Image: a bunch of dried flowers sits within a love heart drawn in the sand on an Illawarra beach. Found randomly on my beach walk last week.
February always has been a month about love. The last push of heady summer days in Australia is usually a short month where people don’t take themselves as seriously as they otherwise might. It is (usually) the month where people still have a little rebellion in their heart. We are eager to finish work on time (or early) to explore the sunshine and life outside four walls. We are interested in what is new and what is risky, career wise.
Friendship, self-love, connection, community involvement, compassion, purpose and kindness- these are all forms of love.
So too is creativity. That gentle exploration of the darker pains, the lighter moments and the encapsulating and expressing of what makes us most human. How we distil human existence, large and small. Or how we’re driven to solve problems, make statements, demonstrate curiosity and raise awareness.
All this is love. Real love. Often in its most pure form.
I think we cheat love with our focus on romance. We confuse love with dizzy highs and heart-wrenching lows. We put it on some nauseating see-saw, some spinning carnival ride.
We neglect to see it in the hands that bring you coffee as you type. Or water as you toil.
It is the hand that holds yours when the news isn’t so great. It’s the community that makes you feel as though it will all work out eventually as long as they are by your side.
We don’t see it in contentment, honest assessment and the details.
Love is forward motion with gentle confidence. It is growth as a state of consistency. It is that feeling of recovery from life and growing stronger with every well-placed step. It’s a spark that doesn’t burn and fizzle, but that warms us from the inside.
We build, we create, and we grow to know what we didn’t know before.
And so on and so forth until we feel strong within ourselves enough to feel a full rib cage. Not through bursting, heart pumping moments that crash like wild waves within. But a deep enduring experience of joy that has our back, even when the storm sets in.
Creating love within
As freelancers and creatives, we spend a lot of time pawing over love as the stories of life. We want our clients to feel love for their products and business. We flirt unabashed with confidence and customer alike. We are forever crafting stories of wooden table, hand-crafted admiration to entice and seduce.
The creative scene embraces the true love of the amateur. We covet the lifestyle the lovers who create for the passion of the work. We love the auteur well beyond the film set, scrambling for the leader, the lover and the storyteller who has it all figured out. Who can sell us the dream of loving the money and the work and the lifestyle in the overblown lightness of the latest Instagram filter.
Yet many times, I have sat across from the walking wounded of the creative romance as they sit meek and bewildered on the monitor’s fence.
They have so much love to give, but never know how to share it.
Is this the right idea to love?
Why don’t I love freelancing as much as I thought I would?
Why, when I love this idea so dearly, am I still unable to leave doubt behind and love it fully?
Can I love my creativity enough not to care what will people say?
Is love enough to create success, financial security and a future?
And if I don’t succeed, can I love myself enough to cope with the failure it will bring?
I want you to take heart little creative.
For love surely is risky, scary, beautiful and not without thorns. But it thrives in the soil of vulnerability. It knows how to weather fear. And sometimes, the very act of believing in it helps it grow in places and ways you never considered.
How do you know if you love something creative?
I’m no expert, but for me, it looks a little something like this:
· Can I trust the process to guide me when I am unsure of the outcome?
· Am I experiencing joy from creating even without an end goal?
· Am I content with learning, even if I fail?
· Is this shifting something I want to explore to reality on my terms?
· Do I feel connected with this creativity (or person) in a way that I don’t with others?
· Am I enticed by mutual respect over eventual pay-off?
· Am I feeling curious and as though I am growing, even when doubt or fear sets in?
· Is there a longing that keeps making me circle back to this idea over other opportunities?
Love is all around us
In a world filled with people they are oh so together, it’s important to look for the places where love feels like the currency over money, fame and visibility.
You can find love in the following places:
Love up the freelance and creative scene of the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. Share the challenges and ideas you have for the region, what makes it hard to love and practice your creativity. And build a community keen to share the love through their research and talent directory. All by answering this ten-minute survey.
Make a commitment to love your creative ideas and join us for the next Freelance Jungle Deadline Party. This six-week course is designed to make you love your creative process and do so in the loving arms of other freelancers. Kicks off March 8th runs until April 12th 2022 Register your interest with this short survey.
Be with community that loves you by joining the Freelance Jungle (for Australian and New Zealand freelancers).
At the Freelance Jungle blog – and through the content provided exclusively through the Freelance Jungle Patreon.
In all things, remember we can relive the past. We can imagine a future. But the present is only experienced in real time.
It is happening right now, anchored in imperfection and the awkward stages of that love.
Enjoy it while you still can!
Love and other words for a harmonious experience of self, others and life,
Rebekah
I've been feeling a little bit of that love lately. Alongside the writing on Substack, which is interesting but feels like hard work a lot of the time, and other work I'm doing, I'm spending a little bit of time each day writing a novel. And I'm having fun. I'm learning to trust the process and let go of perfectionism. Right now, it doesn't matter whether it's any good or whether I'll ever try and publish it. The writing itself is bringing me joy. It's been magical to experience.