How to Make Things When Perfectionism Keeps Bubbling Up

The Feeling! Summer Camp series is a multi-week course and the first lesson teaches you how to use creative journaling to combat perfectionism.

This is the first edition of something I’ve been waiting to build for you. The Feeling! Summer Camp series is a multi-week course, exclusively for supporting subscribers.

Over 1,000 readers joined my Summer Reading Challenge, and what I saw confirmed what I already suspected: you (like me) want projects that pull you away from the screen and into real life. You want to make things, maybe even with a sticker chart involved.

So I’ve made a “summer camp” course (because summer camp has a wonderful balance of structure and fun) that teaches you how to live creatively with ease in every facet of life. *Creativity not as an aesthetic, but a daily life-enhancing habit.

After completing this series, you will find a personal creative practice you can actually maintain, a collection of very joyful completed projects, tools for moving through fears, and a community of people on the same journey.

This is for working artists who want their creativity back, aspiring creatives who are having trouble getting started, and anyone who wants to reclaim the ease of making things like they did when they were a kid.

The camp will function like a cohort, with exercises, feedback, a shared collection of your work, and group projects! I’m offering it to paid subscribers only to make the space more personal. Here is a glimpse of the camp schedule, so you know what to expect:

And here are some features each lesson will include:

• Beverage Cart: A complimentary coffee or tea recipe for enhancing your at-home café

• Promptings: Topical questions for journaling

• Introduction to the Topic

• Lesson

• Assignment: A hands-on way to master the subject

• The Gallery: Sharing work from readers

• Group Project: Questions to debate and consider together, bringing stronger connections together

Before February, I was an entrepreneurship and design-thinking teacher and curriculum writer. I started in the classroom with middle and high school students, helping them understand the principles of being a designer and developing their own creative ideas into sustainable small businesses (we even made a student-run coffee shop). After moving to New York, I continued working for the program as a curriculum writer after receiving a grant to write the curriculum for what we had cultivated in the classroom.

All this to say, I have been missing using this part of my brain, and was thinking about ways my experience in education could benefit my readers.

The idea struck, as they often do, suddenly and without warning. I knew I should make a series teaching a lifestyle of creativity. I hear from readers that you don’t want to buy more things or pin idealistic visions, but long for a practical how to live creatively. So I am using my background in curriculum writing and teaching to get back in the classroom. With you!

This course is designed to serve you well, from lesson one to the finish line! You can hop in and out of topics as they interest you throughout the series. However, I recommend completing the full course, as each lesson builds on the previous to reach the ultimate objective: developing practical, repeatable skills for a lifestyle of creative living. It is going to be an incredible time, and I am so excited to create alongside you.

I will jump into lesson one today! This is accessible to all paid subscribers.

Combatting Perfectionism through Creative Journaling

Materials needed today:

• One journal

• One really great pen (but more colors permitted, of course)

• Your most powerful mug

• Matcha powder

• Earl Grey tea leaves

• One kettle

• A small whisk

• Imagination