Welcome to Common Shapes! This week’s episode is about the art of beginning AKA the moment just before the sunrise of our projects when anything and everything is possible.
“The first step of beginning is to dream up all of the things that you want to begin. And it is my hope that once you start to see clearly all of the beautiful things that you want to bring into the world that you will feel a sense of desire and hope around their existence.”
Tune in to hear me share
🪜 Stories of my many creative beginnings
🪜 My favorite visioning process
🪜 Reflections on imposter syndrome
🪜The magic of starting small
Then grab my free Creative Ideation Portal and start dreaming up your own beginnings today.
Links
🔑 Get the Creative Ideation Portal
🔑 Sign up for my weekly newsletter, Monday Monday
🔑 Join Flexible Office, my digital co-working space
🔑 Sign up for my next class, The Art of Beginning
Find all these links & more at marleegrace.space/commonshapes
Want more support for getting your ideas and projects off the ground? Join me for class on Sunday May 28 Live on Zoom (recorded for those who can’t make it live)
-
00:00
Hello, and welcome to common shapes, a podcast about practices, systems and rituals for creative life. This is also a podcast about building business ecosystems that align with our core values. It's about marketing, as a creative practice, rather than something that we dread, and never want to do. This is a podcast about friendship, and collaboration and figuring out how to make money from our art and the things that we do and the things that we love. It's about hobbies and passions, and how we pay attention to our neighbors in both the digital sphere and in real life. I'm Marlee grace, most people call me Mar, I am a writer, I am a dancer, I am a quilter. And I am a teacher of many things, mostly the art of improvisational quiltmaking. I teach about writing books about being devoted to our creative practice, how we navigate devotion and discipline. And many of you have taken my newsletter class. I've been sending a digital newsletter for the past over 10 years now weekly for the last six. And I love talking about emails, and marketing and sharing our work and having an offering that is an email newsletter. So you'll definitely hear me talk about that on this podcast. If you're interested in becoming a reader, you can find my newsletter at Marlee grace.substack.com. It's called Monday, Monday, it comes out every Monday, it is free. Every Monday has over 22,000 weekly readers at the time of this recording, it's been a featured substack publication. It's one of the top art in illustration, sub stacks. I'm extremely proud of it. I love to write it. And I love to talk about newsletters. So a lot of what we'll talk about in this podcast is really about how I bring my work into the world. So much of what I love to teach about is not waiting to not feel afraid to share things. But to do it anyways. Right? I didn't necessarily sit down to record this podcast today and think I am completely ready now to record this podcast and put it into the world, right? Acting my way into right thinking a little bit borrowed from the 12 step world. But I really love that idea of you know, I sit down to do the thing. And that's what brings me into the self esteem that I'm looking for so often before I do the thing. But I really find that is the action that helps us get to the thing. So I am so delighted that you're listening to this very first episode of common shapes. We're at the beginning, and what better way to be at the beginning than to talk about the beginning. I've created many things in my own life. I have made books and dances and quilts and online classes and newsletters, and other podcasts and all sorts of things. Many of you have been listening to me podcast for almost a decade. I started in 2014 when I had the half company podcast and have company was a space that I ran from 2012 to 2016. It started in a camper and transitioned into a storefront that was a shop and an art gallery and an artist's residency and the podcast was me interviewing each of the resident artists. And I did that using the Voice Memo app of my iPhone. And I share that to say don't wait to have the tools that you think you need to do the thing, right? You don't need an art studio to be an artist. You don't need a microphone to make a podcast. I think we so often think
oh, I just if I just had x, y and z, then I could do the thing. And I know this because I've experienced this myself with so many different things. I think I thought for so long that because I didn't feel like a professional quilter or because I didn't have training in how to sew a straight line. I couldn't teach other people to quilt, but that is not true. In fact, many people who are excellent expert quilters love to come to my quilt class because they want to learn to break free I have technique and construction, and learn to make a quilt without rulers and without rules and no patterns. So, on today's episode, I just want to look at the art of beginning, the beginning of the beginning, the dawn before the beginning, right, this moment just before the sunrise of our projects and everything that we're doing. And I'll share a little bit about my own process of beginning. And, you know, for me, this podcast is really an expression and an extension of my teaching. And I want it to be a place that I can share everything I've learned in the past 10 plus years of being self employed, what has gone well, and what is exciting to me, and what's exciting to me today, and I will be more than happy to share the mistakes, or the failures or the hurdles that have led me to where I am today is sort of in hopes that you can learn from them, and maybe find yourself in a more easeful way
