Good morning! What a rollercoaster start to the year! How are you all taking care? I’m grateful that January didn’t feel quite as interminable as usual and that I was mostly successful at simply focusing on going slow and taking care of myself and my people and my Tater.
Over in membership, January’s “Begin Anew” is giving way to the sweet February theme of “Attend to the Heart.” In addition to digging into this book as a loosely held guide for the year, this month I’ll also be sinking (finally!) into bell hooks’ “All About Love” as an additional text to support this month’s theme. Consider it a very unofficial book club.
As I wrote the below essay, I found myself mulling over the qualities of a creative life. I wanted to share a few things that have worked for me in developing myself as an artist over the past four years, what I’ve done to make creativity a daily practice and guiding force in my life.
TIME AND SPACE - I sit and squirm at my desk from 5/5:30am - 8am every weekday morning. Sometimes, it’s morning pages. Sometimes, it’s SELF MADE. Sometimes, I read essays and catch up on being with other people’s words. Sometimes, the words flow, and it is delicious. Other times, I sit and stare and am a squirrel. But I give myself time and space.
INTERACT WITH OTHER ART - poetry! photography! gardening! music! podcasts! television! watercolors! museums! theater! “Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.” - Henry Miller. I find #2 helpful always, and particularly when I am stuck with something. You can take a break and seek inspiration elsewhere. I guarantee you’ll come back refreshed.
JUST SHOW UP - you might show up as a squirrel. This is part of the process it doesn’t mean that anything is wrong with the process.
PUT IT ON THE CALENDAR - If you just try to “wing it,” with no systems in place to hold you to it, well, the chances are just way lower that you’ll actually SHOW UP.
BE IN NATURE - aka DUH. For real though, go stick your nose in some flowers or some of that fine California scrub sage that’s roaring off all around these hills, watch hawks spin lazy serpentines overhead, lay in some grass, stare at the ocean, hug a tree (how obvious is it that I’ve been in snow maybe five times in my whole life).
COLLABORATION - Do your art with other people, find people who you can talk to about it with and who will remind you to KEEP SHOWING UP, start projects with people, be in conversation about your artistry with people who get it.
What about you? What are your creative practices and routines? I always learn so much about people’s different processes - I’d sincerely love to hear yours.
Quite the preamble this week. See below for February events and more <3
Thank you for your eyes on my words.
💥 FEBRUARY PUBLIC EVENTS
✍🏽 February Writing Workshop: Grab your spot here (Sunday, February 26, 10am - 12pm PST). These generative writing workshops are based off the Amherst Writer's Method. Workshops feature two writing prompts // opportunities to write, and a zero-obligation opportunity to read allowed and have your fresh work be received by kind and generous feedback: we only share what we like and what we remember; there’s no critical feedback (critique is great and definitely has its place! It’s just not at this workshop).
This workshop is appropriate for all levels and I hope you'll join me. If you have questions, let me know—I'm happy to answer.
Fee: $33
Come write!
🙋🏻♀️Ask Us Anything…About Sobriety and Recovery! (Monday, 2/27, 5:30pm PST -7pm PST). I’m collaborating with two of my favorite comrades, fellow Recovery Coaches Anne Marie Cribbin and Christina Hanks for a sliding scale, virtual Q&A answering your questions about sobriety // recovery // sobercuriosity // whatever the hell label/word/term you like. This will be a safe and brave space to ask the questions on your heart.
This is for you if you’re wondering things like:
How do I know if I have a drinking problem?
Can I just moderate instead of going alcohol free?
Where do I begin?
How do I keep going?
Why the fuck isn’t my skin luminous and my sleep as deep as the sea and my attitude less, um, grumpy (OK that’s my question but maybe you have a similar one)?
If you prefer to ask your questions anonymously, we got you: Click here to submit your questions prior to the event.
We are here for you and can't wait to share this space, our experience, and our hearts.
This event will NOT be recorded to maintain confidentiality.
Suggested donation: $5-$25
Come through! There is no pressure to ask a question or to even have your camera on, and I promise that however you choose to participate this will be a meaningful experience.
🤝 1:1 COACHING: Sign up for an Alignment Session.
“Working with Dani was such a positive experience. She brings deep insight and a beautiful combination of enthusiasm and tenderness to her coaching. Dani helped me change my mindset in practical, concrete ways. The work we did together has stayed with me and continues to impact my thoughts and behaviors.”
— A. // 1:1 Coaching Client
Schedule an Alignment Session with me or click the button to learn more.
🪐 If you're curious about membership, $30/month // $300/year subscription gets you:
✍🏽 Content! (January theme: “Begin Anew”)
📞 Calls! (3x/week!)
📣 Slack community! (Chitty-chat with your people!)
📆 Monthly workshops! (This month, our workshop is on Navigating Burnout in Recovery)
🔮 Creative Coworking Fridays (this year, we're Artist Way-ing together)
❣️Mucho amor y cariño
❓Questions? Ask. I’m here and I’d love to hear from you.
