I had this transformation all planned out.
A summer of slowing down. Burnout recovery. Creating a whole new relationship with my creativity and productivity. Naps, journaling, making art, eating amazing salads while also moving my workspace upstairs and creating space for my new E X P A N D E D art and writing practice.
Nothing is going according to plan. Except naps and salad, I have that part down.
I mean I have taught this long enough to know - if your "transformation" is going according to plan, you are not actually transforming anything.
So I am taking that as a good sign.
There's a lot I want to say.
I think there's a lot we all really should be talking about, in terms of sharing how this time is impacting us, the ways we choose to respond to that, and the healing that we are each being called to do.
But I don't have the capacity for any of that right now.
So I'll say: I am making some amazing summer salads. I am feeling SO nourished.
During the winter I was freezing lemons - I would put 1/2 or 1/3 of a lemon into a smoothie and then freeze the rest. Now I am using those frozen lemons and homemade lavender syrup to make lemonade in the blender and OMG.
I've moved 75% of my work stuff upstairs. I gave away my old bed frame and made arrangements for the mattress to be picked up this week.
I moved into the new bed downstairs. I have slept upstairs in the loft for the last 11 years. The longest I've been in any bedroom. This is a HUGE transition for me. The first morning I woke up and actually wanted to cry I missed my upstairs bed so much.
I know I still want to move ahead with this re-configuring of the space.
AND it's a little like being ripped out a beloved space.
It even feels like not having a home, even though I am still very much in my home.
This is what it's like, being in the goo of transformation.
I'm going with it. Staying nourished and doing what I can each day which is so much less than I wish it was. Following my intuition about what to do next which feels grounded and clear but also disorienting and new.
I am thinking about how a seed changes states to become a plant. How sudden and wild it is.
I am feeling that but in super slow motion.
I trust what I am growing into.
Even though it all looks like a mess right now.
I wrote this last week, but then I was so much "in the mess of being in the process" that I forgot to post it. This week I am in a completely different place - for one, I LOVE my new bed downstairs and have put a whole jungle of plants around it and I don't miss sleeping upstairs at all now and I wake up feeling so grateful for my home, again. When you're in the process of change it's good to remember that things will continue to change.
Every month in the Year of Dreams 2022 planner there’s a reminder to check in with your vision for your year, and space to journal about how that felt and what adjustments you might want to make.
I didn’t want to do that this month. I mean most months I don’t want to but this month it REALLY felt uncomfortable.
But here I am doing that. And sharing my experience as a way of offering a light on your path, in case it's uncomfortable for you too, right now.
As I sit down to answer these questions and I feel like a total failure.
This feels so heavy I want to just stop, and make up a story for why it just makes sense that I not do this reflection work this month.
And I say “Andrea, you don’t HAVE TO do this, but… this is your job. And YOU are the one who gave yourself this job, you worked hard for it, and now you don’t want to do it? What’s up with that?”
Oh. I do want to do it. I know that this is important. I know all of the things I teach are true and that being in the process is messy and that nothing is wrong, I just need to be brave enough to keep showing up. Can I just complain and throw a bit of a tantrum first?
“Sure sweetie you do that”
Permission to tantrum led me to just sit down and flip through my Year of Dreams journal.
I remember how excited I was back then but I realize…
Actually it was a desperate kind of positivity. Like “holy fuck this year has got to be better” vibes.
What I feel now are “Holy wow I am really getting into my own flow. Feeling myself. Feeling my future. I may be moving slow as fuck but this is deep and rich.”
It turns out I love where I am.
It’s just when I am judging myself based on goals I’d set six months ago that I feel shitty.
But I am not six-months-ago me anymore. Me-from-today is totally different. I mean, I have bangs now. I have these new outfits I made myself that FEEL LIKE my future self. I have totally different plans now.
I actually *KNOW MORE* about what it will take to achieve some of those bigger goals, from the last 6 months of experimenting with them.
And that’s why I know that some of them are just not going to happen this year.
And that’s why it feels so right to be focused on different things because these things feel needed right now.
I am re-arranging the Dream Loft, tearing down the workspace my husband had built me when we got married, and using that wood to build something new.
I am creating a new art + writing + creative exploration space in the upstairs loft.
I am E X P A N D I N G my art and writing practice in all ways. New bigger space. More time + attention. New projects + directions.
I am really expanding into my future self in all of these important ways.
