Play Date with Minette Riordan: Creativity is your birthright 

EPISODE LINKS:

To find out more about Minette's Alice in Wonderland Mythical Makeover Experience, "Down the Rabbit Hole" go to: https://www.minetteriordan.com/down-the-rabbit-hole-mythical-makeover

Minette's Website: https://www.minetteriordan.com/

Mentioned in the episode:

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

The Queen's Cloak by Joan Chamberlain Engelsman 

Zentangle

TED Talk by Sir Ken Robinson

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:37] Annmarie:  Hey, welcome back. I am feeling pretty darn honored that you're choosing to spend a little time with us today. So if you haven't done it already, consider this your invitation to pour yourself a cup of coffee, get comfortable, and settle in for another playdate So one of the things I've been noticing in my own life, and in almost every conversation I've had on this podcast thus far, is that creativity really starts to tug at us in midlife, not necessarily as a desire to become an artist, but as a way to reengage with a part of ourselves that we've been missing.

[00:01:15] And that's exactly why I invited today's guest to join us. Her name is Minette Riordon, and I mean, come on, if your name is Minette Riordon, I think you have some sort of cosmic duty to become an artist, right? Minette is an artist, but she also calls herself a midlife transformation mentor, meaning she has spent years helping women understand that very call to a creative, reflective approach to midlife.

[00:01:45] So today, we're gonna talk about why it is that creativity seems to come knocking for us at this stage in our life, and what might happen if we answered the door. So pull up a chair and help me welcome Minette. [00:02:00] Welcome to I Used to be Fun, Minette. 

[00:02:01] Minette: Yeah, I'm so happy to be here, and I can't tell you how much I giggle every time I see the name of your podcast.

[00:02:08] It's the best name ever, I Used to be Fun. It's so true. I used to be fun. 

[00:02:12] Annmarie: We've all said it, and I was thinking about it the other day, and, uh, just about the title, and because it catches people with humor, it's a great title, but there's also that little line of grief underneath of what have we lost? What have we buried?

[00:02:29] How can we unearth it? And I think that's a little bit of what we're gonna talk about today. And one of the reasons that I invited you to be on the podcast was what I said in the introduction, that creativity seems to become especially important in midlife, and you're the expert. So tell us why you think that is.

[00:02:48] Minette: Yeah, there's a, a few reasons, and we could spend all our time talking about that, but I think it's because in the first half of life, we're really building our life, right? We're building families, careers, whatever the, our chosen path is, and in the second half of life, we start asking ourselves, "Does my life still fit?"

[00:03:11] Yes. And what I've noticed is that we feel really constrained, right? Like, you know, it's like the, the, the menopausal middle belly, right? And all of a sudden, the pants don't wanna button. Well, life feels like that, that it doesn't fit, and so many of the roles that defined us for so long, they just implode.

[00:03:33] Like, I'm in my 60s now, but in my 50s it felt like every role that I had been playing changed, shifted, or disappeared, and creativity was the only thing that helped me make sense- of who I was beneath the roles. It helped me get out of my head, back into my body. And we're not talking about making art as much as we are about using creative [00:04:00] process to make meaning.

[00:04:01] And for me, I believe that creativity becomes a path back to authenticity and that fun part of ourselves 

[00:04:11] Annmarie: I feel like we could just end the podcast right here. That, that is the perfect statement, and I agree with you that creativity is not just sitting with paints, though doing that is fun. It is bringing that creative sense and flair and attitude to everything that we do, and really opening ourselves to finding the creativity inside of all the things that we do.

[00:04:37] Because what do we do that actually isn't a creative act, right? 

[00:04:41] Minette: Amen. Amen. 

[00:04:44] Annmarie: So let's just keep going with that train of thought, because the minute some women hear the word creativity, they do go to that artist place, and they think, "Well, I'm not creative. I don't have..." I used to own an art store here in the small town that I live in, art materials store, and people would come in, I've talked about it many times before.

[00:05:04] I had the store divided in half. One side was fun gifts and greeting cards and things like that, and the other side was the art supplies. And there was, like, almost this invisible line that people wouldn't cross to go to the art supplies because, "Well, I'm not creative, I'm not artistic." So tell us a little bit about how to undo that misunderstanding about the concept of creativity.

[00:05:28] Minette: Yeah. Well, there's so many approaches we could take, and I actually did some research on this 'cause I was really curious about at what point in history did creativity get conflated with art? And it was actually during the Renaissance that that happened. Like, it's fascinating. That's a whole nother rabbit hole that we can go down perhaps another time, because we both do love that kind of history stuff.

[00:05:52] But because of that initial conflation of creativity with artistic talent, we [00:06:00] lost the deep knowing that creativity is our birthright. Creativity is what sets us apart from every other species on the planet, except for our closest cousins, all the monkeys, right, and apes and gorillas are equally creative, as many studies have shown.

[00:06:18] But creativity, when we separate it out from art, we remember that it's about how to solve problems, how to dream again, which often in midlife and beyond we've lost our ability to dream, which is part of the fun piece, and it helps us express ourselves in every area of our life. And I often like to remind people to look around for the places they're already being creative that have nothing to do with art-making.

[00:06:49] Like, you walk into somebody's home and it is just so beautifully designed. Or so warm and welcoming, or you get invited to a friend's house for dinner, and the way the food is served and shared and prepared with love and attention. S- gardening is a beautiful creative expression. I have one friend that teaches this amazing form.

