Now that I moved away from Lochgilphead, I found myself missing the group, the chats, and the beautiful connections me and my daughter were making in the community. I looked for similar groups in the town where we lived currently, but with no luck: they are either too far, too expensive, or they specifically don’t allow young kids.

I decided to start a group myself. I’m posting here below the proposal I’ve written, which sums up why and how I’m going to start this project. I honestly think every town should have an art group that is inclusive, peer led, and free of charge and of expectation.

Proposal for:

Art for Wellbeing in my town

An inclusive, peer-led, weekly arts & crafts meet-up, where creative expression meets community building and individual wellbeing.

Summary

Art and creative expression have long proved to be effective tools to promote both individual wellbeing and community building. As our town develops and its population increases in number, the need for more activities on offer increases too. Having a weekly meet-up where residents can provide space for each other to express themselves creatively without an agenda (for example, without the obligation to participate or without the expectation to create “good art”) can have significant positive effects for our community.

Aims

1. To strengthen our community by offering an open space where Tornagrain’s residents can build relationships while experimenting with their own creative expression.

2. To promote art as a tool for individual wellbeing, through art therapy practices and easy-to-follow tutorials that everyone can experiment with.

Specifications

During an initial trial period, I (Margherita) will take care of organizing and leading the group, but the final goal is to create a peer-led meet-up that can take place autonomously. The group could start as soon as this proposal is accepted and the materials needed are gathered.

Who is the group for

The group will be open to everyone in our community. The group will initially be set up for 10 to 15 participants.

Location and time

The location will be the local community room.

The group will take place one afternoon during the week. The day of the week can be decided according to the room’s availability, and possibly after an online poll using the Facebook group to check residents’ preferences.

Trial period

I suggest trialing the group for at least 8 weeks before establishing whether it’s worth continuing, and I can take responsibility for those 8 weeks in terms of organising the space, welcoming participants, leading the group, and tidying up the space after.

Materials and budget

For the initial phase (trial period) we would need basic materials such as mixed media paper, brushes, gouache or watercolours, tempera sticks, acrylic markers, tissue paper, low-tack tape, pencils and pens.
If this proposal is accepted I’ll be happy to provide a more detailed budget list.

Community Art Group Success Story

The motivation to create this group comes from the positive experience I had at the weekly art group in Lochgilphead, Mid Argyll, where I lived with my young family until April 2026.
The group was peer-led, free of charge and open to anyone, with remarkable positive impact on the participants’ wellbeing.
It included a short meditation, a brief sharing circle, and an easy-to-follow tutorial which was selected by the leading participant.
The group facilitated and strengthened long-lasting friendships within the community.
I took part with my baby, now a toddler. The presence of a very young person seemed to enrich the enjoyment of our art group’s participants, by bringing together every generation in the local community, and closing a generational gap that is sadly very common in our society.

The photos in this article are from the Snowdrop Centre in Lochgilphead, where the art group has been taking place.

The other day my social media feed offered to me an image of someone wearing a gannet costume. I looked carefully and recognized my own paper mache gannet head, which I had sold as a commission in 2023. Over the years I occasionally saw that head popping up in various news outlets, including the Guardian, being used for environmental activism – and I couldn’t ask for my art to be used in a better way. Here’s the gannet’s story.

While I was working at the Stirling Reuse Hub, helping rescuing waste from going to landfill, someone donated a cyclist helmet that looked like a giant beak. As a charity, we couldn’t sell things like helmets or car seats because they couldn’t be checked for inside damage, therefore, that fascinating helmet was destined for landfill.

This was sometime in spring 2023, when I was coordinating the opening a new makers shop in the Thistles shopping centre, called “Reclaimers”. I decided to save the helmet even if I was extremely busy, and make something out of it that could grab attention from shoppers. Things aligned and I was commissioned a giant gannet head to be used as a prompt for environmental activism. I covered the head with paper mache and some fabric feathers, leaving holes for the eyes.

