Well, hello there. My name is Morgan Harper-Nichols. I'm an artist and a writer, and this is a space where I share words that I hope can make a little room for you to slow down and take a few deep breaths as you prepare for whatever lies ahead. Thanks for being here today. And now on to today's episode. Whenever I do any kind of Q&A, one of the first questions

out of the gate usually has to do with how do you stay motivated? How do you stay inspired? How do you

stay creative? And one thing that all of these kinds of

questions have in common is this word stay. Stay means to remain in one place. And I find it

interesting that we, myself included, oftentimes put this pressure on ourselves to remain in a state of being productive

in some way, putting out in some way. And when you think about it, that's a lot to ask for a human

being or anything in nature to constantly be in a state of putting out. So what I find myself doing these days is

any time I'm asking a question of myself that has the word stay in it, I catch myself and I ask,

why do I feel like I need to stay in this state of productivity or linear success. Why do I feel the need

to put all of this energy into creating something for of myself that's going to stay at a certain

rhythm and pattern and flow when nothing else in life works that way. And I think a lot of

that pressure comes from the ideas and the images that we often see of the people that we look up to.

We're not seeing the moments where they're resting or doing nothing at all. We often see what they produce. So the way that we

interpret their work and the way they are in the world is that, wow, these people just stay in the

rhythm. They just stay in the flow of what they love to do and they're just staying connected

with people. They're just staying so energized and just a part of

everything that's going on around them. But we don't see the moments where they're not doing

anything at all or where they're just focused on something else entirely. They're focused on

taking in wisdom or words or stories from other people and they're just listening.

We just see what they put out.

And as a result, we put that pressure on ourselves.

Well, I guess I need to put out more.

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