounds responsible. But it is avoidance. It is fear dressed up as preparation. And the love voice — the one that says who are you to not… — doesn't sound like that at all.

It sounds like: this sickness is not a surprise. It does not disqualify you. If a door is supposed to close, it will close. If an opening appears, it will appear. But right now, your job is to sit down and do the work.

Because that is how I feel connected. That is how I get to the end of a day without regret. That is how I can pick my kids up from school and actually be present. Because I know I did the thing I was meant to do today.

The reframe that changed things for me: creative ideas are not tasks I'm responsible for completing. They are invitations.

They arrive like gifts. You can receive them. You can set them down. You can come back later, or find that the timeline is longer than you thought, or discover that the path leads somewhere unexpected. None of that is failure. You're not failing a gift. You're not behind on an invitation.

The guilt I used to carry about unrealized ideas — and I carried a lot of it — starts to dissolve when I think about creativity this way. Not because the ideas matter less. Because my relationship to them changes. I'm not responsible for their existence in the world. I'm the one who gets to participate in bringing them here. That is an honor. That is a privilege.

And, I'll be honest, it's also a little terrifying. Because if I'm just a vessel, I don't have the whole picture. I'm not in control. I don't know what this will ask of me or where it will lead.

But the feeling in my body when I remember this is unmistakable.

It's the whoosh. Not the weight.

The taskmaster feeling, the overwhelm, the guilt, the which of my ideas is even real spiral: it only ever shows up when I'm in my head. When I'm thinking about all the things and how they fit together and whether I have enough capacity and what I'm going to do about the timeline of my recovery and what that means for everything I've planned.

It never shows up when I'm actually working.

When I sit down and write, or build, or make something, I don't feel the taskmaster. I feel the flow. The sense of doing my part and releasing the rest.

Worrying about depletion depletes me faster than the work does. The spin of trying to protect my energy consumes more of it than the creating would have. What I need isn't more planning. What I need is to trust the invitation enough to begin, and then rest when I'm actually tired, not in anticipation of being tired.

This is the practice inside the philosophy. Not a productivity system. A return. Again and again, to the source.

Love precedes creativity. Not because creativity matters less, but because knowing that changes everything about how you hold it.

The ideas that live in you are not your burden.

They are what love looks like when it chooses you as the one to bring something through.

Warmly,
Jennifer

Creative Current is the podcast I just launched with my friend and creative partner, Jess Schimm. We talk open-book style about our relationship with creativity and all it brings up in our lives. I love it so much. I trust you will too.

P.S. Want to encourage someone in your life whose taking creative risks? Share this email with them. It’s an encouragement to me, too!

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