[00:07:16] It's called wild embodied dance, and it's the traditional, some people will remember this that are our age, five rhythms dance. That is one of her many creative geniuses is creating the playlist, of being able to tap into music to find the story and the rhythm. Photography. You're a writer. It's an artful expression of your voice, right?

[00:07:43] My husband is a programmer, and he's incredibly creative in his capacity to problem solve technical things. I'm so grateful for that in my own life, right? And every child is creative. I think, uh, Sir Ken Robinson is, has a [00:08:00] great TED Talk about this, that talks about the very specific age when kids stop thinking they're creative.

[00:08:07] And it's the first time they get judged for what they're creating and told it doesn't look right, or it doesn't look like it's supposed to like, or when art becomes very directive, draw a horse, draw a tree. Not all of us have drawing skills. I also wanna remind people that art is a skill, not a talent.

[00:08:30] Some people have both skill and talent. That is magical and helps them get there faster. But as an aspiring artist for the last decade, I have worked so hard on my drawing skills. And so I think once we start to uncouple creativity from art making and find those more expressive ways to use art as a powerful mirror for self-reflection, that's when it becomes a magical tool for self-discovery in the second half of life.

[00:09:04] Annmarie: Tell me a little bit about what that looks like in practice, that using creativity as a mirror. 

[00:09:09] Minette: Sure. So most specifically I would say traditionally that looks like art therapy. In more contemporary times, it looks like what I call expressive arts. So that might be intuitive painting on a canvas where we use color, stroke, and movement to get feelings and emotions up out of our body and onto a canvas or a piece of paper where we can see it.

[00:09:36] That's one way where a canvas becomes our mirror. One of my most favorite ways to introduce people to this type of creative expression is collage, right? Uh, just grabbing a magazine and just tearing out some images, tearing, not cutting, because as soon as we start cutting, we go into perfectionism mode, [00:10:00] and gluing them down on a piece of paper and then looking at it and go, "What's the story that's here?"

[00:10:06] And we can do that very abstractly, and we can do it with intentionality and prompts. But, you know, who doesn't love to rip images out and glue 'em on a piece of paper? Like, talk about taking us right back to kindergarten delight and fun. You know? So collage is such an easy entry point to expressive arts where we're creating for meaning, not art making.

[00:10:30] Does that make sense? 

[00:10:31] Annmarie: It makes perfect sense, and I love the idea of creating for meaning and not art making. I'm gonna just say that again because it is so powerful to do something like that. I also love the idea of going through a magazine, pulling things out, or, you know, wherever you're doing it.

[00:10:51] Please don't do it with library books. But outside of that, pulling those things out- 

[00:10:56] Minette: I, I tear up books all the time, I have to tell you. Not library books- I, you know- ... but 

[00:11:00] Annmarie: recycled books. Right, exactly. 

[00:11:01] Minette: Yes. 

[00:11:02] Annmarie: Yeah, me too, and I think that's actually a great way to use a recycled book. You pick up a book at a sale, a garage sale, or something for a dollar.

[00:11:12] Well f- you know, pull things out. But then the piece that a lot of people aren't doing is they're not going back and asking themselves, "What is the story? Why did that flower attract me? Why did those words attract me?" And it can be very insightful to be like, "Oh. Oh, this." Now, especially if we're sitting in mid-life and we're trying to figure out what's coming next, and I think I use the word mid-life, I think you use the second half, and you're ceased being an active parent.

[00:11:41] Maybe your parents have passed away or you're in caregiving mode, and now you're the parent, and they're more like the child. As you said, so many things change that... And we don't slow down to, to see how we're changing through it, and I think, never really thought about it this way, but that collage can be a perfect way of doing that because we [00:12:00] are attracted to things very strongly, and if we don't think about it, we might not know why.

[00:12:07] Minette: Yeah, for sure. Now, did I make sense? Yeah, it totally makes sense, and I would add this is not a vision board, and no words when you're doing this type of intuitive collage because words are labels and limiters, and then you're predetermining the story. When we use only images without words or we add a word later that captures the meaning, that's so helpful.

[00:12:31] But to start with, use only images and layer them up and cut them away from their backgrounds. One of my way too many creative certifications is soul collage, which is a powerful intuitive collage process with a lot of structure to it. But the structure for me was a little restrictive, so I love freeform intuitive collage that allows us to just get the images down and the piece that is where the magic happens- is the asking the questions after the fact.

[00:13:09] What does this collage mean to me? So not why I chose an, a particular image, but what does this image represent? Is there a colorway here, right? And is it the color that's speaking to me? Is the figure that I chose, is she looking right at me? Is she facing away? Is she looking off into the distance? Like, we can really look at the image overall and ask what it means, and then we can go a little deeper underneath that for what is this collage trying to c- tell me, right?

[00:13:45] What's the gift here or the learning from, like, three images on a piece of paper can create an amazing opening in our own thought processes. 

[00:13:57] Annmarie: Love the idea of no words, especially [00:14:00] words are, been my whole life. I'm just... My love language is language. 

[00:14:04] Minette: Mine too. 

[00:14:05] Annmarie: That's l- very meta. 

[00:14:06] Minette: Mine too, and multiple languages, right?

[00:14:08] You know? 

