Hello & Welcome to Creative\\Proofing!!
Pleased to meet you.
I'm Megan J. Robinson, and this is Creative\\Proofing, a space to think, feel, and design out loud. Every Thursday I'll send you a newsletter exploring the intersection of creativity, spirituality, and productivity, and what that looks like for each of us. In each issue of Creative\\Proofing, I’ll dig into various questions, ideas, and topics by sharing what other thinkers, feelers, and doers have said, followed by my take, and then, what it do for us going forward. I’ll also try to throw in reader feedback, recommendations, and maybe something I’m enjoying that week. Stick around to find out more, hmmm?
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Hey there!
Here's a question for you.
What kind of life do you want to live?
Oooh, wait, how about this one...
Who do you want to become?
Or, this is my favorite:
Do you think you're creative? Do you ever wish you could be more creative?
DUDE.
We just met.
What's with the existential questions?
I'm tryna eat my double-stack with one hand here.
All right, okay, you're right.
That is a little intense for a handshake.
But seriously, have you ever wondered how all those super productive, crazy creative people got that way?
No? Yes? Okay, I'mma tell you.
It's entirely possible that a conversation with me could sound like this. I usually try wait at least an hour, but sometimes I can't help it! I just love talking with people about what makes them them, and how they can become more them. But let me first share a little about what makes me me.
Ever since I was a wee child exploring my world, I've been writing, coloring, sketching, dramatizing, and just generally trying out for the title of World's Most Creative Ever. Over the years, how I express my personal creativity has morphed, not to mention how I understand the range and possibilities of human creativity in general. I might not write poetry and sketch drawings like I used to, but creativity has now become the lens through which I see the world. What new thing is possible that doesn't yet exist?
(Though if World's Most Creative Ever were actually a thing, I'd totally go for gold.)
Growing up in evangelical Christian churches taught me a lot of things, many of which I’m grateful for, and others which I’ve had to unlearn over the years. As I continue to explore faith communities, one of the main things I appreciate is that the spiritual dimensions of our lives can provide us with both meaning to make sense of our histories, as well as purpose to give shape and direction to our days.
Exploring how creativity and spirituality interweave and guide my life has been one of the, if not THE, main themes of my life so far. Discovering the Enneagram, learning my type (Ennea4, hey-yo), and developing a expanded skillset for living has transformed my self-understanding, as well as my relationships with others, and how I contribute to the world. But like the great Duke Ellington sang, it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing. Understanding who you are and what you want to do really starts to mean something once you start doing things.
I've found the concept of Harmony Triads incredibly helpful in working with the Enneagram, in which we learn to draw from, and integrate, our three centers of intelligence - our head, heart, and body, or, thinking, feeling, and acting. As an Ennea4, my feeling center goes through the roof, my thinking center scales the ladder, and my acting center drops through the bottom of the basement. I've spent most of my life feeling stuck between thinking and feeling all the time, and frustrated that I could never seem to act quickly, easily, or effectively.
That's when I started delving into productivity theories, frameworks, and tools, and discovered methods and tools that helped me shape my environment, and made it easier for me to form effective, disciplined practices that supported and encouraged my creativity and productivity. I realized that I needed to make it as easy as possible to cycle through my centers: to move from feeling to thinking to doing what mattered most to me.
And I think that doing what matters most in life is a pretty high value for most of us - it’s figuring out what that is and how to do it where we get a little baffled, yeah? So here’s a space for us to gather, learn, and share what we discover about our selves as we learn to cycle through our centers in ways that are uniquely, awesomely us.
Because I believe that when our meaning, purpose, and actions align, what we make of and give to the world happens just once in a universe.
Express your once-in-a-universe self.
Tell your friends.
If you’d like to support Creative\\Proofing, the best thing to do is spread the word. If you think of five friends who might enjoy this, forward this email to them! Degrees of gratitude may vary, but please know, my gratitude is infinite.
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Shalom!