How many hats have you been wearing?

Praise for the people who help us be who we are and some prompts for you to reflect with this week

Today I’m kicking off a roll-yer-own-virtual-retreat with my creative partner Anna. We’re taking stock of where we’ve been & where we’re going in our professional lives— and letting ourselves be as nerdy and woo about it as we want.

I’m sharing some of our prompts for personal reflection with paid subscribers today—

If you’re interested in joining our Creative Partnership Circle on November 18th to take a deeper dive with your own End-Of-Year Review, you can find out how to join here.

We folks in the business of creativity, particularly those of us whose work is a composite of “freelance” and “passion project”— we wear a lot of hats.

A snapshot from my mid 30s:

I am a one-woman-business as a high-end bridal stylist, also a commission portrait artist, a studio manager for another entrepreneur, a body paint artist and a set decorator for a 30,000’ haunted attraction: all at once.

Over the years you can toss in other overlapping hats: muralist, logo designer, waitress, animator, sculptor & cannabis trimmer. Teacher, producer, videographer, editor, board member, musician, grant writer.

During all this time I’ve also been my own: contract writer, web developer, marketing director, social media manager, secretary, accountant, researcher, buyer, wholesaler, tax preparer and laborer…

In short: exhausted.

Some of you, for whom the above rundown feels foreign, might fall into the category of “those-with-stable-jobs” or “people-with-a-foundation-of-financial-security”. I am not one of those people.

If you’re like me, a good number of the things you do, you do because you simply have to and you try to make the rest fit. We have to make art. We have to make music. We have to write. We have to get on stage. And everything else we do, we do because those things rarely pay all the bills.

Then attached to everything we’re already doing, there is this invisible string of additional support duties — things we have to figure out by ourselves & for ourselves because we’re “self-employed” and there’s nobody else to help us.

(This, I’ve learned, is often referred to as “unemployed” on official paperwork, like at the doctor. I’ve seen this so many times. They say, “So, you’re not working right now?” I point to where I’ve written “self-employed” and say, “I am— I work for myself” and they nod and write “UNEMPLOYED”. )

A lot of the creative folks I know are some of the most over-worked people on the planet. So. Many. Hats. Unless you have the mythical capacity to hire both an assistant and a coach (the universal fantasies which solve everything), you have to figure all this business shit out for yourself and hope you don’t fuck it up— all while trying to excel as a visionary oil painter, a prolific sync musician, a poet.

You might find yourself imagining one day, like I did….

Wouldn’t it be relieving if I had even one single person who was following along with all the hats I’m wearing, who knows what I’m going through? Someone who could offer me advice from their similar experiences and lend skills I don’t have to my operation? And wouldn’t it be relieving if this support was consistent and ongoing and— I dunno, just to make it feel extra impossible — free??

And now, consider how much experience you’ve gathered over the years, parading around in all those hats by yourself. Wouldn’t it be amazing if the weird shit you’ve had to learn along the way was useful to someone exactly like you and you could save them some of the pain & distress you’ve endured?

This is exactly why I have creative partners.

And they save my life approximately once a week.

Cam has been saving my ass since 2015

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If you live in a major metropolitan area with a high percentage of professional creative jobs, you may be at least familiar with this concept— but so very many more of my artist, musician, writer and performer friends all around the globe are yelling HELP ME - I AM SO ALONE!!!— So I’ll share the basic framework of what creative partnership looks like for me and how it helps.

The core of it is simple: We set time aside each week to meet one-on-one in the spirit of lateral, mutual aid for our self-driven creative business endeavors. We take turns talking about the projects we’re on, giving status reports, sharing our wins and pain points & offering one another insights from our own experiences. Tracking. Listening.

That’s it.

Like most profound things, it’s really simple.

Anna is an expert hat-wearer.

How has it helped? In lieu of a life with pre-arranged corporate structure— like titles, promotions, teams— my creative partnerships anchor me. These relationships are my mirrors. Thinking deeply about their processes helps me reflect deeply on mine. Having people in my life who see everything I’m doing professionally is enormously validating and helps with the isolation and confusion of the self-directed-creative-path. We provide accountability to one another that extends beyond calendar deadlines and enters into the territory of “I want to make sure you’re following your fucking purpose on this earth, you brilliant weirdo.” They’re some of my best friends. And they’re some of my only friends who know what the hell I actually do during the week.

And I’ve grown so much faster, with so much less pain, because of these relationships.

So, if you see some part of yourself in my comedy-of-errors resume I’ve spilled out before you, and you’re also feeling isolated and like you could use some structure to measure your own growth…

A suggestion:

Reach out to that person in your life who seems like they’re in a similar boat and try formalizing your convos around mutual-creative-professional-support: one hour, once a week, for a month. Show up on time. Take turns. Take notes while y’all talk. See what happens!

Wanna circle up with a group of people doing this in a network and get some more resources? Consider joining us:

So you can kickstart your own year-in-review, here are some of the prompts Anna & I are starting with this weekend: