“What you want is to follow and be followed by human beings who care about issues you care about. This thing we make together. This thing is about hearts and minds, not eyeballs.” —Jeffrey Zeldman
Creative Energy
If you’re reading this, you’re probably a little confused or maybe you’re curious. Why is Glitter Guide talking about creative energy? What the heck does that even mean?
Creative energy isn’t something that’s super easy to define. It’s elusive and hard to pinpoint. It’s very personal, but it’s at the essence of all creative work. It’s a tireless impulse to absorb and discover new things. It’s a drive to create and break boundaries, bring joy and connect to others. Creative energy is a flow; ideas start to unravel and time moves quickly. You need creative energy to make great things, and even if they aren’t “great,” it’s essential to an imaginative life.
Creative energy has always been something I’ve been passionate about. It’s more important to me than the actual things that are made. When I started a blog in 2009, it was about sharing cool things with others in an effort to spark their creative energy. I wasn’t fully aware of this at the time, but the pieces started to come together a few years ago. It’s my true passion. Cultivating creative energy not only for myself, but for others. I want to help you find that magic spark that ignites you, that causes you to take pause and then spins you into a beautiful flurry of inspiration, creating and hopefully sharing with the world.
When Glitter Guide launched in 2011, this was at its core. It may not have been defined, but it was part of our essence. Our focus was to inspire and delight you. We wanted you to feel a spark from seeing a beautifully designed party, reading about an inspiring woman’s business, experiencing one of our fun events, buying one our products. While this is still something I think we embody, I feel like it got muddled along the way. We, like many other growing businesses, got caught up in competition, being seen, growing our numbers, followers, external validation, etc. I think it was around year six that I started to really feel the disconnect. You can read more about this on my blog.
It’s All Connected
A few years ago, I started to really see that creativity, and cultivating creative energy was a passion of mine. I wanted to learn more about it from people I admired and then I wanted to share these findings with you. That’s why I started Taylor-Sterling.com. It’s a place where I could truly be me. No worries about the bottom line, supporting a team, continual growth. It’s my little haven. I plan to still share a lot about creativity pieces there. It will be a sister site to this one.
This journey also showed me how important self-care and self-awareness is to creativity. If I’m run down, struggling, stressed, etc., I lose all my creative powers. I need to be constantly working on myself in order to stay inspired. That’s where Tired Dreamers Club came in. It’s a collaborative community of creatives exploring self-care and the mind and body connection to our creative flow.
While working on these two side projects, I realized that Glitter Guide had ventured too far from my core values. It wasn’t a clear extension of these two things I was so passionate about. We did do tests and have been slowly adding more of it, but honestly, we’ve not always received the best results. It seems it’s not everyone’s passion like it is mine. I think that’s what has held me back. The fear of failure. A fear of not giving our current audience what they want. A fear of ruining it all. However, I finally came to the conclusion that if I’m going to be the leader of this business, I have to be deeply connected. It has to be a reflection of my values. Otherwise, why am I even here? It’s time to make a change.
Hearts not eyeballs
It’s not huge and dramatic, but it will be a change. Some of the things you’ve come to love and expect from Glitter Guide will still be here: fabulous home tours, lifestyle tidbits and style advice. However, there will be less. There will be more personal articles and different points of views. We also plan to share more tangible advice. We will talk a lot about cultivating creative energy and helping your creative career (or lifestyle) thrive. Each month, we will have themes to expand upon and feature creatives who we find inspiring.
Our new motto is we want hearts not eyeballs. Something I read in Austin Kleon’s book, Show Your Work!. It comes from a quote from designer Jeffrey Zeldman. It’s not about more, more, more. We don’t need more followers and more eyeballs. That doesn’t lead to quality work or quality growth. Kleon says, “Make stuff you love and talk about stuff you love and you’ll attract people who love that kind of stuff. It’s that simple.”
Images by Emily Scott, art direction by Taylor Sterling, florals by Marigold.
