Roots and Branches

And the first steps to building yours

In my circles, I work a lot with regenerative business ecosystems and implement regenerative ecosystem practices into my own work.

I’ve even noticed some people talking about creative ecosystems: But the comparisons often feel surface-level and, honestly, I lose interest pretty quickly.

I agree, it’s super useful to think about each component of our work as a different part of our ecosystem, but why stop there?

I’ve developed a whole framework for regenerative creative ecosystems that I teach in Bloom and some of my other programs, and while it’s too expansive to fit in one newsletter, I wanted to give you a few quick ideas for starting to build ecosystems principles into your own creative life:

1. Recognize your creativity, and you, move in cycles: No individual plant, or animal, or microbe, or a whole forest is going at top speed all the time. Can you imagine how much energy a flowering plant would use up if it were in bloom all the time? They would never have enough energy to grow or to make more plants. They would just eventually wither away.
   
   Living a creative life is about living your cycles, not grinding yourself to dust in the name of output. Learn your own unique cycles of creation, and honor them: I promise, it makes the work better quality, more fun, and frankly, you produce just as much without ripping your hair out. I talk more about regenerative creative cycles here.
   

2. Be open to growth (and remember growth can be uncomfortable): Remember growing pains from when you were a kid? I’ve always imagined trees feel the same way as they stretch their new branches out or as new leaves unfurl.
   Growth leads to beautiful things but it isn’t always comfortable: And often we shy away from the discomfort, especially in our creative practice, because we want it to be a safe haven.
   
   I have good news though: Your creative practice can be a safe haven still while creating room to grow. Letting yourself acknowledge what feels vulnerable, redirect your attention, and weave some pleasure into your work all help.
   And sometimes, it’s useful to give yourself permission to just write it out: So you can see what direction you want to grow from there.
   

3. Creativity is a network of relationships: Yes, just like the mycelia in your ecosystem. There’s the relationship between your ideas, between your relationship to yourself and your subject, and of course between you and the people you want your work to reach. I use this understanding to help me choose topics and as part of the journaling practices I share with my clients. You can see how I choose topics here!
   

4. An ecosystem you want to spend time in is enchanting as well as resilient and regenerative: Your creative work thrives when you’re in a place you want to be rather than in a functional, but un-inspiring box (again, weaving pleasure and mindfulness into your creative practice helps a lot). Here’s how I weave enchantment into my creative life.
   

There is so much more I have to say on building a regenerative creative ecosystem, but it would be a literal book (and maybe some day it will be?) but I hope those first few steps at least help you down the path to beginning to imagine your ecosystem.

And speaking of that, really let yourself imagine it: Visualize your ecosystem as an actual place, and fill it however you wish (mine is a forest in the Appalachian foothills and is actually a place I’m fortunate enough to steward in real life).
Yours might be somewhere you’ve been before, or somewhere completely imaginary. And it can be whatever kind of ecosystem you want, too: A forest, a desert, underwater, etc. You get the idea.

What does your creative ecosystem look like?

If you want to dive deeper into your creative ecosystem with me, I’ve opened up spots for our next round of Bloom, an 8 week program to build a lifelong, sustainable writing practice.
The skills we learn apply to any kind of writing: And to any creative work in general.

And I’m building a brand new program that’s 6 whole months of deep work into building your regenerative creative ecosystem. It hasn’t been announced yet, but you can be first in line on the waitlist by filling out this form.