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Been listening to Shad a lot this past year. His latest album, Start Anew, is a masterwork in what it sounds like to be fully alive and in charge of your own craft. Here is a man who owns the mic, and crafts lyrics with the giftedness of a poet, the playfulness of a prankster, and the seriousness of a man on a mission. His co-creators are maniacal in the production department: wildly jazzy, rich in samples, thick in bass, these tracks root you in the earth and lift you right up into the stratosphere. Ain’t nobody like Shad.

His album title, Start Anew, has been sticking with me as a bit of a mantra of my own this season. There is a lot of newness, and a lot of returning to old-ness to start it again, in a new way.

• I’m re-invigorating my business, Co.school, after a season of trying employment.
• I’m re-newing my own personal site, as a way of expressing myself a little more wholly online.
• I’m re-entering the Okanagan, a place I’ve lived for years but where I haven’t necessarily built work-roots.
• I’m re-starting my workout routines, which I never really had.
• I’m rethinking a lot of things.
• I’m starting anew.

Over coffee with a fellow Kelowna-based creative this season, I was asked: “What have you noticed about your creative output? When is it at its best? What does it tell you about what you NEED in order to be at your best?”

(If you’re wondering who the heck would ask such a deep and thoughtful question, look no further than the intrepid David Fairfield.)

I spent some time with David’s questions. I dragged myself through my own not-published back-catalogue of creative contributions. Things I made, things I wished I had; things I published, things I slept on. And I categorized them into a few themes, then re-wrote them as a bit of an invitation to myself.

What does it take for me to create? I arrived at the statement, “Do it, in love.”

First of all, I have to actually do it.

Do it. Ambitiously take action. This is a survival imperative. I remind myself:

• It’s for you: Creative output is for healthy, balanced flow. The exhale to your inhale. Life.
• Try: Increase your surface area for luck. Get data from experiments. Failure is learning.
• Go for it: Get that cash, that prize, that deadline; make goals and reach for the success!
• Focus is a choice: Producing art does not detract from family or finances, and takes work.

And, lest the competitive thrust lose all awareness of its surroundings, it is tempered by that part two: in love.

In love. This is for fun, love, energy, joy, delight, friendship and kindness.

• Allow love and fun to power it: Let it be something that fills you with energy.
• Be intentional with vulnerability: You don’t owe anybody it, but you can choose it.
• Protect your energy: Mean people exist, cynics exist, trolls exist; they’re not for you.
• Delight in connection: Celebrate wins with friends, relish audience interactions.
• Uphold love and kindness: Your values are about compassion. Be about that.

So that’s what’s happening even here, online, again. I’m starting anew. I’m doing it.

In love,
Kevan