Creative clarity lives in solitude.

Back when I first moved to Australia in 2010, I started taking lil road trips on the weekends to go explore and see what cool shit I could find. What felt like freedom at the time, was the beginning of me learning how to be alone with myself, and actually like my own company.

These days, these solo adventures are my everything. Over the last year or so it’s hit me how important they are not just for my soul, but for my creative nourishment.

Lately I’ve felt kinda ‘stuck’ (as much as I hate using that word 🤢), not because I don’t have anything to say, but because I couldn’t reach it. Then I went on two solo adventures last week, one night camping, one day trip up into the mountains.

Turns out, those two days out in the wilderness, floating in the ocean, starting at the trees, driving through big ass mountains, unlocked a whole lotta shit I’ve been sitting on without even knowing it. 🌀

Because you can’t find your voice if you’re never alone with it.

And I’m not talking about a cute solo café session. I mean truly deep solitude. 🌲

The kind where you’re out in the forest, at your secret ocean spot, in a cabin by the river, hiking to the top of a mountain where you might pass one or two people with a quick “hi”, that kind of alone.

Because a change of scenery is a change of rhythm. And if you’re a creative, sometimes the best thing you can do for your work… is fuck with your rhythm.

When I’m out there, I’m not forcing myself to ‘think about deep shit’. Of course things come and go from my mind as I’m driving, as I’m sitting on the river, but the beauty of these days is the feeling integration, and not forcing anything, because most of the time I’m too deep in the experience of being solo in nature to ‘think’ too hard about fucking anything.

Present, offline, and truly unbothered. And that’s the magic of it. 🌿

Let the awe take over, and let yourself exhale.

The sooner you can stop TRYING, and just go be out in the world, you give yourself the space to give yourself back some fucking perspective.

Within that space, I often feel like the ideas and shit starts flowing again, or sometimes it’s after—when I get home, and the following days that feel totally different and I’m in a new creative zone that I couldn’t get to before.

“The woman who returns to her own deep nature knows that creativity is not a solitary act but one that requires solitude.”

— Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With The Wolves

Take yourself out for a day, for a week. ⛰️

Fuck with your rhythm.

Go somewhere new.

Get deep into nature, solo, and see what happens. 😉