Marketing. Branding. Self-promotion. These words may strike fear or disdain in the hearts of many artists. They feel a bit shameless, a bit self-centered, and a whole lotta awkward. But they are also necessary because most of us are not making art only for our own delight, but also to resonate with others.

What if, instead of making resolutions for the new year, we instead focused on four other words that begin with R?

If I could get paid for every minute I spend planning to do the work, sighing about not doing the work, ruminating over why I am not doing the work, and prioritizing other work to take up the time that this work could take, I could really make a living at this. I would put the Pro in Procrastination.

What to do when you are equally committed to artistic work and other kinds of work? How to fight back against the pressure to pick a side?

Impostor Syndrome is often described like a monster. Confidence is often described as something that could be missing or that one must find somewhere...that is, if you don’t get attacked by the ImpostorMonster first. Yet what if we thought about these in a different way?

There are a lot of creative people who have trouble declining requests. And we are darn tired. How can we improve the art of saying no?

On our personal journeys as creative people, we sometimes lose sight of our core beliefs about why we do what we do. With a lifetime of jobs, relationships, achievements, mistakes, joys, disappointments, gains, losses, observations, and mostly mundane moments behind us, we rarely take the time -- or the courage -- to reflect in the way that we might have when we were coming of age. There is sometimes raw and audacious truth uttered in youth.

Just as with our bodies, our minds need to be stretched and toned. When you are creatively stuck, this can be akin to the slump you may feel when you are not moving your body as much as you should. Explore some tips that can help you break through your creative slumps

This is just the time when we need to be at our most resilient and our most creative. Yet what is happening with the worldwide COVID-19 epidemic has made that a challenge for many. I wanted to share a few thoughts on how to be resilient in these strange times.