[00:14:09] Annmarie: Yes. Yeah. And, and so not doing it with words is definitely a challenge for me, because that's what speaks to me first. But I can already see the power in not doing that, because it is prescriptive in a way, and I don't have to wonder why I would cut out a word like communication. That might go on my vision board.

[00:14:30] Like, that is the way that I wanna relate to people, but that maybe shouldn't be part of this process. So that is, this is definitely going on my list of things to do. And- 

[00:14:39] Minette: And even on your vision board, Annmarie, I would say no words, right? If we think expansively and you put communication on there, and you put you and your husband talking to each other versus you standing on a stage in front of 100 women, they're both related to communication, right, but they have a very different impact.

[00:15:00] And I deeply believe in the spiritual aspect of all of this, this or something better, right? So when you take out the words and there's no labels or limiters, then the universe delivers something that perhaps we never could have even thought of. 

[00:15:18] Annmarie: Oh, cool. I just love this. I'm, like, already my, my, my thoughts of the next question for you are gone because I'm already planning on when I'm gonna sit down and do this collage.

[00:15:27] All right, I'll bring it back around here. One of the things that did come to my mind while you were talking is we talk a lot about permission on this show and giving ourselves permission to do these things. So let's just stay with the collage thing. There are a lot of women right now that are saying, "Oh, that's nice, but when am I gonna have time for that?"

[00:15:46] Or, "That's nice, but my, whoever I'm living with will say, 'What are you doing? That's silly.'" How do we combat those negative voices that keep us from doing exercises like this, or even taking [00:16:00] the time for ourselves to, to sink into something fun like this? 

[00:16:04] Minette: Yeah. That's such a big question. Um, these are all such great questions.

[00:16:08] So sometimes taking a class, like finding a, a local class at your library or a local museum- helps with the permission and to remember that it's fun to make art. So sometimes that's one thing that can get over the hump. But the other part of this is practice and commitment to your own personal growth.

[00:16:29] For me, the biggest change happened when I simply prioritized art as the most important thing in my life. Like, I literally was standing in the middle of my space at the time that was half office, I've worked for myself always, and half studio, and I heard this voice pop into my head and say, "What would happen if you put art at the center of your life?"

[00:16:53] And at the moment, I didn't know what that meant. I was doing business coaching at the time for artists and creatives, but what I realized after that it was cramming my creative playtime into little pockets or Saturdays. And I've shared this on other interviews where my daughter walked in one Saturday morning and said, "Hey, you wanna go shopping today?"

[00:17:16] Well, first of all, I don't love to shop, and second, I was painting. And I said, "No, I'm painting." And she said, "Mom, you painting is just like you working." And I realized that I was, one, being obsessive about it, and greedy about it, and a little bit selfish because I thought I had to only do it outside of my regular work hours.

[00:17:40] And she was right in my approach to how I was thinking about art as it had to be separate. But when I shifted the priority and I started every day with creativity, it is part of my morning practice every single day for close to a decade, it has changed my life. [00:18:00] And that was about me giving myself permission to prioritize art.

[00:18:05] Now, I tend to be an early riser. If you're listening and, you know, you have teenagers that you're trying to get out of bed and off to school and make sure they eat something, I was the teenager who never wanted to eat breakfast, and every morning, I remember my mom saying, "Are you gonna eat something?" "No."

[00:18:21] You know, so I... There are things, um, if you work from home, your time may feel even more constrained, right? Sometimes there's freedom in I know when I go to the office, and I know when I leave, leave the office. Well, I work from home in my basement. It's, you know, we're in a big drought here in Colorado, so that metaphor of everything needs watering, including us, is an important one in my mind right now.

[00:18:50] Annmarie: I used to have, speaking of using images as inspiration, I used to have an image of a full cup that had flowed over into the saucer, and next to it, there were words, 'cause I'm a word girl. But it said, "You give from the saucer, not the cup." And it has been something that I have said, my friends will tell you, like, "Please don't use that metaphor again, Annemarie" because I keep saying it, and I keep sharing it.

[00:19:18] But particularly as women, we expend so much out, and we don't stop and think about what fills the cup, what fills the well. And I have been sitting this year with that very question, even though I am a woman now that, from looking from the outside, I have a lot of freedom. I'm not a mother. I'm self-employed.

[00:19:40] I control my own schedule, which, you know, has its own craziness to it, but it is still much easier for me to think about what am I gonna do for others today versus how am I gonna fill my well? And I moved all my art supplies into this office, and I've hardly looked at them. So I keep [00:20:00] looking at that bin of art supplies.

[00:20:01] I'm like, "Stop." And the other big awakening that I've had around this is, so I put out basically six books in three-ish years, and I burnt out a little bit, and I want to get back to writing, and I finally had to realize that what you're talking about is the way that writing is gonna have to be for me, that writing a book is my creative practice, and that is the way that I refill the well, and oh, by the way, I'm gonna publish that book.

[00:20:30] I'm gonna share it with you, but it is not a widget It is the way that I'm gonna refill my cup. And so figuring out what that is for you, you know, I would love to hear, you were talking about a morning practice. If you're willing to share, I'd love to hear what your morning practice is. 

[00:20:45] Minette: Yeah, it's diverse, right?

[00:20:47] And it may not look the same any two days. And so this for me as a creative and multi-passionate, you know, all the things artist, I have a list of things that nourish and support me, and I don't ever feel like I have to do any of them or all of them. But it always starts with something creative. That may be some combination of writing, oracle cards or tarot cards, painting, stitching.

