Happy Aries Season!
It’s my favorite time of the year. Trees are blooming, birds are singing, flowers are popping up all over, and our backyard bunnies are flashing their cotton tails around with reckless abandon. I would spend my whole life in April if I could.
Per last month’s Deep Dive, I’ve been doing my best to contain my chores and deregulate my devotion. I continue to struggle a bit with teasing them apart, but I’m absolutely getting better at early overwork detection.
For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been carrying a little chunk of ocean jasper in my pocket to help me remember to go with the flow—honestly a brand-new notion for me. Critically, I’ve realized the extent to which overscheduling myself has kept this lesson from me.
Casey is an expert in going with the flow. He tells me, “I’ve never had a plan for anything.”
I will say though, for a guy who doesn’t plan, Casey has sure accomplished a lot. His story is full of twists and turns. His work is abundant.
Unlike my jasper nugget, entirely passive to the currents that have shaped it, Casey seems to catalyze the flows he follows.
When I asked Casey how a California native happened to find himself living deep in the Peruvian rainforest, for example, he tells me how a random couple saw him quietly whittling a piece of wood on the beach and paused to comment on his project.
As Casey recalls, his carving habit started all sorts of conversations during that time. It was just a regular day, a regular activity, a regular conversation with strangers. Only this time, the strangers happened to be scientists preparing for a rainforest expedition, and they happened to invite Casey to come along.
I’m so taken with this. So many pieces of it strike me. I think it’s the perfect mix of free will and fate. It’s one thing to say yes to a huge opportunity (a rainforest adventure, perhaps), but for Casey it’s certainly thousands of yesses to conversations with strangers, thousands of yesses to daily creative joys, thousands of yesses to quiet afternoons on the beach. Active, and open.
It’s a great reminder that we’ve got to engage the little magics if we want big magics to find us.
And boy, did Casey ever find magic in Peru. I could hardly breathe just hearing him describe his time in the cloud forest: “If it’s not raining, it’s misting; you’re in the clouds. Big steep canyon, one thousand feet straight up, every square inch covered in orchids. Billions, and billions of orchids. Mineral seep coming out of the banks of a river. Clouds of butterflies in every color.”
Like so many artists I’ve spoken with, Casey talks about vision as something actively expanding. His first lessons in vision happened near tidepools, watching the way an octopus moves with the current, how “they use their body as a medium, and the world around them is their muse.”
Casey spent his childhood near and in the ocean, but upon beginning training as a lifeguard, he marveled at how much he’d been missing. He says, “it’s such a funny thing learning how to see…as a lifeguard trained how to see and be aware of all that, now I can’t go to the beach and not see stuff…it’s always been there, I just didn’t know how to see it.”
It was the same with the jungle. A sea of green slowly opened into so much more. In Casey’s words, “most things are not just jumping out at you.” But there are clues everywhere, once you learn what you’re looking at. Certain fruits on the forest floor indicate monkeys in the branches above, for example.
He says, “those experiences made me acutely aware that I have no idea what I’m looking at…and this applies to everything.”
During his time as a commercial diver doing underwater construction, Casey learned to apply this principle to his crewmates, asking earnest questions and heartily absorbing their answers.
Now, Casey applies these lessons with the sculpting team he leads. Each day, they take their lunch under the “story tree” outside—sitting, eating, and sharing their thoughts and experiences. It’s team-building. And their stories become a sort of communal lore, holding them together in friendship and collective purpose.
He tells me there are Fortune 500 companies spending thousands on corporate retreats that don’t hold a candle to lunch time at the story tree. He says, “if you can get a team of people that are true believers in the mission of what you’re trying to do, that’s unstoppable.”
It’s vision exponentiated. They see together. And together they build what none of them could build alone.
An aside…
For a good while now, I’ve been reporting that I’m not sure where I’m headed. As a person who’s historically always had a plan for literally everything, I’ve been feeling altogether squirmy at the looming question mark where another rung ought to be.
And while I’m increasingly flow-curious, I think I’ve been stuck because I know how much I love to work, to make work. I live to pull on strings and chip away at projects, and I loathe boredom. Every cell in my being revolts.
I think I’ve had this deep soul knowledge all tangled up in spoiled models telling me investment is wasted when it isn’t charging toward a clear destination.
I’m always moved by artists like Casey whose lives are full of pivots, but I think I’ve been inclined to project a restlessness onto these stories. I imagine a relentless drive, a hustle, the feverish pursuit of who knows what, some sort of know-it-when-you-see-it, lightbulb phenomenon.
I’ve imagined each of these artists like myself, itching to mark a definitive X, then chart a course toward it, clenched and clammy on a mid-air ladder, plumb out of rungs.
I’m pleased to say, I’ve begun to entertain other metaphors.
Here’s a new favorite: I am the fertile ground where my dreams take root.
I needn’t fear lost investment here. I can boldly pull any string that calls to me, all the strings I please.