06:19
I want to share about a guide that I made that is available for you, for free. It's called the creative ideation portal, you can go to Marlee Grace dot space, slash common shapes and find it there. That is also where everything lives for this podcast. So if you're wanting to find show notes, and things that I mentioned, and future episodes, and past episodes, those will all live at Marly Grace dot space slash common shapes. So the creative ideation portal is something I created to organize and vision, your projects. And so everything I talked about in this episode, you can grab that guide, and it's sort of going to help you maybe organize some of your thoughts. So the next time you're at a computer, check it out, download it, and it brings you through three days of sort of looking at your project. So these first few episodes of the common shapes podcast, I'll sort of walk us through the creative ideation portal, and hopefully help you to birth your beautiful projects into the world. Alright, so as a listener of common shapes, I invite you to act as if you believe that your work is worthy of being put into the world. So in flexible office, the digital co working space that I host, we have a rule number one, which is that we act as if we feel ready to put our work into the world. So I mentioned this earlier, right, this feeling of like, I need to feel ready to put my work in the world, I need it to feel like shiny and perfect and ready to go. And so a big value of all things Marlee grace, and a big value of this podcast is anti perfectionism. Another thing I'll say about this episode, and every episode of this podcast is take what you like and leave the rest. I love to quote my friend Amelia, who hosts pony sweat, the fiercely non competitive aerobics class, and she says, fuck the moves, right. So she gives you this choreography for you to do and it's like, if you don't like doing it, or you need to like mold, something for your body to be able to do the moves, like fuck the moves, do whatever you need to do. So take what you like and leave the rest. Fuck the moves. I really want you to just shape whatever I'm saying, for your own work and your own life, acting as if we feel ready to just put our work into the world. And so the first step of beginning is to dream up all of the things that you want to begin. And it is my hope that once you start to see clearly off the beautiful things that you want to bring into the world that you will feel a sense of desire and hope around their existence. I usually suggest people set a timer for seven minutes. This is something I do when I teach. It's something that's in the creative ideation portal. If you're driving or you're doing something you want to keep listening, you don't necessarily need to stop this podcast and set this timer for seven minutes although if you want to great, but I always say just take a pen and paper out or open a blank Google Doc or a document in notion and just write everything down that you want to do hobbies per projects, passions, business
ideas, anything that you want to do. So when I make my list, I'm usually, you know, right now my list has to do with like, getting clear on my debt, right? I talk a lot about how I filed seven years of taxes at once. And that'll be a story for another episode, I'm sure. But taking the time to look at like, what are my some of my money goals, I have goals around gardening and things around my home. And I have goals around this podcast, or my newsletter, or my next book that I'm writing, right. And so I just write everything out just lists and lists and lists, I love making lists, you will find, if you don't know already about me, I love the art of list making. It's really important to me, it's how I vision, it's how I dream. And it's how I get really clear on what projects I want to focus on and think about. And so after I make my list of like, all of the projects I want to do, I usually pick three, and then I sort of focus on those three for about a week or so. And, you know, you might want to pick one that the most exciting to you, one that maybe has to do with earning on this podcast, we're not going to shy away from like talking about money and thinking about where money comes from and where we want it to come from. Right. And so thinking about which of these projects might move the needle forward on my earning. And why do I want to earn I think is another great question that we'll be asking ourselves as me as host you as listener, and then one that's maybe tied to a hobby or separate from your job. And in 2018, I want