[00:21:20] Although in my house, so my, my studio and my office are in my, my basement, right? And the, and everything else is upstairs. And I have what I call downstairs projects and upstairs projects 'cause I can't paint in my living room. So mornings usually for me, I make my coffee, and I either go to my journal or my canvas, is the thing that I love to do.

[00:21:41] But I have a list of a combination of creative sort of, um, self-discovery processes and spiritual practices that I love to do, and I do some combination of each of those every morning, even if I only have five to 10 minutes. Like yesterday, [00:22:00] I only had a few minutes. I literally am working on a painting. I grabbed a white paint marker, and I was outlining the flowers that were on the painting in the five or 10 minutes that I had.

[00:22:10] It was just enough to have that tactical connection to my creative practice. So that's one thing. And I am very much an early riser and a morning person. Not everyone is. So I think the other thing is looking at how you manage your energy, not how you manage your time. When is your most creative time of day?

[00:22:34] So by 3:00 in the afternoon, my brain's a little mushy from sitting at the computer. I might take a 30-minute break and go back to the canvas or to my journal or do some collage, right? So that I give my thinking brain a break and let my creative brain take over. That's very refreshing. Some people are evening creatives.

[00:22:58] I tend to like very relaxing, meditative art in the evenings, like Zentangle, my drawing practice, or I'm so obsessed with slow stitching. This is my new current love is anything stitching. And I can do that sitting in front of the TV, kind of letting my brain, again, letting my brain go soft. In my Midlife Renaissance program, I call this deep rest It's not absence of doing, it's more about absence of input, just allowing ourselves to just be restful in our bodies so that our brains can open and have some spaciousness.

[00:23:37] And deep rest is one of the ways that we fill our creative brains. A walk in nature is ano- another example. Swinging in a hammock, uh, sitting in a rocking chair, right? They're all things when our bodies are in motion and our hands are busy, our minds actually can expand back into that imaginative dream space, which is the source of I used to be fun.[00:24:00] 

[00:24:00] Annmarie: True. True, true, true. I have so many things I just want to reiterate out of that. The first thing is five or 10 minutes. Like, a practice does not mean you're going to devote hours of the day to it. It can, but give yourself five or 10 minutes. This is a little controversial when I say this, but I always say, if you say you don't have five or 10 minutes in your life, it's an excuse.

[00:24:25] Like, everybody can find five or 10 minutes in their life to do something. And the something is the other thing I wanted to pull out. You said journal or canvas, right? Figure out what it is, you know, whether it's Julia Cameron's Morning Pages and you sit down with your journal, or it is collage, or it is the slow stitching, which I am a huge fan of as well.

[00:24:50] People that have been listening to this podcast now know that I talk about English paper piecing like, like I'm some sort of- 

[00:24:56] Minette: Expert? 

[00:24:56] Annmarie: I don't know, like, not an expert, maybe just cult leader. I don't know. 

[00:25:01] Minette: I love it. 

[00:25:02] Annmarie: But find that piece that you enjoy. So maybe it is you, you just sit down with colored pencils and markers for 10 minutes.

[00:25:11] And I don't know how you feel about this, but I think that those practices before you pick up your phone are even more powerful. Do that first. Get a little sunshine. Figure out what that five to 30 minutes is for you. Don't pick up the phone until you're done. 

[00:25:27] Minette: Yeah. And I am not a fan of the Morning Pages process.

[00:25:32] I am a huge fan of Julia Cameron and grateful to her for helping me reconnect my creativity. But I did not find it productive or helpful to sit down and do her version of the stream of consciousness writing for three pages. And so don't feel like that's the way. It's a way, and for many people who I deeply admire and envy, they've been keeping...

[00:25:59] I have one [00:26:00] friend who's a writer, and she has, like, 30-plus years of all of her Morning Page journals that she's kept. She's so committed to her practice. And for me, the thing to take away from something like the Morning Pages or my routine or Anne M- Marie's routine is the consistency. And I just finished reading And had never finished it before, but it seemed like the right timing.

[00:26:29] There's a really famous book called The War of Art, which you've probably read, by Steven Pressfield, which is all about resistance and how resistance is just a mask for fear. So procrastination, self-sabotage, numbing out, these are all versions of resistance, of showing up for ourselves. So I would add to what Ann Marie said, if you can't find five or 10 minutes, it's an excuse that's usually masking some sort of fear of failure or fear of the unknown or fear of what we might find.

[00:27:03] And he talks about the way to overcome resistance is simply to show up every single day. And so many writers, I think he quotes Somerset Maugham, who I remember reading in high school and loving, that he quotes Maugham as saying, "It's amazing how inspiration shows up at 8:00 AM every morning as soon as I sit down at my desk to write."

[00:27:25] Right? And so it's cultivating the intention that when I walk down to my studio with that first cup of coffee, I am ready to create Because I have been doing this for a decade, I'm just ready. I wake up. Sometimes I dream about my paintings or dream about projects, right? And so I'm down here very early in the morning ready to go.

[00:27:49] So I, you know, it's like, look for that place in your schedule where you can show up consistently at the same time every day [00:28:00] for 30 days and see what happens. 

[00:28:02] Annmarie: I have to agree with you on the consistency piece, whether it is in my actual writing practice, which is part of my job, or that other piece that you're talking about, is to give yourself that space.

