Get more advice on IG: @bethpickensconsulting

Join the Mind Your Practice Homework Club: www.mindyourpractice.com

Homework Club is for every creative person who wants deadlines and accountability! I mean, who doesn’t want that? Each month you’ll get: homework handouts, bonus audio content, access to a private members-only IG account, and a webinar led by author and arts consultant Beth Pickens. Just $12/month through 2020. 

THIS EPISODE'S HOMEWORK:

Ok, let’s talk about your homework. I want you to think about these three basic needs for artists in your own life. How is your practice? How about your creative community? How full are your coffers? Where can you identify that a little tending is needed and how can you invite in what you need? If you think one or more of these needs are found wanting, make a plan for the next week. What is one simple action you can take? How much time can you reasonably commit to tending to these three basic needs?

Let me know how it goes. I’d love to hear from you.

Mind Your Practice is produced by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. You can find out more about her practice at carolynpennypackerriggs.com

Get more advice on IG: @bethpickensconsulting

Join the Mind Your Practice Homework Club: www.mindyourpractice.com

Homework Club is for every creative person who wants deadlines and accountability! I mean, who doesn’t want that? Each month you’ll get: homework handouts, bonus audio content, access to a private members-only IG account, and a webinar led by author and arts consultant Beth Pickens. Just $12/month through 2020. 

THIS EPISODE'S HOMEWORK:

This episode’s homework is about living the principle that your art matters.

In the next week, I want you to write a letter to your creative practice as a whole, all of the work you’ve ever made and all the work you will make. I want you, in the letter, to express your gratitude for what your practice has done for your life and the way it’s helped you. You can make a list. You can send a gushing email. You can make a drawing. You can write a proper Victorian love letter with a fountain pen. 

Next, I want you to clear out one more hour than you would usually commit to art making. Give yourself one more hour. If you’ve been giving yourself zero hours in recent weeks, then you can use this as an opportunity to go from zero to 1.

Finally, I want you to make a list of at least 20 artists who have made work that has been deeply meaningful to you. Any discipline, living and dead, anywhere across place and time. Celebrities, anonymous artists, someone you know and love.  List all their names. Pick one of these and write them a love letter for their art. Tell them all about what you loved and why and what their work has meant to you. If you can and the person is living, send the letter to them.

And, please, tell me how it goes. 

Mind Your Practice is produced by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. You can find out more about her practice at carolynpennypackerriggs.com

Our show icon is made by Jess Cuevas. 

Get more advice on IG: @bethpickensconsulting

Join the Mind Your Practice Homework Club: www.mindyourpractice.com

Homework Club is for every creative person who wants deadlines and accountability! I mean, who doesn’t want that? Each month you’ll get: homework handouts, bonus audio content, access to a private members-only IG account, and a webinar led by author and arts consultant Beth Pickens. Just $12/month through 2020. 

THIS EPISODE'S HOMEWORK:

Ok, let’s talk about your homework. First, think about yourself in terms of showing yourself and sharing your work. Is this something you avoid? Do you want to do it differently, on new terms? Is there work you want to show more of? Is there anything you want to share less of?

Next, consider some recent work, any discipline, in which you connected to vulnerability and the willingness of the artist to share themselves. I just read the new novel Life Events by Karolina Waclawiak, which I loved, and vulnerability came up for me again and again in this story of death and disconnection. How does another artist’s vulnerability connect inside of you?

Then, imagine yourself as a conduit for connection through your work. What in your practice makes you feel vulnerable? Which projects? Sharing it where and how? Why do you decide to share or not share? Have this conversation and answer these questions with another artist that you trust. 

Let me know how it goes. I’d love to hear from you.

Mind Your Practice is produced by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. You can find out more about her practice at carolynpennypackerriggs.com

Get more advice on IG: @bethpickensconsulting

Join the Mind Your Practice Homework Club: www.mindyourpractice.com

Homework Club is for every creative person who wants deadlines and accountability! I mean, who doesn’t want that? Each month you’ll get: homework handouts, bonus audio content, access to a private members-only IG account, and a webinar led by author and arts consultant Beth Pickens. Just $12/month through 2020. 

THIS EPISODE'S HOMEWORK:

Ok, let’s talk about your homework. This episode’s homework sounds paradoxical but conflicting ideas can coexist at the same time. 

First, I want you to think about your 40% capacity. What could you do in a day or a week in 2019? What does that look like if it’s reduced down to 40% right now - not forever, just right now? What can you let go of? What can become imperfect? Where can you have some help? What can be tabled until later?

Next, I want you to write a list of what you intuitively know helps you rest and recover and what you intuitively know is numbing out. Make two distinct lists. 

Ok, now I want you to commit, in the next week, to a 24 hour period of no screens. If that’s not possible for some logistical reason, how long can you go? Try it.

Finally, I want you to build some creative practice space into your week, every week for the next month. Put it into your calendar, protect it in the shape of your week. Jealously guard it. 