to share you know, I wrote a book called How to not always be working. And it is often a joke given to me or that I make towards myself that I should read that book. Because it's so easy for me to sort of weave everything I do into my job or into my work. And so I want to just say, I am looking at things through, you know, an anti capitalist lens and being critical of systems of oppression and work addiction and the things that can get in the way of rest and ease. So throughout thinking about your projects, and what you want to bring into the world. Keep an eye on that keep an eye on am I trying to turn too many things into money making ideas, am I not willing to earn enough on some of my ideas, you know, take an easy approach to looking at it. But that's just something that's on the forefront of my mind right now and something I'm thinking a lot about. So I invite you into the space where we're dreaming, and we're visioning. I want to start by sharing this quote from Bell Hooks, which says, To be truly visionary, we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality, while simultaneously imagining possibilities beyond that reality. And so I share that, when we're making these lists, we are going past our current reality. And we're also staying rooted in where we are today. Once you start to get clear on everything you want to bring into the world, it can feel really overwhelming. We can really feel like oh my god, do I even like any of this stuff. Am I good at any of this stuff, right? We're going to start really being in like the imposter syndrome of it all. And I also just want to offer to us some of my own thoughts about imposter syndrome, because I think there's usually two things that are coming up. One of them is more research is needed. And I want to share the story of another sort of beginning of mine. It's actually really beautiful that the day I'm recording this episode, I got a letter that is from the University of Nebraska and Lincoln that says that I was accepted into their quilt studies graduate certificate program that starts this fall. It's remote, I'm not moving. But it's really exciting to me because a quilt is something human which is my class I've been teaching for the last two and a half years, I decided to take a break from it. And I didn't know why. But I just knew I needed a second and I knew that something else needed to come through me. And part of it was that I knew I had more to learn to be a teacher. And I saw this program and I applied to it and I got in and today I'm like, Oh, I can't wait to teach quote class. Again, I can't wait to go back to teaching about quilting and about the craft of quilting and the art of quilting. And so that's to say, my imposter syndrome sometimes. You know, it's mean, first of all, the voice of like you are an imposter is the inner asshole. That is just so mean. And so we can talk back to that voice and say, Hey, what are you trying to say? Because it might just be saying, Hey, you might need to do a little more research on this thing before you put it into the world. Or,
15:35
I definitely noticed a voice of imposter syndrome around making a podcast, like my microphone wasn't fancy enough, or I'm going to stumble over my words, and this isn't going to make any sense. And in some ways I have to accept like, this podcast will make sense to the people who it is for. And may I pray that it is to be found by the people who need it the most, I don't need to overly think about it making too much sense. I mean, I want it to make sense. You know, it's like it that's the dance of imposter syndrome, right is like, how do we greet? Whatever it's asking us, which is usually like, I want to put work into the world that is worthy and is deep and that has been taking good care of. But I also know that my perfectionism will stop me from putting things into the world. So I, I invite you as we're in this dance, right? We're acting as if, but we're also looking at what are the voices in my head telling me, but really, like, what are the voices really asking of us. And sometimes it is to go deeper. And sometimes it's to be like, Oh, imposter syndrome voice thank you so much for stopping by. But I actually am going to record this podcast and put it into the world. And trust that in whatever form it takes, it will be good enough for the people. I want to say that as your host, my beginnings are as a dancer. So in 2010, I graduated with a BFA in dance from the University of Michigan, and I love dance, I love to teach dance, I love to think about dance. But dance is also a very small part of my income. If anything, I think we're talking less less than 5% every year. If that. However, improvisation, as a tool for composition, is something I learned first in the dance classroom, in the dance studio. And it's something I bring in to my quilting class, into newsletter class into how I write my newsletter, how I do everything is this spontaneous, improvisational making? My beginning is as a dancer. But I have little beginnings as a writer as a quilter, that are all sort of sprinkled throughout. But it really all comes back to shape making of the body and how I translate that