Not your regularly scheduled programming 📆

Hello beautiful souls,

Today is 15 August, otherwise known as Ferragosto, or “August holidays” in Italian. In another timeline, I’d be on a boat somewhere off the coast of an Italian island, sun on my skin, salt in my hair.

In this one, I’m waking up groggy after a stubborn bout of insomnia, staying at my mom’s house in Nebraska for the month. I’m grateful to be here. I’m also cranky about missing the rest I knew I needed. All night I tried to coax my mind into stillness, reminding myself that ruminating on “what ifs” has never gotten me anywhere worth going.

Still, I tossed and turned, staring up at the ceiling. My eyes landed on the exact spot where, in high school, I once taped up a poster of Justin Bieber. I smiled at how much has changed since I last lived here… and how much hasn’t. Back then, I was an artist. I’m still an artist. (And I still love Biebs.)

As I mentioned in my last newsletter, I’m at this exhilarating place in my life where I get to choose my own direction. And yet, the old thought patterns still sneak in: the doubts, the “you’re not good enough”s, the “who do you think you are?”s, the “you’re really doing this?”s.

Yesterday I was proudly showing my friend’s dad a mural I had designed and painted last week and he said with a bit of disbelief, “Wow, Holly, I didn’t even know you were artistic like that.” That response really opened my eyes to how small I have been my entire life about showing the world my art. How truly afraid I’ve been to be seen as an artist. 

I spent the beginning of this year healing while deciding how I wanted to move forward with my life. I didn’t realize how much mental and physical energy that took for the fog to finally lift. Now that it has, and as I’ve been reclaiming this role as artist once and for all, that little capital ‘C’ Critic, as Julia Cameron calls it in her book The Artists Way, is coming in hotter than ever.

And she’s got some newer and stronger beliefs that she’s up against. 

Now, I have example after example that prove I AM the artist I now proudly claim to be.

Like how I just start-to-finish executed an 80 square foot (7.5 m sq) mural and it turned out beautifully. How I’m commissioning large paintings for friends who have just bought their first homes. How I’m designing and selling prints and stickers to individuals and boutique shops and stringing meaningful meditation beads. (If you’re interested in any of these projects for yourself, lets talk 😉)

But my brain last night kept saying, okay, but what’s actually next?

Six years ago I set out into the unknown when I moved to Madrid after graduating from university. I had no idea what I was on the cusp of when I made that leap. No idea of the relationships and experiences and growth lessons that would await me on that continent for the following six years. 

I’m about to do the same in a few short weeks when I travel to India for an artist residency 👀

I wanted to nurture my inner artist by providing her with an opportunity to slow down and dedicate time to her big projects, something I find challenging when I’m constantly moving from place to place. 

I’ll tell you the truth: this artist residency scares the hell out of me. And that’s exactly how I know I need to do it. 

Because I recognize this feeling. I recognize the same discomfort I felt in the pit of my stomach right before I left for the Camino. The same butterflies that say ‘this is going to be difficult, but so worth it.’

I know myself. I know I can do difficult things that are for my highest good and come out the other side stronger and better than before. 

Part of my hesitation about returning to Nebraska during this transitional time was my own perceived fear of judgement from the people with whom I spent a quarter of my life. It turns out, for the most part, my family members I told about my next moves were genuinely excited for me. No bitter undertones, no behind-the-smile thoughts of “yeah, right”. Because I think they know me well enough by this point too, and they know that when I put my mind to something and I say I’m going to do it that I actually will. 

I now recognize that most of that perceived disapproval came only from within. That I was projecting my own inner Critic’s judgement about doing an artist residency onto what I thought my family would say or think. And that, thankfully, isn’t my lived reality. 

My visa to India was accepted yesterday. I’m officially going. I’m beating my inner Critic’s thoughts of “you can’t be serious” and continuing to devote myself to my creative practice, daily. 

I’ll spend at least one month (most likely two) in the Himalayan foothills of Rishikesh, nurturing some projects that terrify but excite me. 

And I’m proud to call myself an artist of many mediums. I’m a writer, a painter, a muralist, a video editor, among others. 

Consider this newsletter your permission slip to step fully into the thing you’ve been afraid to call yourself. 

Thanks for following along on the journey. 

I hope you can make someone smile today,
Holly