On Stranger Creative Ties
Issue Highlights: We're exploring new ways to rest, discovering the human side of the algorithm, and making a short film!
Welcome to Create (Pop), a bi-weekly newsletter dedicated to providing fun, insightful, and useful tips to help you excel in your creative journey.
Grab your favorite snacks, bevs, and sword pens, and prepare to enjoy the journey.
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Greetings my friends! I hope everyone had a good holiday and welcome to the last month of the year!
As we wind down 2023, my mind is turning towards goals, new mindsets, and resolutions I want to bring into the New Year. Rethinking rest is one of them.
On occasion, I realized I can have a true aversion to rest. In my mind, even taking a nap means losing out on time doing tasks, losing time on tasks means not completing my to-do list, which adds up, and so on and so forth. I.E. I conclude that sleep is a deficit that will cause more anxiety than getting the task done.
It wasn’t until I experienced a massive creative burnout (no surprise there) that I began researching rest more, and was surprised to learn rest is more than sleeping.
Similar to my writings on gratitude, rethinking how rest and productivity coincide allowed me the opportunity to increase my creative output, cope with stress better, and not overtax my brain.
Understanding The Importance Of Rest and Its Use To Fuel Productivity
I was attending a Zoom meeting on 7 ways to be more productive in the workplace. The moderator presented slides on rest and how it correlates to the pivotal success of high-performing athletes. ‘Okay, great.’ I thought, but how does this apply to me? As the moderator explained different ways rest manifests I realized maybe I was taking the term rest too literally.
Besides sleeping I learned that all kinds of activities are considered restful, and there are several modes of rest that we experience. Rest runs the gambit from emotional, spiritual, mental, sensory, etcetera, and all can affect the other.
I was severely lacking in emotional rest, which affected my mental rest, and (you guessed it) kept me from experiencing a deeper physical rest.
Gaining emotional rest for me means practicing taking mental breaks, practicing mindfulness, and breathing, as well as, relaxing activities that allow me to gain mental clarity and change the way I approach tasks.
I learned pushing past my body’s need for rest was extremely counterproductive. It was causing me more stress, and mental breakdown, and prohibiting my ability to work effectively.
I had to stop seeing rest as a deficit and more of a necessity.
This may seem like a ‘duh’ moment, but I think we would be surprised at how we all do this. Thanks to hustle, grind culture we all justify the mindset that true rest is an optional thing and indeed it is not.
Allowing myself relief from my mental taxation frees up my brain to solve creative challenges more effectively, focus on the joy of the task more, and multitask at a higher rate - all without stressing my brain capability.
What I’m aiming at here is we’ve all had to learn how to shoulder an enormous amount of pressure which thanks to recent years (and current events) seems to compound our stress and maybe not-so-good habits on how to deal with them.
The upcoming holiday can already be hard on some of us so I want to encourage YOU to give yourself grace and patience, and to find what rest you most lack. Let this guide you to what exercises and solutions best work for you so you can go into the New Year as rested as possible.
Now as we’re leveling up on rest gains, let me tell you about a selfcare brand you may want to add to your bag.
How Ashley Tisdale’s Frenshe Is Creatively Changing Self-Care
Oh, how I love to remember the good old days when all I had to worry about was getting through an exhausting week of middle school and planting my butt in front of the Suite Life of Zack and Cody. While I loved watching two wacky brothers cruise their way through the sweet life in an actual Suite life I was also drawn to the quick-witted, sharp-tongued, and fabulous Ashley Tisdale.
Ashley Tisdale, a.k.a Maddie Fitzpatrick, Candance Flynn (Phineas and Ferb), and Sharpay Evans wasa huge part of my childhood.
So imagine my surprise and thrill joy when a friend told me about her wellness, lifestyle, and beauty brand Frenshe.
Frenshe, exclusively at Target, is a wellness brand that uses scent to provide holistic self-care in a unique, vibrant, and immersive beauty and bath experience.
Products range from under $10 to under $20, and the entire line is created around 5 different scents - Soothe and Comfort, Awaken and Uplift, Joy and Bliss, Balance and Harmony, and the coveted Unwind and Rest.
When creating Frenshe Ashley Tisdale explained she was searching for a wellness routine to assist in her battle against depression and toxic thinking. She realized when she incorporated oils into her routine there was an immediate in her mood.
I also have a range of oils I use to brighten my mood or help me wind down which is why I was immediately drawn to the Lavender Shea Butter Hand Lotion from the Unwind and Rest kit!
For me, this hand lotion is perfect for the upcoming winter season thanks to the rich shea butter, and the scent of lavender signals my body that it’s time to wind down.
However, if you are looking for an uplift to help you power through some tasks I’d love to suggest either Frenshe’s Awaken and Uplift which uses citrus and amber, or Balance and Harmony which has bergamot and cedar.
Each of these scents revitalizes the creative brain placing it in a deep state of flow and is good for present awareness, thoughtful engagement, and decreasing fatigue.
Frenshe is also committed to being more than just self-care. The blog covers a variety of topics from wellness, interiors, lifestyle, and the male line extension - Frens(he).
Do you and your creative vibes a favor by adding something from Frenshe to your self-care bag. You won’t be sorry :)
If any of us currently use Frenshe or Frens(he) I’d love to know!
Now that we’re well-rested and Frenshe’d up…it’s time to talk about something brainy…
Hacking The Human Side To The Social Algorithm
This story has a bit of a weird lead-in so just roll with me.