Let me know how it goes. I’d love to hear from you.

Mind Your Practice is produced by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. You can find out more about her practice at carolynpennypackerriggs.com

Get more advice on IG: @bethpickensconsulting

Join the Mind Your Practice Homework Club: www.mindyourpractice.com

Homework Club is for every creative person who wants deadlines and accountability! I mean, who doesn’t want that? Each month you’ll get: homework handouts, bonus audio content, access to a private members-only IG account, and a webinar led by author and arts consultant Beth Pickens. Just $12/month through 2020. 

THIS EPISODE'S HOMEWORK:

This episode’s homework is about living the principle that your art matters.

In the next week, I want you to write a letter to your creative practice as a whole, all of the work you’ve ever made and all the work you will make. I want you, in the letter, to express your gratitude for what your practice has done for your life and the way it’s helped you. You can make a list. You can send a gushing email. You can make a drawing. You can write a proper Victorian love letter with a fountain pen. 

Next, I want you to clear out one more hour than you would usually commit to art making. Give yourself one more hour. If you’ve been giving yourself zero hours in recent weeks, then you can use this as an opportunity to go from zero to 1.

Finally, I want you to make a list of at least 20 artists who have made work that has been deeply meaningful to you. Any discipline, living and dead, anywhere across place and time. Celebrities, anonymous artists, someone you know and love.  List all their names. Pick one of these and write them a love letter for their art. Tell them all about what you loved and why and what their work has meant to you. If you can and the person is living, send the letter to them.

And, please, tell me how it goes. 

Mind Your Practice is produced by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. You can find out more about her practice at carolynpennypackerriggs.com

Our show icon is made by Jess Cuevas. 

Get more advice on IG: @bethpickensconsulting

Join the Mind Your Practice Homework Club: www.mindyourpractice.com

Homework Club is for every creative person who wants deadlines and accountability! I mean, who doesn’t want that? Each month you’ll get: homework handouts, bonus audio content, access to a private members-only IG account, and a webinar led by author and arts consultant Beth Pickens. Just $12/month through 2020. 

THIS EPISODE'S HOMEWORK:

Ok, let’s talk about your homework. First, honestly assess your relationship to asking for help, receiving it, and giving it out. Where is there imbalance? Do you ask but reject offers? Do you only give and refuse to ask? Do you tend to ask but are unwilling to offer? What do you do to avoid asking for help? Just simply notice what’s true for you these days. 

Next, is my favorite kind of homework - making a list. Create an epic list of all the ways you can help another artist. Maybe you have some highly technical skills using equipment or software. Or you can listen deeply. Or you can proofread other artist's applications. Maybe you’re good at the internet. Start this list and keep adding to it all the ways you can help other artists in your world.

Next, another list, my favorite! Start a list of what you need help with. Get really specific where you can. Keep it vague where you need to. Keep adding to it every day.

Now, the hard part. Today, yes the very day on which you are listening to my voice, ask three people for three different things on your list. Ask them what they need from you. Start the energy exchange of giving and receiving support. 

Let me know how it goes. I’d love to hear from you.

Mind Your Practice is produced by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. You can find out more about her practice at carolynpennypackerriggs.com

Get more advice on IG: @bethpickensconsulting

Join the Mind Your Practice Homework Club: www.mindyourpractice.com

Homework Club is for every creative person who wants deadlines and accountability! I mean, who doesn’t want that? Each month you’ll get: homework handouts, bonus audio content, access to a private members-only IG account, and a webinar led by author and arts consultant Beth Pickens. Just $12/month through 2020. 

THIS EPISODE'S HOMEWORK:

Ok, let’s talk about your homework. Whether you need a break from some of your feelings or want a little help accessing any emotion at all, I think there are some simple strategies. 

First, what’s up with you specifically? These days, how much pain and grief do you feel or not feel? Are you able to access pain and continue your day? It’s important to know how you’re doing and whether you are in touch with your individual grief and to what extent. 

If you want a little respite from your real time pain and grief, I think regular opportunities for levity and joy are in order. For you, I recommend investing more in relationships that bring lightness and laughter to your life these days. You may benefit from a daily practice of a written gratitude list; maybe you share that list with a few of those loved ones who bring lightness to your life. 

If you are feeling numb and emotionally void lately, then emotionally powerful art may be a helpful tool for dislodging what is stuck. Music, film, books, podcasts, art, movement, anything that has, in the past, facilitated grief for you may be worth revisiting now. Just to open the grief valve, and let some pain move through. 

Finally, talking to other people in your life about how they are or are not feeling and processing their own pain is enormously valuable. When we can’t locate an answer within ourselves, often a loved one will bring it to us. 

Let me know how it goes. I’d love to hear from you. 

Mind Your Practice is produced by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. You can find out more about her practice at carolynpennypackerriggs.com