into my writing. And so when you're making these projects, and you're thinking about things, the other thing to really think about is, you know, I'm a big believer in calling ourselves what we are right. I am an artist, I am a dancer, I am a writer. And it's so interesting, because dance can often be the thing I get the most like caught up in like, Am I really a dancer, and it's the thing I have the most maybe things on paper that would prove I end the thing, right? For some reason, it's easy for me to call myself a quilter. It's like I've made quilts. I teach quilt class, I'm a quilter with no credentials in quiltmaking, right? But with dance, it's really easy for me to question it because I'm not actively in a dance practice as much as I am in a writing practice or a quilting practice. I'm not I've never been in a dance company. Right? I have these ideas, especially I think going to school for dance. I have these ideas of like what a dancer really is. And so I can question that, even though I have a college degree in dance. I had a dance project called personal practice where I posted dance videos on Instagram self published a book around it that was written about in the New York Times dance magazine, Vanity Fair. And yet still, I think, am I a dancer. And so this is where it ties into impostor syndrome, and thinking about how we question ourselves, and we question what we call ourselves but I encourage you to call yourself what it is You are moving towards. So if you are moving towards artistry, call yourself an artist. If you are writing a newsletter, even if you're an herbalist who writes a newsletter, once a month, I invite you to consider calling yourself a writer. Right? These are the things we're going to be playing with here in the common shapes podcast. So once I'm am clear on my big list of projects, all the things that I want to bring into the world, I've picked three, I want to spend some time thinking about the why of each of those things, right? This is what keeps me on track. As someone with ADHD, who is also bipolar, as someone with five planets in Gemini, there's a lot going on up here, right? As I'm recording, this Mercury is retrograde. I was famously born during Mercury Retrograde, I'm also Virgo rising. So I often feel like during a retrograde I'm really sort of in it don't quote me on some of these astrology things. But I do know that there's a lot going on up here. And so I think of all the things I want to bring into the world, I pick three, and then I go to the why. And I named some of those like
identity markers. I'm also a recovering alcoholic. I've been sober for 12 years. I'm queer, I'm non binary. There's a lot of things right that sometimes pull me from my attention. Right? A lot of this podcast is going to be me thinking about researching about talking about how do we reclaim our attention? How do we begin? And how do we finish? That's what I'm thinking about. That's what I'm really here to sort of look at with you. And knowing the why behind my projects is what keeps me really in them. It's what keeps me devoted, right. That's where I talk about that, from discipline to devotion is one of my online classes. And I named it that because sometimes being disciplined is not enough, right? I do my morning pages every morning. But then sometimes suddenly, a week goes by and I haven't done them. And I can so quickly be so mean to myself and just be like, Oh, I can't believe I didn't do my morning pages. I need to be disciplined. And instead what helps me resume that practice or that ritual is thinking about why am I devoted to my morning pages, because they bring me closer to myself, because they give me insights into my projects and ideas because it grounds me, it routes me in daily ritual. It clears my brain, right? Those are the whys of why I do my morning pages. And so the three projects I've been focusing on are my house projects, writing my next book and making a kitchen garden, write a garden with little herbs for the kitchen. And then I have these much, much bigger projects. But those are just that's a good example of like three small things. So I might take my next book, for example, and write out the whys like why am I writing this book? And I'll get into more and more about what the next book is. Maybe I'm right now in this day, I'm a little bit like what's the next book right? So you might even pick one that you're like, what exactly is the thing? You know, when I was thinking about the why of this podcast, so much of it was, I want other artists to feel less alone in sharing their work and talking about their work and thinking about their work. I want artists to feel at ease when they're taking time off. I want artists to feel connected to each other. And I don't want artists to feel bad marketing their work or their projects or their ideas. And so when I get clear on the why it helps me to sit down and do the thing. Right with my house projects, I often think about hosting people, and how sweet it's going to feel for people to be in my purple bathroom or my yellow kitchen. And it's also allowed to do those things because I feel good in my purple bathroom and I feel good in my