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Making the gannet head was good fun, and someone else made a beautiful gannet costume. That costume had then been covered with molasses, to imitate oil, in a protest against a new oil field planned just off the coast of Scotland. You can read more here: 'Human-sized oil smeared gannet' displayed in protest over oil field

This time (2026) the gannet head has been used to highlight the cruelty of the traditional “guga hunt”, where not just the protected sea bird, but its chicks, are being unreasonably slaughtered in the name of profit (dead gannet chicks are apparently profitable to be served as food), and masked by the word “tradition”. To read more and to support the campaign, follow this link.

If you are part of an activism group and in need for prompts, please do reach out, I might be available for commissions, or for consultations (ideas on how to make things).

I’m available to support action to contrast all forms of violence and oppression against humans, animals, ecosystems, or the environment as a whole.

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In the last 12+ months I haven’t had so much time and energy to pour into my art, but earlier this year I’ve put together this piece in a sort of creative frenzy that lasted a few days.

Whenever my daughter was napping, even just for 10 minutes, I would go to the kitchen and paint. I normally plan the design ahead and spend lots of time adjusting details, but this time I worked fast, almost without thinking.

The resulting mixed media art piece has been accepted as part of an event that honors and celebrates the gorgeous rainforest here in Scotland. It was a one-day event in Fort William, it took place in March 2026 and it featured works of several artists based in the Scottish west coast, islands and highlands.

The original is for sale and I’m not making any copies. For more information, contact me on marghe@spacecows.art or fill the contact form here.

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RECEIVING: why does this word sound so beautiful?

Feel your muscles relax. Give permission to your neck and upper back to let go of the tension. Feel any little knot in your guts open and release. Feel the tiniest of your muscles relaxing, all the little muscles of your feet, the muscles of your fingers and between the fingers, the superficial flat muscles of the back of your head, your forehead, your tongue, your throat, your rib muscles, your pelvic muscles. Relax and completely trust the numinous, the universe, a spiritual dimension.

Open to receive. In such a state, your feelings are very welcome to show up and to stay. They are important messengers of how to lead your life: what is there that can guide you through this unbelievable time on Earth you’re experiencing? There’s lots: a sense of peace is there, but also fear and worry are there, a half-buried sense of guilt or shame, some anxiety and insecurity, self-doubt, are all there. They are sometimes uncomfortable but they all give you gifts, if you’re open to receive them. A lot of the most uncomfortable feelings that dwell in you are actually not a negative presence: they are of service as protectors. Imagine if you didn’t have any fear, or guilt, or insecurities. How would you lead your life in relation to others? And would you be able to keep yourself safe from real dangers?

FEEL all the feelings, let them exist and express themselves. They are your helpers and your servants. Remember, though: they aren’t YOU and you aren’t their servant.

In this week’s video (link) I share how our own death could be “used” to enhance our positive perception of life.

The video is scheduled for Thursday at 00:00 CET, so if it’s not up yet it will be soon.

This was the succession of events that gave me the idea on death:

1) The perspective emerged, very suddenly, that I might have limited time left (this idea has been triggered by something I’ll keep private)

2) I initially felt anxiety raising in my chest, my thoughts went to my loved ones, and to all the things I have not accomplished yet

3) Following anxiety, curiosity came right after, and I started journaling about my death, as a way to process it

4) Once the fear/anxiety dissipated, as I was writing, I realized I could enjoy my day-to-day life more, if I had a specific deadline.

Therefore, I decided to start living a little bit more as if I was dying. Which is not delusional. After all, there is only one certainty: death is waiting for all of us, we just don’t know when it will come. So, technically, the idea of our upcoming death is not just a fantasy, but we seem to go on with our lives forgetting all about it, taking our time for granted, and getting stuck in all sorts of small problems and frustrations. Death used to very present in human society, but nowadays, with the control we have on nature through medicine and technology, and with the increase of closed-doors animal farms and slaughterhouses, we have lost our connection with death, especially in developed countries.

Death is a reality for everyone, including the healthy, the wealthy, and the people in countries that aren’t at war, but we’d rather avoid thinking or speaking about death. Ignoring the topic of death isn’t a solution to our mortality, but it makes the acceptance of our mortality even harder.

If you’re not feeling overwhelmed by the fear of your own death, you could consider using the following journaling prompts for self-exploration. Counterintuitive as it may sound, it was a very enjoyable activity when I tried it, and it enhanced my ability to enjoy my life and to value my physical body.