[00:28:15] It's a way to prioritize yourself and then hold yourself to that prioritization, which I think is missing. You know, I recently had a conversation with another podcast that I recorded, and it, it was like, you do need to put this on your schedule. It feels like, oh, art or spontaneity or fun or play, that shouldn't need to be on my schedule.

[00:28:38] But maybe it does. Maybe until you get in the habit of it, it does. And maybe even after that, because when you look at your calendar then there's that bump of like, oh, I have something to look forward to, but also that little deep knowing that you're taking care of yourself and that you're putting yourself first, even if it's for 5 or 10 minutes a day, which I think is so important for women.

[00:29:00] Minette: Agreed. I so agree. And you know, we talk about creatives resisting structure and schedules. This is the part where you schedule the time. When I was a business coach for creative, this was the thing I learned about helping them understand time blocking. You block the time, but you don't determine what you do in that time because your creative self does like choice, right?

[00:29:24] And so if you know that you have 30 minutes at lunchtime every day, you wanna be able to show up to that 30 minutes ready to go with writing or colored pencils, I'm a big fan of coloring books, or paints or whatever, but you don't have to know ahead of time what it is. And this is the way that I overcame the inner rebel, that if I put in my calendar, I need to write my email newsletter, or I need to work on this painting, you know, my inner rebel is like, "Uh, hell no.

[00:29:56] I don't wanna do that right now. I don't feel like it." But instead, if [00:30:00] I said, "Okay, I've set aside this time for business writing," there's always lots of business writing, or I've set aside this time for creative daydreaming, which I also get to do a lot of in my business, then we show up knowing we're committing to ourselves.

[00:30:17] And I get asked all the time in my programs about how do we overcome self-sabotage, and it requires us to rebuild self-trust by showing up for ourself every single day. 

[00:30:29] Annmarie: Mic drop right there, actually. It requires self-trust, and that belief requires us to show up for ourselves every day. So if you're not finding that five to 10 minutes, it is super hard.

[00:30:41] It's super hard because, you know, we doubt ourselves, but culture also tells us that you should be working, you should be cleaning the house, you should be taking care of your kids. All of these shoulds crowd out that time. But again, we'll go back to the cup and saucer thing. If you really wanna do those things to the best of your ability, you have to feed your own soul, too.

[00:31:04] And I just cannot... I mean, that will be the drum that I beat until I'm no longer beating a drum on this planet. So I will keep doing that. I'm just curious what keeps coming to my mind as you're saying about the practice and the job and all of it is, I know you have several certifications. I also know you have a PhD Tell us how you get to be Minette of today.

[00:31:32] Like, what was your journey? 

[00:31:35] Minette: Wow. Y- you got, like, a whole lifetime? Um- So- 

[00:31:39] Annmarie: You know, really, what... I'm curious as to how you really started to center this level of creativity, both not, you know, it's in your business and in your life outside of your business. 

[00:31:51] Minette: Yes. Yeah, so it's actually a pretty clear path. So I grew up in a family of artists and creatives, and so was [00:32:00] making art of some kind pretty much my whole life.

[00:32:03] But my mom, who has an MFA in ceramics and sculpture, was the real artist in the family, right? And so I never took my own visual expression seriously until much later in life. I, like you, was a writer. I have a PhD in Spanish, 19th century Latin American literature and poetry. Everything was about writing.

[00:32:26] Then I owned a publishing company. For a long time, I didn't even write for my own parenting newspaper, and then my voice started to ... But it was still about writing. And then in my 40s, something shifted. One thing that shifted was I worked through the artist way with a group, and so it got me asking all these different questions, and helped me remember that woman, or really the girl, that loved to color.

[00:32:54] I made stained glass. I even sold stained glass pieces when I was in high school. I loved to draw. I found an old sketchbooks in an whole box at my dad's, and I would tell people, "Oh, I can't draw," and then I'd, like, find this sketchbook from high school, and I'm like, "Yes, I can draw." Right? So what happened in that gap?

[00:33:12] Well, one thing that happened was I had a really awful teacher my freshman year in university. I took a drawing class as an elective, it wasn't my major, and I think I got a C in the class, and I'm like, "I don't have time for this." Then I took a watercolor class in grad school, and it was m- supposedly for beginners, but if you've ever tried watercolor, it's complicated.

[00:33:34] So I had all these things where, like, "This is too hard. I don't have time for this," so I just stopped. And then all of a sudden, in my mid-40s, when I had my publishing company, was doing creative things with my kids at the holidays, and realized I was cramming my love of making things into Christmas making ornaments, making teacher gifts, right?

[00:33:56] And I'm like, "Okay, something's wrong here if I'm, like, [00:34:00] holding onto all of this for this one season of the year." So I just started dabbling. It was when Creative Memories scrapbooks were popular, right? So I started, and Connor has, like, three big fat ones, and my baby, Maggie, like, has one little tiny one.

[00:34:16] Typical and always the way. And, you know, that led me down this rabbit hole to more mixed media art. And I had a girlfriend in... We were living in Texas at the time, and we just started exploring that. I discovered soul collage, and I discovered Zentangle, and I'm like, this whole world opened up. So I would say two things: I followed the breadcrumbs of what was missing that felt fun, and I did the inner work to find out what the resistance was.

[00:34:49] And then it just started to become more and more im- important to me. And when I started my business coaching practice, I incorporated creativity from the beginning because creatives, we don't think linearly. So I had this beautiful mandala business plan that I designed, and we did it with crayons and markers because we needed to think differently.