Like Casey courting vision in every new endeavor, building upon that motile bedrock, I can establish sturdy groundwork and embrace mobility. The garden goes where I go. I’ll never need a map to find this spot.
And like Casey says, “all the things that you do will flavor the work.”
Lily makes some of the prettiest things I’ve ever seen. Working in recipe development and food photography, she’s out here braiding leeks, building roses out of tomatoes, and topping toast with huckleberries and pansies. It’s the stuff of dreams.
Like Casey, Lily is prolific, and also maintains a relationship with flow, leaving room for in-the-moment flexibility.
She tells me, “In some cases, I think that having a recipe and feeling obligated to follow a recipe kind of sucks the joy out of the creative cooking process. For me, it’s very instinctive. I like to eat, I like to cook, and I like to experiment with those things until I produce something that I enjoyed cooking and eating…my impulses and instincts translate into my visual style.”
Like so many lessons it’s simple, and nevertheless revelatory to me. Experiment with what you like until you produce something you love. Trust your instinct as the work unfolds.
Leaning harder into joy, Lily talks about investing in the small details that “make me more satisfied with my output.” She asks herself, “what is the minimum amount of resources I can invest to get the maximum output that still meets my satisfaction?”
I don’t know why it feels a bit rebellious to me to focus on the details first. It must be that old work-before-play programming again (because play lives in the details, obv), but holy cow I love the idea of investing in details first, just going straight for the best part. It’s honestly making me slightly emotional.
I really can’t emphasize enough the extent to which I’ve never been taught to listen to my body, trust my instincts, follow my joy. I’m learning slowly, but learning all the same, grief and relief coming in waves all around it.
Of no longer being interested in reading fiction (an activity she loved as a child), Lily says “I just lost interest in being in my own head but in someone else’s head at the same time. I guess now I just want to be in my own head. Playfully, she adds “I’m like, selfish like that.”
But it’s an anthem to me. Truly.
I loved hearing Lily talk about the way she struggles with negative space in both the micro and macro. She wants every little nook of each plated dish adorned with an edible flower or a perfect sprig of dill. And she wants her collection of “props” (backdrops, plates, cutlery, vases) all filled in, too.
Combining that beautiful “selfishness” and flow, she says it’s all about “the fulfilling of impulses.” For example, she might recall that she didn’t like how a certain knife looked in a photo, and will put herself on the lookout for something that might be more satisfying for next time, something that “could work better,” asking herself “what do I wish I had? And then looking for that.”
Piece by piece, Lily collects treasures and skills that fill the gaps in her satisfaction. She’s about the business of her own joy, but every member of her audience reaps the benefits. I know I do.
Hannah’s work hits me right in the dreamy feels, as well. She describes her pieces as “intricate worlds,” “creating a place the viewer can escape to and take all the time they need to explore.” She says, “each of my original artworks is a sanctuary, offering a moment of peace, wonder, and reflection.”
It’s my favorite kind of maximalism, positively teeming with exquisite detail, but exuding the loveliest sense of peace.
Hannah’s presence radiates a steady ethos, as well. Her voice is clear and low, grounded and present. She speaks slowly, and surely. I felt my nervous system go quiet during our conversation.
In the context of all of this calm, I was admittedly a bit surprised to hear Hannah describe the underlying fire in her being.
Having been raised with the idea that fiery drive needs to be all hustle and competition, fast, fierce, and frenzied, I’m struck by Hannah’s ability to hold her vigor differently.
It’s a model I didn’t know I needed.
Hannah is also fearless in the face of new challenges and paradigms. She’s always poised to ignite neuroplasticity anew. With undaunted steadiness, Hannah opens metaphorical (or myelinated) dams to let her magic into brand new spaces.
She tells me she wants to “see what happens when I go all in,” “I wanted to wow myself,” “I wanted to prove something to me,” all with that same sovereign coolness.
Hannah tells me her fire burns in ebbs and flows. After finishing a project, it might take a week for another fire to build. She says, “the fires are evolving with what we experience.”
Hannah gets ideas by living life. She loves the processes. She’s never rushing herself toward the end.
I want to live and work this way, too.
I want to luxuriate in the process. I want to create enough space in my schedule to give myself the flexibility to follow a mood or motivation in real time, developing my vision as I go, wherever I go.
I want to be the fertile ground where my dreams take root.
I want to dig into details before I’ve built any scaffolding, if that’s what strikes my fancy. Like the springtime bunnies, I want to give zero fucks while I’m munching rose petals and clover in whatever sort of whimsical concoction I’ve decided to whip up.
I want to keep experimenting with what I like until I produce something that tickles me absolutely pink. I want to be in nobody’s head but my own.
I want to be calm, sovereign, and full of fire. Brave enough to follow the muse wherever she leads me.
As Casey puts it, I’ll “shoot the arrow and paint a bullseye on it afterward.” 🎯
Amen, fam.
Love,
Emily