Struggling to fit creativity into your busy life?
Daunted by your creative project?
Wondering if it’s all worth it?
Welcome to the Gentle Creative
My name is Cali Bird and I love to give gentle, encouraging advice on getting going with your creative project.
I help people find the time and courage to be creative alongside other things that you have to do (like work or take care of your family!) I’m guessing that you don’t have a trust fund or lots of servants so you are going to have to keep working and/or looking after your family while scratching that creative itch.
Let’s find a way for you to do your creative project in realistic bite-size chunks that fit around the other things you have to do in life.
If you want to write, or make music, or make art, jewellery or crafts (or whatever floats your creative boat) it is easy to get caught up in “will I make money from it?” or “am I good enough?” or “I’m too old to do that”.
Forget all of that rubbish. Get on and create in the best way that you can just for the sheer joy of doing it.
Next Steps…
If this sounds like just what you were looking for then here are some options for you:
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- Sign up in the box at the top of the page and get the Gentle Creative manifesto. You’ll get some great tips to help you bust through your fears and get creating now.
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- Buy the book: Don’t Give Up Your Day Job – Practical ways to lead a fulfilling life and still pay the mortgage. Click on the picture of the book and it will take you through to a website where you can purchase a copy. It’s only £8.99, is an easy read and contains a few exercises that will get you started on a project that will feed your soul.
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- Scroll down and have a read of some recent blogs.
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- Connect with me on Facebook and Twitter by using buttons below. I post daily inspiration and articles about creativity.
3 lessons I wish I’d learned as a 21 year old music student
It is over 30 years since I graduated as a music student. My final year was such a painful experience that I thought I would never play again. A big chunk of the final mark was awarded to our degree recital. I was a flautist and had been preparing for the recital for...
Can your divinity help your creativity?
I’m a Buddhist so you might find it a bit weird for me to talk about the concept of divinity. But this summer it has been my new favourite word. What is divinity? This depends on your religious and philosophical points of view. If you look up “divinity” in the...
Is it better to be half dead from exhaustion or half dead from not living?
You have a job and a family – and a passion for your creative project. You squeeze your creative activity into whatever gap you can find in your schedule whether that is on the train, on the toilet or when everyone else is watching Netflix. You forego social plans and...
Why do we demand perfection from ourselves?
Why do we want our work to be perfect? How is this quest for perfection working out for us? Why do we expect our work to be good, particularly if we are new to our craft? Perfection can stop you creating, make you throw your work in the trash and tells you that you...
The three most important lessons I have learned about creativity
I’ve been blogging consistently for two years now. Today I would like to share the three most important lessons I have learned in that time about creativity. Lesson 1: you can only control the inputs not the output I had been writing on Medium for a couple of...
Feel like giving up? This is the time to keep going
Have you ever had a project that felt so impossible that you just want to give up? You are so despondent that you no longer care about all the effort you have put in. Perhaps it hasn’t panned out the way you wanted it to, or it has taken much longer than you thought....
How this writer transitioned to part time work to have more time to write
This week I am proud to welcome writer Mark O'Loughlin to the Meet The Artist series. In the interview below Mark tells us how he transitioned from a full-time job, which didn't allow him much creative time, to part-time work. Mark now has a great balance of day job...
3 ways to tell the inner critic to f**k off and create anyway
There it is again. That voice in your head that tells you your art work is crap, or your writing is appalling or it’s not worth bothering. The inner critic is the same voice that tells you your creative ambitions are too scary and it is best if you stay in your safe...
Find out how this writer tackles multiple writing projects
This week I am very pleased to welcome Philip Whiteley to the Meet The Artist series. Philip is a seasoned writer whose day job is in corporate writing and ghost-writing. On the side he also writes novels. Despite being a professional writer he spent seventeen years...
What to do when you are daunted by your creative project
I sat in tears at my computer. Why was I doing this? Was it really necessary? Why had I even started it? Maybe I should abandon the idea. I was so daunted. The task in hand was building the home page for my new website. I am technically minded so it wasn’t beyond my...