Prompt 1: “If I knew my death was close, how would I spend my time?” (Example: I would worry much less about working hard, to make a living but more so to afford things that aren’t strictly necessary. In other words, I’d be immune to consumeristic temptations, or to the frustration of not having all the comforts I desire. Another example: people’s triggering behavior would probably leave me unbothered. My list of things I’d enjoy was very long!)

Prompt 2: “How would I relate to others?”

Regarding the second prompt, I initially thought:

“I would be extra kind, I’d listen to others, be much more forgiving, I’d forget my ego’s desires, and create lots of good memories for people to treasure once I’m gone. This would be a good way to make the most of the time I have left.”

But, surprisingly, I also thought… what if I did the opposite? Giving others less of me, not more. Listening to them less, spending less time with them. Investing my energy and time on me instead, and enjoy my private creative bubble, completely and freely. Why? Because I love spending time alone, it nourishes my soul. For some of us, especially those who have been socialized as girls in a traditional setting, the idea of focusing exclusively on our own wellbeing may sound horrible: no way we could be this cruel, and spend most of the time alone, ignoring those loved ones who need us. Some of us were trained to prioritize others, otherwise… we were “bad”: doomed to be rejected and unloved by the people we depended on.

Also, sometimes we think we MUST be the kind ones if we are “evolved” enough, to prove the hard work we did on ourselves was successful, especially when we follow the stereotypical spiritual path that portrays the EGO as the enemy… but I do feel like there are a few people who would benefit by some extra selfishness. Here’s a little test: if the idea of coming across as selfish doesn’t bother you, it doesn’t give you the slightest hint of fear, then maybe you would’t find it therapeutic to experiment with it. But if you feel like prioritizing yourself is scary, then maybe it would benefit you.

To be fair, things are rarely this B/W, and sometimes people do need to prioritize others’ needs (when we are responsible for young children, for example) but I thought it would be interesting to share the idea of “healthy selfishness”. If it stimulated any thoughts, please do share them below.

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Thank you for reading! If you haven’t yet, please consider subscribing, and check my other offerings - mostly related to creativity, art, and self expression - on linktree.

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As animals (life in motion), us humans are designed to move; the impossibility of moving, and the lack of personal choice in general, can be extremely stressful to experience.

This theme came up for the month of April 2025: “Freedom VS being trapped”. Below you’ll find a photo of my notes, and the transcription.

If you want to read about what these 12 meditations are, scroll down to the next section, the one about the “Raunächten”.

Being “trapped” is already painful and scary in itself. There are two elements: the situation you feel trapped in and the feeling of being trapped.

“He who has a why can endure any how” - I think Freud said this, and Frankl quoted it (in “Man’s Search for Meaning”, one of my absolute favorite books)

Sometimes, the story of someone else can come as help. For example, Frankl was a prisoner in a concentration camp, and there was very little he could do about it, but he was able not only to survive it, but to turn around the situation and use it to feed self-expression, with the creation of Logotherapy.

In a way yes, I am stuck. I have to do certain things that make me feel hopeless and prisoner of pain. But is there anything I could use in that pain?

There is ALWAYS something to learn. What are my options? Why this suffering? Can I see things under a different light, somehow?

EVERYTHING IS TEMPORARY.

Things will perish, people too. Me as well. I can choose if I will see this as a depressing element of being here, or if I can use it somehow. Like a death manifesto. Ultimately, you will be eternally free. You will lose your prison. So how can you get something, anything, out of it? Imprisonment is a temporary state of being anyway. At the end, it won’t matter so much if you did anything with it or not. But in the present moment, it matters a lot.

There is always something to make you feel stuck and there is always a way to feel free, somehow, even in a very small way. Then, everything will end.

What are the 12 Raunächten meditations?

Since this meditation is the first one I share, I must say some words about the 12 meditations.

Last year (2024) I finally found the courage to recognize that I have no interest in celebrating Christmas, actually I find it very stressful, so I decided to avoid it completely. My human brain still felt the need for a ritual, one that could feel genuine and authentic, so I researched for an alternative.