Just not in the ways I thought I would, when I made those plans in January.
BUT
That doesn’t mean I was wrong.
You should literally NEVER sit down, make a plan to get your dream, and then follow that plan exactly. That is a recipe for disaster because…
BEING ON THE PATH HEALS AND GROWS YOU.
And as you heal and grow your perspective shifts so you see completely different options.
If you follow that plan that you-before-you-healed-and-grew made - you are actually stagnating.
To grow means to change.
Again, the Year of Dreams 2022 is a tool to help you stay in this process. Which means the goal is NOT to follow exactly what you said you’d do in January. The goal is to stay in the process which means HEALING AND GROWING which means surprising new things emerge.
This is how you tap into your magic to make your dreams real.
So.
Having moved through that initial “why bother doing this I am a complete failure” I now feel really proud of how I am showing up for myself and my dreams.
AND I feel excited it’s about what’s next, which was NOT on the initial Visioning 2022 section, so I am adding it now.
(You can still get the Year of Dreams 2022 and play along for the rest of the year. Six months of HEALING and GROWING into your dream! The Year of Dreams 2023 is going to be quite different - details to come soon-ish)
We had a group coaching call in Dream Book where one person attending (a very accomplished creative entrepreneur actually) said “I mean, what am I even doing?” and I laughed because I saw myself in it.
“What am I even doing?” came up again and again later on in the call as more people shared their stories.
It’s actually REALLY EASY to feel “what am I even doing?” when you are doing your own thing.
It’s natural to feel lost.
It’s natural to think you’re stuck when you’re really just incubating, or resting, or preparing for the next thing in ways your conscious self doesn’t know about yet.
With our dreams, the tangible parts are only about 1/3 of what is actually happening. So if you’re only using tangible, measurable things to measure progress, you are missing most of the picture.
And yet, this is what we do. Myself included!
The week before last I was in that “what am I even doing?” place. At the beginning of the week I was being GRACIOUS with myself and my process. I was MAKING SPACE for how I was actually feeling. I was honouring my energy.
But a few days in I’m all “OK process, wrap it up. I need to be doing something productive here”
But my process did not wrap it up.
In fact, on Friday, the day I did the Holding Space For What’s Next To Emerge class, I had my list of things to catch up on and instead I took 2 naps.
I felt great DURING the class because I always feel great when I connect with people in that way.
But the rest of the day I was still… meh.
And then Saturday I woke up feeling clear-headed and inspired. I rode my bike downtown, got my favourite doughnut for breakfast, and went to my favourite park (which has a TON of seating overlooking the river - it’s actually a bar at night but gorgeous and quiet in the mornings).
I wrote and wrote and wrote. Blog posts, emails, ideas for new projects.
It’s like all week I WAS incubating.
And then when it was time, it was a time. And everything just poured out.
This kind of trusting our creative flow is one of the things we need, if we want to create a new world.
The way our world is run on the Monday-Friday calendar and being productive on a schedule is counter to our actual human nature.
Also, we only have weekends because enough unions fought for them that they became the cultural norm. We can create new cultural norms. This is literally what humans have always done.
Humans created the huge corporations that have become corrupt and are now holding our economic and political systems hostage. They are even holding our entire future hostage by refusing to address climate change in any meaningful way.
We can destroy this and create something new.
We do it all the time.
This fall, my husband and I are going to tear apart the workspace he built for me when we got married. You know the cute one in the background of my videos? It will be GONE.
We’re going to use that wood to build a wall to create a new bedroom in the loft, in the space where my workspace was.
There’s more to this story, which I will share in time.
I just wanted to share - we can tear apart the things we built for A LOT of different reasons. Maybe because they didn’t turn out like we’d hoped. Maybe because time marches on and we change and want something different. Maybe because they turn corrupt and threaten to destroy the world.
We are the creators. We are the ones with the power.
But we need to give ourselves the thing we need in order to access that power:
- Feel your feelings.
- Give yourself space to process your thoughts and ideas.
- Take your dreams seriously and pursue them.
- Be open to the GROWTH and HEALING that your dreams are pushing you towards.
I’m doing all of this every day in Dream Book You are always welcome to join me there.
It’s time.
(I went to visit my favourite peony patch yesterday, and was so inspired by how it FEELS to be surrounded by peonies I made a peony mediation for blooming + radiance - you can get it on Instagram)
What do we do with this?
Whatever you are feeling is 100% valid.