[00:35:11] And then I kept going with my art making, right? I found an art teacher, and I fell in love with painting, and I found a different teacher, and I fell in love with collage and really zeroed in on this idea of art for meaning. But following the breadcrumbs of, you know, to, to go back to, to you, Anne-Marie, was what was fun for me.

[00:35:33] And I keep saying I'm gonna write my fourth book. I've written three. And I have lost my writing voice. Every time that I wanna sit down to write, I'm so into the visual world. So I started asking different questions. Instead of a book, what else is possible? It could be a board game. It could be a journal, right?

[00:35:56] So it's like, follow the clues of what [00:36:00] feels fun and joyful. So I think, you know, the thing that I see in my programs all the time, this was one of your questions that I love so much about what have I learned from other women that surprise me Was watching them, wouldn't surprise me but delighted me, was watching them find their childlike joy and wonder in their own creative expression.

[00:36:24] Annmarie: There's nothing better than that. I would argue, you know, we always think about watching children and watching them light up that way, and the reason it delights us when we see them is because we know that's still inside of us, but we're not expressing it. So I love that you've brought that up because there is that...

[00:36:43] I get that same feeling. Like, I actually have goosebumps now. Like, to watch somebody sink into it. I did it when I had the art materials store. I actually do it now if I'm speaking, and it's like that aha moment, but you're, you're doing it in that play moment where somebody's like Finding themselves again and seeing pure joy.

[00:37:04] I mean, the very definition of play, and if you've listened to this podcast, you're probably like, "Stop telling us what the definition of play is," is to do something with no end result. And creativity, however we wanna say that, allows us to do that. Now, there's a, there's great end results to creative processes as well and what that can bring to us.

[00:37:24] Minette: Yeah, but it doesn't have to be complicated, complex. Like, we see all this beautiful art on Instagram, and we think, "Oh, I can't do that." Well, none of us start at the level of Picasso or Georgia O'Keefe or a Frida Kahlo, right? There's, like, decades and decades of learning. One of the things I learned about Picasso was he was a multi-passionate artist who explored a huge variety of techniques all the time, even though the thing that made him famous was his paintings.

[00:37:55] And I think what you tapped into with that childlike sense of [00:38:00] playfulness is to be willing to explore and experiment and waste our supplies. 

[00:38:06] Annmarie: Yes. That is hard. For, for somebody who it's just as fun to go to the art material store as it is to use the art materials, sometimes seeing those perfect pastels laying out or a fabric that you haven't cut yet or whatever it might be is...

[00:38:21] It can be tricky to like, "I'm worth using that." And guess what? There is more, and it doesn't have to be expensive. When I had the art material store, we always had the watercolor palette that looked like what you got in kindergarten, and people would think they were toys. I'm like, "No, there's a lot of artists who use this as a basic palette if no, for no other reason than when they travel."

[00:38:46] Take it and do it. For $5 and a piece of paper, you can sit and play with those things and just lose yourself in it for a while, and you haven't made a huge investment in time or materials. I went off track a little bit there, but the piece about- I 

[00:39:04] Minette: don't think so ... where you said- Yeah, I don't think you went off track at all because what you said that I try to share with people all the time is you have to use your supplies to understand how they work.

[00:39:15] Don't expect to sit down and paint a picture of something when you don't understand what watercolor does on the page. It took me a long time to get over that first watercolor class and fall in love with watercolor again, right? And watercolor can be tremendously fun and infuriating at the same time because you have no control.

[00:39:36] It's a great example. It's why I love collage, right? You can cut and glue. 

[00:39:41] Annmarie: Yeah, and you can get an end product pretty quickly, and it's meant to look somewhat abstract. And so you don't have to have, it's not gonna be a horse at the end, like you said. One of the greatest lessons I got about that was many, many years ago, I was the director of development to the Ronald McDonald House here in the Twin Cities.

[00:39:57] Minette: Wow. 

[00:39:57] Annmarie: And our offices- That's a [00:40:00] big, big 

[00:40:00] Minette: job. 

[00:40:00] Annmarie: It was a big job, and it was one of the most rewarding things I've ever done. Uh, while I didn't always love the fundraising part of it, the mission was so deeply close to my heart. But our offices were in the, right in the house, on the, on the first floor of the house, and so families and kids were coming in and out all the time.

[00:40:21] And I had this little boy that would come in, and he'd wanna sit on my lap every day, and all he wanted was a piece of notebook paper and my highlighters. He was three maybe at the time, and he just thought he was creating the world's best art with this piece of notebook paper, lined paper, and highlighters.

[00:40:42] 'Cause I've always liked a lot of color, and I've always liked pens, and so I had about, you know, six different colors of highlighters. And then he'd hand it to me as if it was the greatest, you know, piece of art. "Here. Here's my Van Gogh." And I've never, ever lost it. I've never lost that child in my head for, for a lot of reasons.

[00:41:01] But that piece of, he was just creating from pure joy, playing with colors, with things that were readily accessible, and I Have a lot of, his name was Isaiah, and I have a lot of Isaiah. He unfortunately did not win his battle with cancer. But I have a lot of Isaiah th- Isaiah-isms in my head, and that's one.

[00:41:23] Listen, this doesn't have to be complicated. Listen, this is fun just because you're playing. And also, color speaks its own story. It doesn't have to be a flower. It can just be a bunch of highlights on a paper. It's just a top 10 memory and a way for me to reconnect with the fact that this doesn't have to be complicated.