Eventually, I found something called “Raunächten”. These “Rau-nights” are a pre-Christian germanic tradition and I couldn’t find so much pre-Christian information, but they resonated with me so I adapted them to my preferences. They are 12 magical nights between Christmas and the beginning of the new year, when the veil between worlds is said to be extra thin.

They are a very introspective and quiet time, made of rest and meditation, as a reflection of all nature slowing down to a halt during the darkest time of the year. They are a time of particular awareness related to both the physical and the non-physical worlds. Some Christian mystics use these 12 nights to meditate or pray over 12 particular subjects. Originally, in pre-Christian times, it was said that the weather in each one of the 12th mornings’ would predict the weather of the 12 months of the upcoming year.

This was my adaptation: every morning, starting from the 26th of December, I took a piece of paper to write what came up spontaneously in my mind during a meditative state. Then, each day I wrote the correspondent month of the next year, and now for each month I’m going back to that specific meditation. For April 2025 I have the meditation written on the 29th of December 2024. Each month, so far, I’d forget what the meditation was going to be, so it’s been always a little surprise.

I’m glad I found this practice. Christmas just doesn’t resonate anymore, it leaves me over socialized and bloated, and full of random crap that I don’t need (please, let’s stop gifting useless crap to people and expect more useless crap in return). If you also feel sick of having to celebrate Christmas mandatorily, let’s connect, because we are rare!

I hope you found this insightful. If so, leave a comment or subscribe to this Substack!

Also, have you seen my latest video, where I speak of my creative routine? Check it here:

Officially, the reason why I left Scotland and came back to my home country, Italy, was “to study at the mosaic school in Friuli and become master mosaicist after 3 years”. All my friends and collegues wished me good luck and said to me “you will be an amazing mosaic artist”.

One of the more quiet side-reasons, though, was to do some ancestral healing, as all my recent ancestors come from this region of Italy called Friuli. I wanted to do both the mosaic studying and the ancestral / inner work.

Then the unexpected happened: pregnancy has been sort of thrown at us just before school started. As I write I’m at the 8th month. It’s very funny, I think existence really listened to me, so it gifted me with more family-line material to work with.

Soon after, I faceplanted against the difficulties of studying while pregnant, which eventually made me quit school, after only 3 months. So, I’m not becoming a master mosaicist anymore: instead, I have to become a mother. This was a really difficult decision but I’m glad I found the strength to put my ambitions aside.

Every time I wake up from my sleep, or when I resurface from a creative flow state, I re-realize I’m expecting, because I had forgotten all about it. Somebody is in here, tossing and turning amongst my organs. ”Who are you and why are you here?” I hear myself asking, in my head. But the question sinks into silence and disappears, like a rock thrown in deep waters. The answer might resurface when my daughter will appear from my womb. I’m brewing a miniature stranger, but when she’ll be here, it might feel like I recognize her, like I suddenly remember that I knew her all along. Maybe.

From the moment I got pregnant, before I even knew about it, my connection with those who came before me got a little bit stronger. I was able to connect with her ancestors in a variety of ways, my favorites being art, journaling, and meditation. I visited all the gravestones and felt all their peace, that sense of timeless and unshakeable peace which can only come from the dead. I was surprised when some darkness buried deep inside me came bubbling up so aggressively, to finally be looked at, as if my pregnancy pushed up some inner muck to be cleared before the stranger-non-stranger comes.

The closest metaphorical image I have in my head is an earthquake, deep in the bottom of the sea, where at each shake of the Earth, thick black sand opens up and releases ancient spirits and demons, who had been stuck and unseen since who knows when. Maybe since the beginning of humans, where everyone’s ancestral line meets with everyone else’s. While being released, the demons get to express themselves fully: they twist, growl and scream, they fill the waters with overwhelming absolute darkness.

I must say, as scary as they are, their presence is not entirely evil: finally they are seen and free, so they communicate some excitement, and gratitude. They float up towards the air, where they completely loose their scariness: they pop easily and softly like air bubbles, forever free. Down in the depths where they came from, a renewed sense of peace is restored after each demon gets freed and seen.