I’m Canadian, I’m not in the US, but still - I feel it. It was a big step on the march towards authoritarianism that is happening everywhere.
So many people have mentioned to me lately that they’ve been reading up about different forms of collapse and what’s happening in the society - what’s happening to the people - during the collapse.
For the most part - life goes on. It gets more stressful, there are more and more disruptions, but we carry on with everything we can carry on with.
There is no sudden move from one way of living into the next, there is this messy transition where you’re not even sure, for sure, that you are in a transition.
And on top of this - all of the normal life stuff.
And on top of that - all of the creative dreamer stuff. You still have stuff you want to create and do!!
It’s a lot. And so: Whatever you are feeling, however you are coping, is 100% valid.
I still believe that giving yourself space to have your feelings, including your feelings about what you wish was happening AKA your dreams, is key to navigating this time.
Deeply processing your feelings always brings you to new possibilities for how to respond.
I think this will save us.
It’s not the ONLY thing that will save us. But it’s one of the things, and it’s the thing I am equipped to support you in doing, so I am going to keep doing that.
The replay from the Holding Space For What’s Next To Emerge class is available here.
Grab your journal and give yourself an hour to explore.
This replay will be available here until July 1. After July 2 it will only be available inside Dream Book.
What you need:
- One hour of time (or just do the first 30 minutes if you're really short on time)
- Your journal
What you'll get:
- Energy clearing meditation to give you some space away from stress, overwhelm and whatever else you are carrying, to give you space to really BE with yourself.
- Space to process some of your thoughts and feelings about everything that is happening in an atmosphers of "everything you are thinking and feeling is valid, you are not wrong for feeling how you feel AND you don't have to like how you're feeling"
- A new perspective on what you can do next to support yourself
[replay no longer available here - Dream Book members can access it here]
Join me in Dream Book to keep exploring!
Your Dream Book membership gives you access to ALL of my classes, plus live calls every month and the Dream Book journaling system, which helps you navigate the inner and outer work of following your dream - step by step.
I put on a favourite summer dress and went out to do some favourite summer things this morning and... nothing worked as planned.
Other cyclists on the path were so obnoxious!
I forgot my noise canceling headphones and nearly lost my mind in the din of 20 people all talking over each other on the coffee shop patio.
I did get to my favourite peony patch in the park, but it was so full of mosquitos I couldn't stay.
I am thinking about how complicated it is to hold a vision for your future while navigating reality.
Like I wrote yesterday - I feel like my soul is calling me towards a brighter future than the rest of me can see. How do I move towards a thing I cannot see? Especially when every step that I CAN see on this path feels impossible?
This is what creative dreaming has always been.
AND
It's all more complicated right now because you don't dream in a vacuum, you dream in the world.
Exploring "what's next" is actually a jumble of intersecting layers.
As the world changes - how are you feeling called to change with it?
How have you been forced to change and how are you coping with this?
What's been stirred up in you that needs tending to?
What new dreams are being born, and how can you give them some space (even if pursuing them feels impossible right now)?
It's a lot.
AND
NOT exploring any of this only keeps us stuck in it.
Holding Space For What's Next To Emerge is a 1 hour meditation + journaling class (and it's free!)
Meditation to make some space for your thoughts and feelings about all of this.
Journaling to help get it out of your head and onto the page where it's easier to sort it out.
Conversation about what comes up to feel less alone in it all.
The call details go out to everyone on my email list. Sign up here. (If you're already signed up, the call details are in your inbox now.)
The replay will be available for anyone on my blog for 1 week. After that, it will only be available to Dream Book members.
Join me and Heidi Straube (@innerpathphoto) on Monday to talk about following your creative dreams and living a nomadic life!
Heidi is the expert on this and I can’t wait to spend this time digging into her stories.
We'll be going live at 12 pm noon, Monday June 20 on my Instagram account.
Go to this post (from your smart phone) to set a notification for when we go live.
New Class: Holding Space For What's Next
This is a 1 hour journaling + meditation class for making some space to explore what's next for you. NOTE: This is free to anyone to attend! The Zoom link will go out to everyone on my email list - sign up here if you're not on it.
Time: Friday, Jun 24, 2022 01:00 PM Winnipeg - North America, Central (find this in YOUR time zone here)
**The replay will be freely available for 1 week after the class. After that, it will only be available inside Dream Book.
There is just so much happening.
