I’m realizing stuff. Plus, creative friends and why being a professional writer means I’ve taken up glass-making…
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Hi team!
I should start a column all about, in the immortal words of Kylie Jenner, realizing things. Because it wasn’t until I sat down to write about the last few weeks that I realized this particular thing: my friends are exceptionally creative.
Before this epiphany, I thought of them as marketing executives and media personalities and mothers and moguls. But I’ve never actually sat down and thought about how much creativity goes into those endeavours, until two of them hosted very different, very creative events in the same week. (More on those below.) And how, even my most accounting-type friends will happily join me in a creative workshop. (More on that below too!)
I should have known better, but I had fallen into the trap of thinking of people as “creative” in the agency, music or art world sense of the term.
I was a copywriter in the advertising world for many years. Then after an epiphany prompted by accidentally travelling off-the-grid—I.e. I left my phone on the plane in a tangle of blankets after my middle kid was sleeping on my lap on the flight to Munich and then spent three weeks in France and Spain without a phone and had a full-on Oprah aha! moment and realized I wanted to write fiction, which led me to spend many years waking up before my kids and my day job to write my mystery-thriller, which, now that I have an agent, has become a professional endeavour.
Is it too on-the-nose to say I’ve been… waiting for you to:
So I have to get, ahem… creative in searching out opportunities to be creative for creativity’s sake.
Which led me to try glass-making.
I’ve talked about how I think it’s vital to create something—anything. Even if you’re terrible at it. And workshops like this one by Awesome Sauce Designs are the perfectly packaged way to flex your creative muscles without investing a ton of time or overwhelming your art supplies closet with more crafting kits. (Something the author Jasmine Sealy talked about despising on the first episode of The Waited podcast.)
If you’re in Vancouver, MakerLabs offers so! many! workshops! run by makers themselves in a converted warehouse that will make you consider renting studio space and taking up ceramics.
Highly recommend you go—or hunt down something similar wherever you live. Community centres often run these types of things. Bring your most creative friends—or better yet: invite your entire book club.
Worth the Wait
I’m still nursing a Backstreet Boys-related hamstring injury, but am thrilled to report I was able to do high kicks at my friend Jessi Cruickshank’s super-fun, super-sweaty Evening Club. Music is magic.
Speaking of high kicks and creativity—I lived my best WAG life at a World Cup game, a throw-in’s distance (sports analogy? Idk.) from The Beautiful Dome, which was officially named by my sister Larissa Dundon, an absolute creative professional career highlight.
Speaking of sports, active and swimwear brand Left on Friday, which was co-founded by my friend Laura Low Ah Kee and Shannon Savage, has (finally!) opened a Vancouver storefront in Kitsilano, which is coincidentally where the brand was born. The opening party was wild.
I’m obsessed with the work of Victoria-based artist Anne Griffiths, who’s currently showing at MAAT Gallery in Paris. Her pieces are the abstract equivalent of forest bathing and I want one—or two.
You’ve Been Waiting for: The Return of Wear/Where!
On my lifestyle site The Anthology I had two columns people would mention most often: The first—and I’m pretty sure the reason The Anthology took off in the first place—were my vintage reinvention posts where I’d take an unwearable piece of vintage clothing and have it tailored into something I’d wear again and again.
The second is my Wear/Where column where I’d highlight visual parallels between a look and an interior. The Left on Friday x Clare V. collab, alongside the Architectural Digest spread of designer Clare Vivier’s home in France has brought Wear/Where right back to life in my brain.
Et voila:
Wait for it
Next up on The Waited podcast, I’m going to be talking with my friend Dr. Danya Fast, who studies youth and substance use, which is something I’m guessing absolutely none of us want to even think about. But it’s important. It relates directly to one of my favourite topics: community.
And after co-hosting two of these conversations IRL with her, I can absolutely say Danya offers so much hope on the subject.
I’ll happily ask her any questions you’d like (anonymously, if you’d prefer!). Send them to me at: KDundon@NorthillCreative.com.
Thanks, y’all!
Kelsey
P.S. I really miss the social elements of the agency world, so I’ve been very deliberate in building my personal community to offset all the time I spend alone with my Word docs.
I talk about how I’ve done that with Mahsa from We Need to Unpack This in the latest episode of The Waited podcast.
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