I tend to believe some of our demons come from before our conception and birth, so ancestral healing feels like digging out the demons. Also, ancestral healing is not limited to the boundaries of a single family line, but it expands to the cultures where our biological ancestors lived, and it includes all the non-biological ancestors too, meaning all the people who allowed the survival of humanity before us. In my head it gets infinitely complex.

As I’m bringing life forth, ancestral work is no longer done just for myself, but also for my daughter. To celebrate our relationship and to prepare for this stranger-non-stranger arriving without knowing exactly when, I decided to decorate her father’s body with a tattoo (he has been asking me for another tattoo since years!) inspired by celtic art, which is part of his ancestral heritage.

I made a video about the making of this tattoo, where he speaks about the process and the symbolism of the design. Thumbnail below. If you’re interested, check my channel and subscribe, I’ll post the video tomorrow, for the 2025 spring equinox: https://youtube.com/@spacecowsart

When the tattoo was finished, I asked my partner to decorate my belly with facepaint.

It was a sunny winter day, just before spring equinox, and we painted my belly out in the garden, where the grass is full of those tiny blue flowers I remember from my childhood. I can almost see my small child’s body playing in the grass amongst these same tiny flowers, some 30 years ago. Later, a huge black bee with stunning holographic wings appeared in our home, and we’ve been completely enchanted by her beauty. Here are some photo preceding her release, and the morning after she came around for another visit in the garden (or maybe it was a sister, who knows)

I’m currently creating video content for this tutorial, but for the time being I’m offering you my notes. Have a look, and if you want, let me know what you think. I hope you will find this exercise stimulating for your own creative practice.

NOTES

If your head is full, new ideas can’t fit. This is why it’s vital to remember that emptiness and stillness should be treasured, as much as fullness and constant motion.

I once read a zen story of a monk who teaches his disciples to keep their cup empty, as if it’s already full of water, they can’t pour any more in. The message is that when we encourage emptiness of our cups and our spirits, we’ll be able invite new content in, content that is fresh, clear, and alive.

In our lives we get constantly bombarded by information and commitments, but we didn’t evolve to deal with this much. When we are forced to stay productive all the time, and to stay social, and to work harder, feeling overwhelmed is normal. But from a state of overwhelm is hard to have the clarity needed to take intentional and inspired action. When external information fills your cup completely, you might end up listening to the wrong cues: for example, the desire for external approval, while burning yourself out with overworking and too many activities.

Everything in nature follows cycles of activity and rest. Peace, stillness, and space should be valued in our society, at least as much as rushing and being productive all the time. We: inhale and exhale, contract and expand, tense and relax, get busy and then rest. Our ancestors were forced to live according to the cycles of nature: during winter, they couldn’t do much. At night in the darkness they couldn’t do much.

Nowadays, we can ignore the seasons and stay productive all year round, forgetting that rest is a fundamental part of productivity. When we decide to rest, often we judge ourselves as lazy. When we get bored, we reach out for our phone. But boredom, they say, “is the mother of creativity”, and I couldn’t agree more. Boredom is an open invitation to inspiration.

Burnout is extremely common in our society, because we feel like we can’t or shouldn’t rest. When we get overwhelmed we try to shut off our brain by scrolling, but if we learn to rest, to truly rest, at one point we will feel the urge to be active again, and we will likely be very productive at that point.

The key words are patience, trust, and stillness. Overworking ourselves might lead to get so burnt-out that we end up having to stagnate to recover, but stagnation and exhaustion is really unpleasant, and overall we won’t be any more productive than if we’d follow a healthy rest-and-action cycle.

CREATE SPACE AND LISTEN: pay attention inward, focus on a sense of deep trust, stay open, curious, and be ready to receive. By welcoming emptiness, stillness, silence and space, we will invite new, fresh ideas, a restored sense of clarity of the mind, and we will be able to reconnect with our inner wisdom, or our higher self, to help us navigate life in the most fulfilling way we can. It’s hard because we need to let go of control.

Practicing the following exercise will allow you to experience within yourself a state of flow that is nourishing and deeply restoring.