yellow kitchen. You know, a lot of what I teach about and talk about is about being of service, and how our art is naturally of service to other people. And I also will pause to say it doesn't all have to always be so deep. You can have things on your list of projects that you want to bring into the world that are just for you and it can be both it's like I want to have a small kitchen garden to like have my hands in dirt and be connected to the earth and this lands that I'm stewarding and I want to eat dill because I love dill and I want to plant greens because I Want to make a salad. And I just want to because I want to. So play with that a little bit play with like, meaning making and removing so much of the depth from everything that we do. So once you have spent some time thinking about the why of each of these projects, I want you to start making little lists of things to move the needle forward. So
25:35
for writing my book, maybe I want to commit to writing for an hour, three days a week. So often for me, I know I can jump to like an I'm gonna write an hour every single day, when it's like I'm not writing at all. And then there's that middle of like, maybe I could pick one day a week to write for an hour. But it's like, no, I have to write every single day for an hour. You know, this is where Julia Cameron can get in our heads a little bit, right, she's so like, every day I write three pages of mourning pages, or like, every day, I write three pages of my novel. And I'm such a believer in doing things every day. And it's like, if I'm not doing them every day, jumping all the way to doing something every day doesn't always work for me. Sometimes it really, really does. And that's awesome. But sometimes it's like, I just need to start small. So you can start small
with these. But it might be like, I'm going to research this project for one hour a week. My best advice is after you listen to this podcast episode, maybe carve out an hour or so to look at one of these projects in the face, to really pick one project and just think about it, just just take that creative ideation portal, that three day guide, and just move your projects through it and see what happens. See what comes up, see what kinds of to do lists you can make to move it forward. And we're gonna keep talking about how to share about it, how to talk about it what to do, right. But this is where we start, we start with the visioning, we start with the dreaming, and we let ourselves do that. We let ourselves believe that the world has room for your projects and your work. It's so easy to start to be like, everybody has a newsletter, and everybody has a podcast, and everybody has a book. And it's like, yeah, but do you yet? Maybe not. And maybe it's time. It's like, yes, the world is saturated with art, but what a gift. What a gift to add more art to the world that we live in. So as you continue thinking about how to put your projects in the world, I also want you to think about accountability, whether it's joining a co working group, or picking a friend that you touch base with before you write in the morning, or a book club or something that you're a part of, that you can talk to other people and be saying, Hey, listen, I'm struggling with this thing. And I want to pay more attention to it. Do you want to join me? Maybe you want to also start your own like 30 days of blank. I don't know, maybe you are a ceramicist. And you want to be like 30 days of hand, clay pots or something. Maybe you want
to make a pot every day for 30 days, I do think that there's something to be said about these little accountability containers, right. The question I might ask is what is the common shape that I want to make? That has to do with my project? Right? It's like thinking about things in shapes, I think changes everything in these pots on the stove, right? We have all these different pots on the stove, all these different projects and all these containers that things are going to exist in. So on the next episode, we're going to look at what are the containers that can hold all of these projects? What are the shapes that our offerings are starting to make in the world?
And how do we really make a beginning. So for today, just dream just dream all of this up, just start thinking about what does all of this look like? And in our next episode, we'll talk about building those containers and what that looks like. Thank you so much for listening to common shapes. Thank you for listening to the very first episode. I'm so grateful that you're here and that you're listening grab the creative ideation portal that Marlee Grace dot space slash common shapes. That's also where you can find the show notes. I want to thank the team that makes this podcast possible. Our music is by salt breaker Our graphics are by Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, and it's edited by softer sounds studio. Go forth. May you be abundant in your ideas. May you be prolific in your creations. May you be guided by spirit and your own goodwill and good ideas. I will talk to you on the next episode of common shapes
Follow along on Instagram
Subscribe to my weekly newsletter Monday Monday