The world is changing. And we are changing. And our dreams are changing.
It's a lot (as in a lot to navigate and it's easy to get overwhelmed/exhausted).
AND
It's a lot (as in a LOT of new possibilities being born and a LOT to be excited about!!).
There is so much MAGIC and FREEDOM in this
Together, we'll tap into that magic and freedom and explore what it is you need to be doing, to create + hold space for "what's next" for you.
I'm planning on a 1 hour call, but lately our conversations on live classes have been FIRE and so we may go to 90 minutes.
If you can't be on time, plan to work with the recording. This work is a journey, and if you're not starting at the beginning it's not going to work.
But if you need to leave early that's fine - you can catch the rest on the replay.
I’m sitting in a coffee shop full of plants. I’m the only one here.
The coffee shop is off to the side of a bakery - which is full of people baking in a wood fired oven which keeps the whole place SO warm and then with the plants everywhere it’s like being in a conservatory, making this my favourite winter coffee + journaling spot.
In the summer I’m usually outside, but it’s rainy today so here I am. I’m sitting at a bar by the window, watching people on the busy street outside.
I had a disorienting night of weird dreams, waking up and also dreaming of waking up but still sleeping.
I feel disoriented in my life.
I lay in bed asking myself what I wanted and decided to come here and journal. Once I looked at my Year of Dreams I saw that I had a lot to journal about. I’d been filling my pages with questions and ideas about what’s next.
I feel un-moored without my routines. As a highly sensitive person, my routines are one of the things that keep me settled in my body enough to hear my intuition and act on my creativity.
The pandemic destroyed so many of my routines and then this last winter I discovered a new form of magic, having ALL of the space without routine or structure.
Anyway. Now I am here - having let go of so many routines that I don’t feel interested in picking back up AND ALSO remembering the magic of routines and how they fuel creative flow and progress AND ALSO feeling really interested in FINDING OUT what’s next for me vs PLANNING what’s next for me.
I’m 48.
A lot of my dreams this last year have been thinking about who and how I want to be in my 50s which doesn’t need to be different than my 40s of course - unless I want it to be.
Which I do.
I feel ready to stretch and grow but in the past that always meant that I had a clear picture of WHO and WHAT I was growing into.
And right now I feel OPEN about all of that. Which is SO thrilling and terrifying.
There are a lot of metaphors in the life coaching/new age/wellness communities about planting seeds and how a tomato can’t be a rose, what you plant is what you get.
What if I am actually a lot more magical than all of that?
What if my brain and it’s clear intentions were only in my way?
What if I don’t need to plan? What if I need to LISTEN?
Since 2015 when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its findings in Canada, I have been learning about colonization and white supremacy, which are systems I have lived in my whole life without seeing them for what they are.
Which led me to see the entire new age, life coaching and wellness communities in a different light.
Which led me to feel differently about my own work.
Which led me to re-work my work and create a space that can hold the bigger questions and invite in a more soul-truth aligned kind of growth. (Which is Dream Book)
Which is what brought me here, I think.
To a place where holding intentions feels so small. Like a way to try to control the mystery.
To a place where I’ve let it go.
To a place where I feel ready to LISTEN as my primary way of PLANNING.
Which is wild - in my late 20s my best friend nicknamed me “Planny McPlanster”.
I had this idea that the best growth grew you into who you WANTED to be. Brought you the life you WANTED.
And I still believe that we need to be better at trusting our desires for a lot of reasons.
But now I see how SMALL that is.
To only dream about the life I can visualize for myself.
I mean yes I always spoke about how your dream can be much better than what you’re thinking, about how the inner growth will nurture you in ways you can’t see now, about how it WILL be different and better than what you picture.
But now - I guess I see the next level of that.
Our dreams are a light on the path, for sure.
But that path is leading to something much more expansive than what we dream of.
AND ALSO we are right here in the heart of the mystery right now. We are so creative and powerful right now.
What if we are MORE creative and powerful when we're in the mystery of it all, and not trying to manifest, create, or control the outcome?
Which feels like a different way of holding our dreams.
AND ALSO a different relationship to the mystery.
I'm offering a free Zoom class on Holding Space For What's Next To Emerge.
It's happening on June 24th at 1:00 pm, Central (North America).
Details to come. Everyone on my email list will get an invite to the live class. The will be a replay available on my blog - for 1 week only. Then the replay will only be accessible to Dream Book members.