The blank space/emptiness exercise: step by step instructions

1. MARK THE EDGE OF YOUR EMPTY SPACE, WHILE FOCUSING ON YOUR INTENTION: get your favorite materials ready, including a sheet of paper of your preferred size (bigger is better in this case, but standard printing size works just fine), and think of an intention you’re setting for this practice. For example, if you have a problem or dilemma in life, you can think “I am clearing the space in my mind, so that inspiration might arise with a solution to this problem I am experiencing. I trust this process”. On your sheet of paper, trace a large circle in the centre. While you trace your circle, repeat your intention in your mind.

   This line will be the boundaries of the empty space you are inviting in your life. A white circle symbolizes endless potential, purity and wholeness.

2. CREATE A PROTECTIVE DISC FOR YOUR EMPTY SPACE: To make sure you won’t accidentally splash paint over your empty space, cut out a piece of cardboard, or of parchment paper, of the exact same size of your circle. Tape it on the centre of the page using masking tape. Important: remember to make the tape less sticky before you do this, by pressing it on your clothes or on your skin before using it on the paper: this will prevent any tearing of the paper at the end, when you finally remove the disc and the tape.

   Ask yourself inward if there’s any further step to take before laying colors on paper. This step will create a communication between your rational mind and your creative mind, which allows a state of flow to arise. For example in my case, I taped down the sheet of paper on the sides, and I also used the masking fluid to create a wavy framing for my painting. The creation of a frame is entirely up to you.

3. TRACE HAND-DRAWN CIRCLES AROUND YOUR EMPTY SPACE, AND PAINT EACH RING IN A DIFFERENT WAY: Now that you’re ready, and you’ve gathered your favorite art materials to use on this painting, you can start filling the sheet around the disc. Start by hand-drawing circular shapes around he main circle, and fill in each ring with a different color. You can make it as simple or as detailed as you feel: just ask your intuition and practice hearing its guidance. The only rule here is to fill in any white space around the circle, as the only blank space should be the circle in the centre.

   FINAL NOTE: The most rewarding result will come from making this process your own, customizing it as you want. Practice being open and curious about how you want your process to be: choosing the type of paper and paint already gives you lots of options. For example, you could even choose to place your sheet on the floor, and to splash paint all over it (after you’ve placed the protective disc in the centre), Jackson Pollock style.

Do you need ideas for hand drawn patterns, zentangle-style? Subscribe and stay tuned for the next freebies, which will be exactly that: lots of freehand meditative patterns you can copy during your own art-meditation sessions.

How I would define “art therapy”: through artistic expression we can transform and shift our own energy, both emotional, mental, and physical, and we can allow positive change to take place in our day to day life. Art becomes a tool for self discovery and self-realization.

If we are going through a challenging time, sometimes traditional therapy is inaccessible, but art will always be available at our fingertips, we just need some paper, and pens, pencils, or any other type of paint.

So, when we create something with our body, using colours and shapes and involving all our senses, we are literally creating ourselves. When we are able to reach the state of flow, this process becomes the easiest and most pleasant thing we’ve experience. This is art therapy at its finest.

A while ago I felt the need for a change in my online activity. After experimenting for a few weeks with a variety of things, I decided to simplify my process, skimming it down to the following:

🌿 I’m offering art videos regularly. My aim is to make others feel empowered, and to infuse a sense of peace. Also, I aim to connect with others and to support each other. I’m posting the videos on Youtube (the longer ones), and on Instagram and Facebook (the reels/shorts) Links to everything are below!

🌿 I started writing on Substack. I find Substack really brilliant. I’ve been a consumer for about two months, and I finally was able to gather the courage to start writing. Years ago I used to love writing blog posts, then I lost my courage somewhere. Writing makes me feel very vulnerable, and very alive.

I will use Substack as my newsletter too, it’s much simpler than the plugin I was using on my website (which now wants to charge me to get access my mailing list, meh). So to keep in touch, subscribe here!

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🌿 I’m only updating my shop now, not the rest of my website, because I find it more fulfilling to engage in a community, so, I’m focusing more on posting on social media.