[00:41:46] I can write in the morning, and it does not have to be or lead to an 80,000-word novel is what I'm saying. Yeah. 

[00:41:55] Minette: To yourself, saying that to yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I think after, you know, [00:42:00] our, our... We had a conversation a couple of weeks ago, and, you know, it helped me realize where I get stuck in my own creative process if there's too much pressure for that product to...

[00:42:12] I belong to a local gallery. I show my art there, but when I feel the pressure to paint something to go to the gallery, it takes all the fun out of it for me, and it's the reason why I love selling my art. But I usually sell my art when people walk into my house and they see it hanging on my walls, and maybe they're coming to a retreat, and they're like, "Oh, that needs to go home with me."

[00:42:32] Great. So I think also taking off the pressure of the product from our own creative spirit frees us to love the process. 

[00:42:45] Annmarie: Completely agreed. Completely agreed. In just about everything that we do, and there's a, a theme that's come up because most of the women that I have had on play dates thus far are independent business owners, self-employed entrepreneurs, just because that's my world, and those are my connections.

[00:43:03] But we have had a lot of conversations about not everything needs to be monetized, and this is part of that, right, is that you're allowed to have hobbies. You're allowed to do things that you don't do anything with. Like I'll, I'll ask friends, "Will you go along to this watercolor class with me? Will you take this quilting class with me?"

[00:43:21] And they're like, "Well, what would I do with it at the end?" That's not the point. First of all, am I that boring to spend time with? 

[00:43:28] Minette: Yeah. Right? Right? 

[00:43:30] Annmarie: We, we don't need to go down that 

[00:43:31] Minette: aisle- Yeah ... that type of thing. I mean, I got an email like that from a, a good friend here, and she says, "Hey, so this person is teaching a mosaic class.

[00:43:37] You wanna go?" I'm like, "Yes. I'm going to a weaving class tomorrow." Right? Like, so I think Not getting pigeonholed into I have to become a good painter, florist, gardener, cook. The judgment we put on ourselves restricts our creativity, so I think it's so important. I get so filled up. I fill my well, and I [00:44:00] get inspired by taking other people's classes or doing things that I know I'm gonna go do one time and then maybe never again because that inspires me.

[00:44:09] Like, how can I take what I learned here and incorporate it? Or what was the approach to the creative thinking here that then I can apply over there, right? So I find I'm so inspired by what other people are doing all the time. 

[00:44:27] Annmarie: It is inspirational. It's inspirational to see how people go from a concept of an idea to what they then come up with as an end product.

[00:44:36] It's interesting to see how other people host classes, whatever it may be. Those are all creative acts, right? It's creative to create a creative class. Yes. Wow, that was very meta, right? 

[00:44:45] Minette: It is. It is totally meta, but it's like I, you know, I assume it's like storyboarding your books is an, as important a part of the creative process as the, the writing itself.

[00:44:57] Even the editing, even though it can be drudgery, right? Can also be an important part of the creative process as well. I find, because I teach so much, that I love designing classes and experiences for people. Like, I get so much joy, and people are like, "How do you create so much?" I'm like, "It's fun for me.

[00:45:17] It's fun for me." 

[00:45:19] Annmarie: I, I say the exact same thing. You opened up our conversation with talking about walking into someone's home that's beautifully decorated. Interior design is a huge love of mine, and I like the aesthetics of it, but what you're talking about is what it really means to me, is to create a space that people feel comfortable in, is so rewarding.

[00:45:42] And I'm not an interior designer. I'm not gonna hire out to my friends. I'm not gonna try and monetize it. But I remember, especially when a lot of my friends' kids were little, and they would come into the house, and they're like, "It's so peaceful here." And I would jokingly say, "It's because there's no Legos on the floor."

[00:45:58] But, you [00:46:00] know, really, I was able to give people that space for that period of time to escape whatever it was that was hard at home. And your classes do a lot of the same things, I'm sure. That just take the, take that break for yourself. So creating, again, is so diverse, and it's not just art. It's whatever you're creating to make something new or better or different in the world, and I want people to think about that, to think about how they're going through life and what they're creating.

[00:46:34] Maybe they're creating a really fun lunch experience for their kid's lunch bag. You know, it can be as simple as those things, 'cause that takes creativity. You know, if you're cr- if you're making lunch for your kids- Yeah ... that's an everyday activity. And- It's 

[00:46:47] Minette: exhausting. It is. I don't miss that at all. Yeah.

[00:46:50] Annmarie: How do, how do you make it fun? And- Uh-huh ... how do you make it fun for the child? Not that that needs to be the end result, it, but how can you make that fun for yourself, too? So lots of questions. I have a couple here before we're up to our hour time limit that I try to hold to- Okay ... to respect people's time.

[00:47:08] I love the tagline on your website, which is, "Be the queen of your own damn story." 

[00:47:13] Minette: Amen. 

[00:47:14] Annmarie: Tell us what that means to you. 

[00:47:17] Minette: Yeah, so it's interesting how that came about. I was actually doing some brainstorming with ChatGPT, which AI is another creative outlet. I'm very much a verbal processor, and I talk all my ideas, and then it helps me to synthesize those ideas.