Growing up in the suburbs of Orange County, I spent my whole childhood longing for adulthood. I always wanted to be older. In my imaginative, emotional girl-brain fantasies, I led a life of sophistication, travel, and grand romance, writing my way through it all. I wanted a big life, like the ones I read about in the dozens upon dozens of novels I’d blaze through any given year. These lofty longings were accompanied by a vague assumption that along the way I’d check off certain boxes just like everyone around me had. You know the ones. Career. Marriage. Kids. Homeownership.
In 2017, I was well on my way toward that life. I’d been out of the burbs for years, living in a cosmopolitan city. I was in grad school for writing. I was seven years into a committed relationship with a great man, whose access to family money had us talking about homeownership. I knew he was talking to my cousin, a jeweler, about a ring. Everyone around us was getting pregnant, some already onto their second kids. The boxes seemed inevitable.
Instead, that was the year I quit drinking and set about quietly exploding every single realm of my life. Quiet, because it was slow, and nothing happened overnight. Explosive, because I look around now and nothing, not one thing, is what it was four-and-a-half years ago.
In six weeks I’ll turn thirty-nine. There’s something about this number—the official tipping into the last year of my thirties—that has me thinking about time, and aging, and desire. I am thinking about focus, and where to place it. I am suspicious of vagueness, relentless in my commitment to eradicating all the vestiges of magical thinking that kept me detached from reality for most of my life. I can say that I have both feet on the ground. Give me spontaneity and flow, serendipity and coincidence, all those mystical lanterns on the path, yes please. But also, give me clear sight, a concrete direction, for I’m no longer willing to leave anything to chance, to assumption. I am here to create my life.
*
Two weekends ago, I was swept inside an old familiar malaise. The melancholy was bad enough, and then I made it worse by judging myself for falling back into a loop I thought I’d finally disrupted for good. That night, I had dinner with friends, which, as always, re-aligned everything, and I woke up the next morning bright eyed and energized, with the clear, visceral, felt-sense that I’d returned to myself.
I moved through my Sunday inside an inquiry: what the fuck, brain? Why do you take me so low, then right back to a friendlier baseline in less than twenty-four hours? Sure, pulling my head out of my own you-know-what and spending time with friends is a tried-and-true, go-to perspective shifter. And also, it would be so nice to not have to be drop-kicked by my thoughts so profoundly.
The day was clear blue skies, no wind. I taught a writing workshop. I took Tater to the beach, watched him prance about the lowest tide I’ve ever seen. I snoozed on the couch, I read, I ate enough, not too much. A deep contentment permeated everything.
Another question emerged: What if nothing was actually wrong? I began to wonder—am I…happy? Is everything good, and my brain is like, yeah bitch, that’s what you think, let me pokity poke poke poke at that thing, THE thing, that will knock out your knees, happy is boring, we need some drama up in here.
So, I’ve been sitting with this ever since, newly present to the ways I’ve been programmed to believe that something is wrong because my life looks different than my straight woman peers (and yes, I emphasize my hetero-ness here because my queer friends, all queer people, have been out here creating non-traditional, unconventional lives and families and ways of being for way longer than I’ve even had to consider any of this, and I’m so grateful to have their magic modeled to me). I am wondering what it might be like to simply allow myself to bask in this period of goodness. To relish in my own place, so much space and time to myself. To be present and available to the joy and richness of friendship. To deepen into my vocation (this, the one element that for the FIRST time I can say is truly alive for me). To read, and write, and walk, to spend my time exactly as I please, to ask permission of exactly no one (except for my Tater; luckily, he is hella chill).
I am lucky to have many close friends who are in this odd-shaped boat with me: unpartnered, child-free, renting cute-ass apartments decorated exactly as we please (one of my FAVORITE things is walking into a friend’s apartment for the first time, and it’s the purest extension of their personality and artistry, everything I love about them made explicit, tactile, physical), all of us around the same age, intentional about our work in the world, in conversation with our futures. When we extract ourselves from the worry of, “what if x, y, z doesn’t happen?” when we orient our vision toward the future instead of ruminating on the past, well, it’s like one of those “choose your own adventure” books I read as a kid. Anything could happen.
*
I took last Friday off and spent the whole weekend writing with two friends from grad school, grinding away at an essay I started all the way back in 2019. We snacked and wrote and pulled tarot and chatted and read aloud. We sat on Kerry’s Point Richmond back porch, gazing at the bay, a copse of redwoods partially blocking the exquisite view, our ages a range—26, 37, 51—and inside that range, so much wisdom, and even though the essay still feels sticky, and I have a long way to go, I was present to so much delight, and gratitude, and near disbelief that this was my life.
If you’re reading this, and you recognize yourself here, in this unique, full of possibility place that is not without its discomfort and at times—let’s be honest—sheer terror, hello, hi, welcome, you are my people. Let’s move forward together. Let’s remind each other of all that is available, let’s shake up each others’ snow globes, let’s rearrange everything. Print out the old stories, cut them up, let’s paste together a ransom, set fire to it all, release our futures from captivity like lovebirds making a run for it out a slightly too-open kitchen window.
SELF MADE is a rebellious recovery community that empowers you to liberate yourself from societal programming and boldly step into a life of your design. Posts are written by me, Dani Cirignano, founder, writer, Integral coach, and recovery guide based in San Francisco, CA.
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