🙅‍♀️👎 Deleted: I’m not on Tiktok nor on Bluesky anymore. I was looking for an alternative to Meta (Instagram, Facebook), but I’m not convinced about those other platforms… so I’ll keep Instagram and Facebook for now. I’m posting very regularly art/creativity content that I hope will make you feel inspired, peaceful, and energized.

Go to all the links

All this will go on until my daughter is born (soon!), then I’ll change my practice again to accomodate the baby’s needs.

Thank you so much for your time. I would love to hear your thoughts, either here in the comments, or in one of the social media platforms I mentioned.

Many blessings to you 🙏

Margherita

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This is a little bit of my story: I’ve been hungry for my own creativity for way too long, but I struggled with a feeling of unworthiness. When I finally gathered some courage and started pursuing my creative path it was 2016-2018, but progress has been extremely slow, mostly because I felt like I didn’t deserve to practice and share my creative expression. In the last few months I made some radical changes, both planned and unplanned (including an unexpected pregnancy, but this topic is for another time), and I was finally able to switch from artistic constipation to a free flow of creative expression. Finally it has happened, I became a creative, an artist, an imaginative being, or should I say, I returned to my own creative and childlike nature. It feels incredible. Now I want to support and encourage others to find their own creative voice, and to experience this wonderful sense of creative abundance.

I believe once we get to a state of personal empowerment, then empowering others is almost a duty. We should aim at being contagious with the positive things of life, because the negatives tend to be so naturally contagious and dominant in human society. Somebody wrote a beautiful sentence below one of my videos: “people who quietly make art will save the world”. It may seem overly optimistic to speak of changing the world, but surely people who make art can save THEMSELVES, and if we save ourselves one at a time, we might very well realize one day that we are saving the whole world. The world needs us creatives to feel and to share a sense of peace and contentment, as an act of resistance to all the darkness that surrounds us. So, let’s get into the content of this video, and I hope you will find it insightful for your own creative work.

The idea of consuming VS creating.

Maybe you, just like me, are the type of person who spends a lot of time consuming content, and enjoys it a lot, but is constantly striving to find balance between consuming mindlessly and consuming mindfully, or between consuming and creating.

Don’t worry, I won’t tell you that the solution is to delete Instagram, Youtube, or any other social media known to encourage doom-scrolling. Personally I’m extremely grateful to social media, because thanks to these tools I found my sense of community and of belonging, in many different ways - even just consuming content made by likeminded people, who experience life in a way that resonates. Social media allowed me to meet some of my best friends, and to find incredible opportunities, by connecting with the world, especially while I was traveling alone for years. Even now that I’m stationary, living in rural Italy, internet and social media keep flooding my life with the pleasure of connection, belonging, and resonance. But I must mention, at one point I had to teach the algorithm that triggering content isn’t welcome in my life, and I’m not even mentioning what that content is about.

Of course, consuming is not always so satisfying: it must be “mindful” to be so, in other terms limited, intentional, and targeted, and this is sometimes a difficult task, because as we use social media, we are also used by it. Our attention gets monetized, tricked, and exploited. We might end up feeling drained after a doom scrolling session that happened, somehow, without our full consent. It can feel like our attention and our energy literally get stolen from us.

Finding balance is a lifelong process. It is known to be hard but it can be really easy, thanks to one simple switch of mindset: instead of forcing ourselves to consume less, and to deprive ourselves of something pleasant (which scrolling is), we can implement elements in our life that feel better than scrolling, to make our brain want to do something else. So these are the tips I find myself using, in order to pursue balance and satisfaction:

1st Tip: Does your mind need a (real) break?

Sometimes we doom-scroll because our brain is tired, from being exposed to external stimuli, and/or to some internal pressure of some sort (like needing to complete a tedious chore), or from trying to hide something from ourselves. Sometimes scrolling is a form of escapism and covers up an uncomfortable truth that we subconsciously don’t want to look at. All these elements take a toll in terms of brain power, and sometimes we need to just shut down. But unfortunately, scrolling is not a real break for the mind, quite the opposite: it’s a bombardment of information, and we might feel even more exhausted, at the end or a doom-scrolling session.

As a solution to this, I found a simple little practice in my daily life: breathing deeply. I like to stop what I’m doing and to feel the air flowing in and out my lungs, filling them completely and then emptying them completely. This simple action facilitates the response of the parasympathetic nervous system, which is also knows as “rest and digest” nervous system: that part of our brain which allows mind-and-body relaxation. Just breathing deeply a few times encourages real and energizing rest. As we practice breathing, our brain might offer thoughts, worries, ideas, memories, plans, etc; we can observe them as if we were at the theatre, without identifying with them. Emotions will lose some of their grip on us, allowing our mind to REALLY rest.

What I enjoy doing at the end of a breathing session is to thank myself and my brain for showing me those thoughts, which reinforces the emotional detachment from them, and keeps me grounded and stable for longer.

2nd Tip: Detach from the final outcome.

Of course if you’re working on a commission this is not recommended, but otherwise, if you’re practicing creativity for yourself, try to coltivate a sense of playfulness as opposed to a sense of control over the outcome. This tip really allowed me to access some new levels of creative enjoyment. This is particularly hard if you’re trying to “make it as an artist” in a capitalistic sense, so, if you need to make your living out of your art. Which I avoid for that exact reason: I don’t want capitalism to spoil the fun.

I am open to commissions because I don’t get them all the time, and the balance works well for me at the moment. To me, the idea of becoming a “full time artist” as in, pay all my bills through art, is not the goal. This is just my current choice and I might change my mind one day.

3rd Tip: Activate your senses.

Sensory play is often so much more energizing and inspiring than scrolling. With “sensory play” I mean to stimulate my senses in real life, and experience tuning into the present moment, into the actual physical surroundings, by finding sensory pleasure in it.

I have a lot of small interesting objects around the house that I can play with: marbles, buttons, nature findings, wooden objects, shells, etc. I have an old first aid box made of metal, full of random objects including a kaleidoscope. My choices are usually tactile or colorful objects, so I use mostly my touch and my sight, but you might find beneficial to use other senses, for example listen to music or smell some interesting smells (old books, fresh laundry, plants, a pet, etc).

To my experience, sensory pleasure is very inspiring for a creative practice, and I try to make it as easy for myself as reaching for my phone.

4th Tip: Notice how you speak to yourself.

This point is about noticing your inner critic voice, if you have one. Most people do have one, but they sometimes believe the stories the inner critic tells, by identifying with it. I struggled with my inner critic for years without noticing, and finally a few months ago I had a little breakthrough on how to deal with it once for all, without shutting it down, ignoring it, or denying its existence, but rather by finding a sense of understanding, compassion, and even gratitude towards this wounded and afraid part of me who is desperate to protect me from getting hurt. Even if it sounds counterintuitive. This is the technique I used to calm my inner critic down and make it want to trust me: https://youtu.be/nvNAj8C8WrY?si=W5dMgQj4ISelvMk0

I hope you will find it insightful.

5th Tip: Replace consumerism with creativity.

Whenever you need material goods, instead of buying them, try to think of how you could either make them yourself, or find them in alternative, creative ways. For example, when I needed a lamp for my bedside table, I made one (and I did buy a part for the lamp, but still, I didn’t buy the full lamp, which gave me the opportunity to be creative). Of course some things are not easy to create or to obtain in different ways than buying them, but this is a wonderful practice: when you need something, think of how you could get it or make it without buying, and buy it when you don’t find an alternative. If you’re used to just go on Amazon and make an order, you will probably be surprised to notice that many of the things you buy can be either made or found.

To “find” them, what I normally do is asking online if anyone has it and wants to give it away. Not only when I can’t buy them, but especially because buying them is the easy and boring, un-creative way. I’ve received so many things this way, which allowed me to save money, reduce waste in the world, and to connect with locals. I do realize this is taboo in some cultures, like the one I live in right now (Italian and rural), but I still suggest to consider alternatives to simple consumerism.

This is the coloring page, it’s already in the standard printing size A4, and you should be able to save it on your device by clicking on it, if not, please let me know, and I’ll figure out another way. This is my first Substack post, so please, bear with me as I figure things out!

If you can’t download the coloring page below, you can find it on my website as well, www.spacecows.art, in my latest blog post.