Day 25- Joy is The Justice We Give Ourselves

Today we're going to revisit the old Cliffs Notes From a Curious Mind and  discuss 7 Things I have learned, loved, listened to, and/or labored over in the past several days/weeks!

Here are today's 7 Things:

1) The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp

2) Get a HOBBY

3) The Road To Tender Hearts (audio book)

4) Counter Weights

5) Joy is the Justice We Give Ourselves (J Drew Lanham)

6) Touching Grass (among many other things)

7) From Wounded to Wise

Welcome to DAY TWENTY FIVE of our new 30-day COMMUNITY PROJECT where we make something with our hands every day in order to improve our mental health. We all realize that creativity heals...it's time to put that knowledge into action.

These episodes will exist here, marked with the days numbered, in order for you to follow along at any speed that you like. Miss a day? Doesn't matter. Just pick up right where you left off and keep making things. These episodes will give us all some accountability, but if you need more, pair up with a partner. It really does help!

Join our creative community by making something today, whether it's for five minutes or several hours—your brain will thank you. Let's do this thing together and turn all of this sh*t into something beautiful!

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Transcript

1) The Creative Habit (Twyla Tharp)

2) Get A Hobby!

3) The Road To Tender Hearts

4) Counterweights And Micro Joys

5) Joy is the Justice We Give Ourselves

6) Touching Grass (Among Other Things)

7) From Wounded To Wise

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to day 25 of our 30-day project that started back in July, and we are now in April. As you can see, it started off as one idea and it has morphed into something completely different where I let go of the reins and I said, you know what, this is not happening in 30 days. I'm going to let this play out and see where it takes us. So instead of talking about making things with our hands for mental health during this time in the world, I'm gonna switch things up again. So today is going to be another Cliff's Notes from A Curious Mind, which is basically an abbreviated and hopefully thought-provoking episode that's going to feature the top seven things that I have learned, loved, listened to, and or labored over in the past several days or in this case, weeks. Number one, I'm going to talk about a book that I haven't really spoken about much, but I think is a must-read for any person who is creative, looking to be more creative, looking to open doors, what have you. And this is The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp. Twyla is an American choreographer and dancer, and she wrote this book on her creative habits. Her main belief is basically that creativity is not some like magical, mystical gift that is bestowed upon the few, but that it's actually a skill and it's built through preparing and having a routine, a creative routine, and discipline. Through that discipline comes the freedom of creating. And it's an amazing book, something that I think everybody should read. And one of my favorite parts of it is this quote. Well, it begins with this quote: Before you can think out of the box, you have to start with a box. She's actually being literal when she says this. She actually has boxes. She has these, like her whole, she has a whole room filled with boxes. When she's getting ready to create something, uh, a musical, a show, uh, anything. She gets a box for it. And she starts throwing things into these boxes. And she keeps them separated and organized and grouped together. She keeps research, sketches, notes, photos, clippings, anything, anything that relates to what she's planning on creating in these boxes. And she uses it as sort of like a an overcoming the fear of starting and just kind of gets this box together. That way she can just pull from it for inspiration whenever needed. Number two is called Get a Hobby. I did a screenshot of this. I don't know who said it. It says, if you want joy, get a hobby. If you want to go analog, get a hobby. If you want balance at work, get a hobby. If you want to find community, get a hobby. If you want to stop self-obsessing, get a hobby. If you want to put down your phone, get a hobby. And if you want to end the loneliness epidemic, help other people get a hobby. This one I love because it has so much to do with why I even started this 30-day project. We need hobbies, we need distractions, we need ways to find joy to weigh out all this crap that's going on around us, right? Number three, I want to talk about the book, The Road to Tender Hearts. I brought this up in the last episode when I had first started it, and I called it light and fluffy. And um then I quickly found out, oh my god, it is not light and fluffy. In the beginning, there are just warnings all over the place. So please look into that before you start it. But I listened to it on audio, which I would highly recommend. I think this book was really good on audio. It's one of my favorite books I have read so far. I loved it. I do think that the audio did lend a hand in that. So please do that. Check that out. So it starts out with a lot of dark stuff to set the stage, but I ended it just, oh my gosh, I don't want to give things away. It's just basically a road trip with an old man who has inherited two children who no longer have a family, and his daughter, who has had a major grudge against him for a long time, and they take this crazy road trip. And oh my gosh, it is beautiful, it is funny, it's sweet, it's endearing. And tender hearts is actually where they're going. It's a retirement community, so it's not. And also, my husband pointed out to me that in my last episode, it it sounded like I was doing a commercial for the Story Graph app and I wasn't. Um, I'm not being paid by them. I just really love the app and it's not owned by Amazon. And um, I just wanted to tell people about it. So I'm glad my husband made me aware of that. And uh on to number four. From number four, I want to talk about a conversation that I listened to on a podcast. I don't normally listen to Jen Hatmaker's podcast, but um the title popped up for me and I liked it. And I listened to it and was super inspired by the talk about counterweights. It's actually the name of a book by Shannon Martin, and she was talking about writing it. The full title is Counterweights: An Essential Practice for Holding Hope in a Heavy World. It is religious. I mean, I haven't read it, obviously, it's not out yet, but it is religious. I'm not particularly religious myself, but I'm also open to listening to people talk about things. So basically, her idea in writing this was all based on when she was a kid, she and her family lived on kind of like a working farm. It was like a tiny farm. And her dad was helping her figure out how to help the family and work on the farm. He said to her, When you have something really heavy to carry, the easiest way to carry it is to carry something just as heavy in your other hand. And he wasn't being symbolic. He was literally talking about buckets, but it stuck with her all through the years, and it ended up inspiring her to write this book. The whole talk was great, but just the picture for me of we've got this bucket in one hand of all of this stuff that we're carrying around. There's so much negativity in the world. There's there's just turmoil everywhere you turn. That's going in this heavy bucket in one hand. What are we gonna do to fill that other bucket? How do we find the joys, the moments of creativity, the micro joys? Micro joys are how we survive macro grief, right? Or one of my favorites, which is number five, Joy is the justice we give ourselves by J. Drew Lanham. That is huge. Joy is the justice we give ourselves in this world that is so unjust right now in so many ways, finding micro joys. That's the justice we can give to ourselves and to our families. I'm finding, you know, that the non-joyful bucket is pretty darn heavy lately, and it has been for a while. And this whole 30-day project is based on trying to fill that other bucket with some good things, with some hobbies, microjoys, curiosity, wonder, awe, whimsy, dancing. And number six is touching grass. I was semi-recently and very ironically told that I needed to touch grass, and I cannot even tell you what that conjured up in me. I was like, lady, you have no idea how much grass I touch every day, just trying to center myself. If anybody needs to be touching grass, it's you. But anyway, so touching grass, um, you know, it's something that I honestly, truly try to do every single day. I try to get grounded, I try to be in nature and just kind of calm the nervous system, stay clear of too much news or social media, all of that. But then as I was thinking about that, I actually wrote this on my Instagram too, but I was like, you know what? What about touching paper and pen, touching a paintbrush, touching gardening shears or cookie dough or guitar strings, piano keys, book pages, a camera shutter button, a chisel, sewing needle, scissors and glue, new soil in your hands. You know, the list just goes on and on. And once again, completely why I even started this 30-day project in the first place. Started it in July of 2025, thought I would get it done in 30 days, and I'm still here in April doing this. I'm allowing myself this time because it was sort of like think now, speak later. I'm not ready to speak right now. I'm going through this, I'm testing out that, I'm living through whatever. I'm just gonna speak later. And no matter how long this takes me to get to the 30 days, I know it's taking us somewhere. I know it's taking me somewhere. I hope it's taking some of you somewhere, somewhere good, somewhere enlightening, somewhere thought-provoking, you know? But it's all about filling that other bucket and trying to somehow get even close to somewhat of a balance. I mean, balance is definitely not attainable in this life, but as close as we can. And number seven is sort of like a door opener to something that I want to discuss a lot more in the future. And it's basically what I feel that I am currently moving into right now at this time in my life. I turned 50 in November, and there has been some shoring up that I've been doing in my life, really, really getting clear on who is a fountain, who is a drain. I don't really need a huge amount of friends. I don't need a big group to cruise with. I only, only, only want people who are positive and supportive, and that I want to be positive and supportive with, and that don't talk shit on people behind their backs and then hang out with them the next day and you know, yada, yada, yada, all that. So I'm naming number seven from wound to wisdom. That is what I've been going through. And I feel this huge opening right now, this huge opening of like, okay, I made the decision to get this nasty housewives type behavior out of my life. I have eradicated it. I will not allow it within my space. Absolutely zero tolerance for it anymore. And there's no anger connected to it. I'm not punishing anyone. I'm not like, oh, I'll get you. It is literally you be a fountain or we are done. This spurred from, you know, so many things that I have been working through over the last, I would say, since 2019, and just really waking up to some relational habits that I had that were not healthy, and trying to figure out, you know, how can I be the best friend possible? And how can I find the best people to surround myself with? And really, you gotta shore it up. Shore it up, people. If you want to move from wound to wisdom, you need to shore up your physical health, your your mental health, the the circle that you run with. Make it small and make it tight. If someone always has an issue with you, that's their issue. Bye-bye. And the whole idea of wound to wisdom is kind of like the healing is going to happen when you are at that place of identifying with who you want to become, who you want to bring into your life, the good things that you're attracting, rather than identifying with the suffering and the, oh, you did that to me back when, or you know. But it takes time. It takes time to go from the uncovering of all of the hurts, the past hurts that you have collected, and sifting through them, saying, Hey, did I have a fault in this, or what did that mean? Really going through that, and you're gonna be angry during that process. I was very angry during this process, but wound to wisdom, from wounded to wise, it's happening. I'm not fully there yet. I still have, you know, some anger. I don't know if that'll ever go away. But from wounded to wise, I just want to kind of plant that seed as number seven because I think that that is a huge thing that I want to focus on, along with books, authors. Um, and there's so much more to come when I am done with this 30 day project and I get into what my plans are because this spring renewal has brought me to a place where I know where I want to take this podcast. That is it for today. Those are my seven things. And in the meantime, stay curious.