My Path of Creativity / a bit of my story (long version / continued from welcome page)
It started right after college (1997), when I was finally free from the expectations of academia and family. One of the very first things I did was complete The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, a self-help course in creative recovery by Julia Cameron. Despite growing up atheist, I resonated with its spiritual Basic Principles right off the bat, and I credit those sensibilities with guiding me through a number of crucial moments and crossroads in the years that lay ahead — first and foremost, through a tenuous adventure/crisis phase that lasted at least a few years and included homelessness, travel, activism, and a painful break-up that flipped the switch on CPTSD symptoms from unaddressed childhood trauma. This landed me in the office of an amazing trauma therapist who helped me to understand what was happening and to change/save/heal my life.
The stuckness I’d perpetually felt around my visual art melted into a prolific outflow, and a new type of imagery emerged. I started having regular art shows around town, and getting wonderful feedback from people. I was also able to reconnect with the performing arts after over a decade away by becoming a member of an intergenerational dance company for 6 years, then delving into some study and practice of autobiographical performance art.
Since my default personality leans towards cynical New England Gen Xer only-child misanthrope anti-authoritarian chronic underachiever with introvert tendencies… I was pretty reluctant, as an adult, to step into roles involving leadership, collaboration, and community — but I started dabbling anyway: I acted as substitute organizer/host for an established on-stage performance poetry show for a year, I co-founded and co-led a membership club called Do What You Love for two years, I served on my local arts council for three years, I started facilitating my own expressive arts workshops, I became a member of a scrappy and innovative arts collective, and eventually I leveled up to the only “leadership” or “team player” position I’d ever actually wanted… and the only one I’m 100% perfectly suited for: ROCK DRUMMER. At age 38-39, I’d finally done enough creative and therapeutic recovery that I became ready to take seriously my lifelong, thwarted dream of LEARNING TO PLAY DRUMS, and hopefully getting to do it in a killer band.
Indeed, now I’ve been playing with Ex-Temper since 2015 — and I was in Psychic Energy 2018-2020.
Becoming a late-blooming musician led to further leadership in the form of two years working at and helping to rebrand Downtown Sounds (music instruments, lessons, and repair) through its transition to becoming a worker-owned business after being owned by one man since the 1970s. Not only did I get to learn a ton about musical instruments and the retail side of it, which is a male-dominated industry, but I was also in charge of managing and improving the Music School part of it. I became a new and encouraging presence for other adult beginners, but especially for other girls and women wanting to learn to play traditionally male-dominated instruments like drums, bass, and electric guitar — and/or who simply had interests or questions they would have been too intimidated to ask in the store’s previous all-dude environment. Working there was an illuminating, fun, and challenging experience that further connected me to my local community and my own capacities.
Over all these years — 1997 until now — no matter what’s happening in my life, my foundational creative/spiritual practice that I first learned in The Artist’s Way (initially the form of “Morning Pages”) continues to be FILLING NOTEBOOKS, cover to cover. I’m up to about 120 notebooks, so far. My notebook practice ebbs, flows, and evolves over the years in terms of how regularly I do it, when I do it, what exactly I do in the pages, and how many notebooks I go through in a year.
There is no formula, nor any hardcore discipline involved.
Follow my instagram to see glimpses from my current and past notebooks (and sketchbooks)!
My notebook is always there for me, and I highly recommend having one that’s always there for you. Mundane and magical things can happen in those pages, and it’s something I have a lot of faith in especially in terms of its contributions to my mental, emotional, and and spiritual health — and to all of the forward movement and positive developments in my life.
Given the involuntary changes and re-evaluation opportunities that arrived with the 2020-21 pandemic, I’m rededicating to my own work around helping people restore their creativity — because of what I see as its critical place in our ability to effectively align with and become stewards of nature and the era of repair/recovery/healing that’s currently trying to be born.
How’s your relationship with Creativity these days?
Is it a source of pleasure, connection, aliveness, belonging, healing, growth, insight, freedom, and surprise — not necessarily connected to attaining something, or improving yourself?
If not, I’d love to support you in cultivating the conditions for such a relationship to grow!
DANA