It's Sunday morning.
I'm sitting on my chaise lounge with my laptop, my cat Bear, and a latte. It rained last night, and I opened up both big windows upstairs and the most delightful breeze is flowing through the loft with that it-just-rained smell.
My husband is asleep upstairs. We are still living apart, but spending more and more time together, and planning to live together again within the next year.
The time apart was so needed. In March 2021, when he moved out, I was ready to lose my mind if I didn't get some of alone time.
And now, with the magic of HAVING SPACE, and also a great couple's therapist, I'm excited to live with him again.
Dreams are not static.
We don't create a dream come true in our lives, and then curl up in it and live there forever, never feeling sad or lost or unfulfilled ever again.
We're alive and our dreams are alive and we grow and change and they grow and change and it can get very complicated at times.
My loft condo was SUCH a big dream for me. I bought it in 2011 - my first year of self employment with the Creative Dream Incubator.
A big modern open space with HUGE sunny windows. This felt like THE perfect place for ALL of my dreams.
And it was. At that time. But I kept growing and changing and then I had a husband and 4 step-kids and the big loft stopped feeling big, lol!
But it's still more than a home, it's a DREAM.
There have been times when I was very frustrated that I couldn't sell it and move on to the next thing. But a shift in the real estate market for condominiums made that extremely complicated. There have been times when I was glad I kept it. There are times when I want to keep it AND get a new home with my husband. And there are times when I am ready to take the financial loss, sell it and move on to the next thing.
When I last wrote about my loft I got so much advice and almost... well it felt like I was being roasted.
My inbox was overwhelmed with people being upset about the choices I was making. Which is wild, since I 100% trust myself to make the right choices for me. I'm so good at this, I help other people do this for a living!
But, people project online. A lot. We only see bits and pieces of each other's lives, fill in the banks with our own projections, and then it's easy to get upset when someone we like does something we don't.
Anyway, I'm sitting here on this gorgeous morning and I still have no clue what to do with this dream house of mine.
My husband and I have lots of ideas for ways to renovate it to make it work better.
And there are other options too, of course.
We'll figure it out....
But I do this - creative dreaming - for a living. So shouldn't I KNOW?
I have ALL of the tools. Shouldn't I never get stuck trying to figure out my next moves? Shouldn't I never make a mistake or mis-step?
It's easy to go there.
And loads of people in the life coaching/Life Your Best Life Industry really are out there saying that with the right tools and support, your life can be perfect. Always. Forever.
And some of these people become such huge corporations with so much impact that it's easy to feel convinced that if your life is not consistently perfect it's because YOU are doing something wrong, and you need to buy a better solution.
That's really shitty. It's the collision of unethical marketing with life coaching/personal growth and there's a LOT of it out there. And it taps into a lot of unconscious beliefs we have from growing up in this capitalist/colonialist/individualist/supremacist culture.
But we don't have to go there. We can shine a light on what's actually happening there, and then we can choose a different path.
Creative Dreaming is about STAYING ENGAGED with your dreams, and your healing and growth.
It's not about imagining that you can control the universe.
Or that being alive doesn't come with a FUCK TON of uncertainty, vulnerability and pain.
It's not about trying to AVOID the realities of life on earth.
It's about STAYING ENGAGED with your dreams/healing/growth/creativity/joy/values/inner truth which is a much deeper magic than "living a perfect life" could ever offer.
So here I am FEELING that magic.
Knowing what I want in the larger sense but also having no clue about what the details or timing will look like and letting it be what it is AND ALSO accepting that I could be in this place for a while AND ALSO - underneath everything, trusting the process.
(And THAT - trusting the process - is a valuable skill to learn which comes from engaging in the practice of staying engaged)
We can feel this magic WHILE being in the process, without a solution or fairy-tale ending in sight, just a commitment to stay on the path.
I'm going to stay here. Lost. Uncertain. Feeling my way.
I am following my creative flow. Starting BIG new projects. Going all in with self care as replenishment from a difficult few years.
I am going to put the LIVE Creative Genius Planning Sessions on hold for now - the ones I do Monday mornings on Instagram. Instead, I am sharing shorter meditations - like this one, for calling in what you need for the week.
I am planning a new free class to happen soon (if you're signed up for my emails you'll get an invite).
And exploring the idea of offering a few small group coaching programs for other people who are navigating deep change, or starting new projects - so we can do this together.