A friend and I were having a conversation about movie reviews and she mentioned seeing Space Jam Legacy.
Her feelings about the film aside she mentioned that the topic of the algorithm stuck out to her thanks to the villainous Al-G-Rhtym played by the astute Don Cheadle.
I never thought all about the algorithm before when posting on my socials. But after seeing the movie it made me look into it a bit more for myself.
And after what she found, she was able to grow her page from 100 to a couple hundred followers in a couple of months. How so?
Well, she did the typical - posting high-quality photos, at consistent times, but what got me was when she mentioned her audience. And then it was like a light bulb went off in my head.
There’s a human side to the algorithm that it seems like we’re completely ignoring today.
And, personifying the algorithm as the villain Al-G-Rythm in a movie was genius. Think about it. I know at times the algorithm has felt like this unsurmountable thing working hard to undermine my page’s growth. It wasn’t until I researched deeper I discovered the algorithm is meant to work for us, not the other way around.
The social media algorithm was built to increase engagement on the platform by keeping our feeds with sustainable and relevant content suited to us - the audience.
This shifted my focus from ‘how to hack the algorithm’ to curating and building my content to the audience I wanted to build, engage, and target on my page.
Once I have that then the rest of the steps that feed the algorithm fall into place.
When it comes to the social algorithm universal truths are niching your content, posting at the right time, and engaging with live, reel, or video features on the platform to draw as many views, interactions, and engagements as possible.
When you're creating quality content for your audience, they are interacting with it, liking, engaging, and commenting - all of the things the algorithm uses to suggest your page or feed.
The algorithm was created to learn from your content posted, how people engage with it, and who to pull that content from.
By creating my social content with my audience in mind first I was able to discover my niche, build engagement, and help the algorithm understand who I am.
As I am growing my page on LinkedIn I discovered my audience is mostly online early to mid-morning, early afternoon, and post-work hours, seeing as how the page is built for them, I want to naturally post during those hours.
This helped me schedule my content and begin posting consistently which also is a key algorithm metric.
A note, when I say building my page for my audience, I’m not entirely removing myself from the process, and I don’t want you to either. After all, you are the creator. And these social pages are meant to showcase, well, YOU and it’s important to have fun doing it.
I discovered that keeping the audience I am serving in mind as well as having fun with my content was a healthier mindset shift and growth metric to make instead of ‘hacking’ a scientific algorithm designed to assist us in the first place.
If you are creating authentic content that is unique to your audience the rest of the steps of posting at the right time, hashtagging, SEO, and engagement will follow suit.
Why? Because each step was naturally designed to follow the other. If you begin with the audience you serve, everything else will fall accordingly and the algorithm will be able to magically do its job.
If you're struggling with social follower gains look into ways the platform can assist your audience gain the information they need from you. It may be a challenge but if you rethink it, it could be fun!
Speaking of challenges, as the year winds down, I am challenging myself to make a short film before the end of the year, and I’d like to invite you to join me!
BEST TIPS FOR MAKING YOUR FIRST SHORT FILM
Short films are a great way to cut your teeth on the art of visual storytelling. You learn concise storytelling, working through creative challenges, and how to visually shoot big ideas.
Now that I’ve completed my first feature film I have a yearning to take my new equipment, and gains in cinema knowledge, and implement it into a short film before the end of the year.
If you're up for the challenge, I’d love to invite you to join me and share tips I’ve found when it comes to short filmmaking.
The first thing I do when making a short film is to well, keep it short.
To keep it short, I’m talking about a script of about 5-10 pages (10 being the maximum).
I also only write scripts for what I have access to which comes from a lesson I learned in film school. When it comes to a script, you write it - you film it. This is because the script is the blueprint for what we will eventually see on screen.
So for your first short film, you may want to avoid writing about a space alien explosion crashing down in your neighborhood…unless, of course, you can afford that.
This brings me to my next point short film budgeting.
When making short films in school all equipment, crew, and things are readily available to you so budgeting for a film may be an afterthought.
However, after school, I quickly realized budgeting ahead of time is vital to the success of your film. You need to understand your costs because that affects your script and shooting schedule.
Again, a big thing that will help you with budgeting is to write a script with all you have readily available to you. Even for this short film, I’ll be using the gear, locations, and contacts I have. And even if you're just starting, your crew and actors can be friends. Your locations can be your home, dorm, manager’s apartment…whatever you have on hand.
Whatever you need outside of that, other resources such as group boards on social media can fill in the holes for you.
I want to inspire you that when first making this film, the goal is to get going, to dive in and start. If you are interested, I go into more depth about this on my blog here (and as a pro-tip it even has some free goodies for you)
A gentle hint, when starting, try not to get bogged down in creating a perfect Oscar-qualifying short just yet.
Focus on the story you want to tell, fully grasp the tools available to use, and use this as using it as a lesson to get the nuts and bolts of filmmaking first.
If you're looking for inspiration I would check out the YouTube Channel Omeleto for inspo on powerful stories and complex ideas! Omeleto is a cool platform on YouTube that showcases a variety of shorts from global creators around the world.
OMELETO WORLD’S BEST SHORT FILM PAGE
I’ll check out this page and even short films on Tiktok for some cool ideas on where to start.
Are you, and some friends, going to join the challenge with me? I’d love to know!
I hope you enjoyed my newsletter and are excited for a great December! If you like our newsletter, then please like, share, and subscribe so other folks can get in on this goodness:)
Until next time!