[00:47:38] But I was thinking about this idea of what does it mean to be a queen. You know, for the last however many years, sovereignty has been like a buzzword that people talk about, and I'm like, "What does that even mean?" And I realized that I had a lot of resistance to the word queen because it felt like a hierarchy [00:48:00] And you know, it's like my husband's Canadian, so they grew up with even an extra, you know, love of the queen, right?

[00:48:06] And there's this reverence and this distancing that happens. So I had to really do a lot of deep reflection around what does it mean to be the queen of my own story and my own life, and it me- and, and what does sovereignty mean to me? And it means that I take ownership for my own shit, right? 

[00:48:28] Annmarie: So responsibility?

[00:48:29] Minette: Yeah. Not just responsibility, but creative credibility as well, or credibility is not the right word. But it's like I take creative responsibility in that I get to write the story, define the story. I'm the main character. I decide how I respond. And for me, it had a lot to do with this idea of visibility, and my word of the year is visibility.

[00:48:56] And not like visibility in a traditional marketing sense as an entrepreneur, you know, we... It's another buzzword. But in making the parts of me that are invisible to myself visible Required me to be the queen and do some excavation. And there's an amazing, amazing book, I've taught a couple of workshops with it, called The Queen's Cloak: A Myth for Midlife Reinvention, or something like that, by Joan Ingalls Chamberlain.

[00:49:25] And it is this inspiring story about a woman who is lost, bored, and stuck in midlife, and how she finds her way back to sovereignty, and to creating her own life by literally unweaving a cloak that her mom had made, and reweaving it into something new and that's her own. It's an amazing story, and that metaphor's stuck with me of, you know, there's the- the story that gets woven for us and about us by others, the cloak that we kind of [00:50:00] adopt of expectations, beliefs, and values.

[00:50:03] But underneath all of that is the queen herself, right? Who am I? And so that's, uh, the origin of that is how do we become the author, the queen, the artist of our own story, whatever that archetypal energy is that fits for you. But it was also about joyfully and proudly claiming my authentic creative self.

[00:50:28] I am the queen of my studio. I don't need anybody else here with me. I don't need to tell everybody about it, although I do all the time 'cause I am an entrepreneur. But it's more that sense of like... And I even painted her. Um, oh, people can't... I forgot we're not on video, but I have a, I made a painting of the queen this year because I wanted to honor that part of me that wants to step more fully into the truth of my own life.

[00:50:56] Annmarie: Of course, my entrepreneurial brain, who does think we have to monetize everything, I'm like, "Minette, I can see the painting. Yes, it's a, it's a tall and thin painting with a queen on it. It looks like there's an owl. You know, there's some iconography inside there." And I'm like, "How do you turn that into a product so that we can all have it on our desk and be reminded to be our own queen?"

[00:51:16] Minette: Yeah, you're not the first person to, to ask, and it's a beautiful example of I paint for myself, right? There's paintings that are for the public, but there's art that we make that's just for us, and that's part of being the queen. I don't have to share it, right? I get, I get to choose what I show and what I share with others.

[00:51:37] Annmarie: There's just no part of what you just said that I don't love, and that is a book I haven't read and will be on my list. And I have been making a list of the books that we've talked about, whether it's The Artist's Way or some by Ken Robinson. I will put all of that in the show notes. When we're done, I'll link to that because some of the things you've mentioned are great places to start if you haven't read those books.

[00:51:56] And they're, they're pretty diverse as far as what you're gonna kinda [00:52:00] pull from different things. So with that in mind, in learning- I want you to imagine someone listening who's been disconnected from their creativity for, I don't know, 10, 20 years. What's a gentle invitation that you could give that listener for this week?

[00:52:16] Minette: Yeah. Take a class. That's always a local, in-person class. There are so many of them. So that would be number one is take a class in something that interests you, and don't go with the intention of walking out with a pretty something. Go with, "I'm just gonna go explore my curiosity." And it doesn't matter whether that's photography, dance, music, right?

[00:52:43] I saw somebody's doing this fun 10-week vocal choral group class here, and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, how amazing would that be to explore voice?" Um, even those, like, uh, paint and sip-type things. Like, they just get us into the mindset of putting color onto something. So that's one thing, and then the second thing is I would think back to what did you love as a kid?

[00:53:09] At what point in time was there ever a form of creative expression that you enjoyed that you would like to pick up, like costume design, playing dress-up, right? Um, designing tea parties. Like, think about what were the ways that you naturally enjoyed expressing yourself and go do it this week, even if it feels silly.

[00:53:32] Annmarie: Especially if it feels silly. I think silly is underrated. And if you can't think of anything, journal about it, think a little bit harder, because there absolutely was something or many somethings. I recently did this. Um, one of my big things when I was a kid was I would take blocks, like the wooden blocks, and I'd pull open the top drawer of my mom's dresser, and there was all the hankies when we used to carry hankies, and they were all [00:54:00] different patterns.

[00:54:00] So I would lay them out, those would be the carpets, and I would build around them for the rooms. Then I'd take my Fisher-Price, you know, couch and bed and all of that, and basically design a space. And I can't even remember where we were, but there were blocks, and I thought, "I'm gonna sit down and do this."

[00:54:18] And did I feel silly at 50-something? Yes, I did feel silly, but it didn't last long, because pretty soon, I just lost what I was worried about. I stopped thinking about it, and it really not only filled me up as a grown-up, but it brought me back to that child whose life was simpler. You know, I have a, a whole host of health issues.

[00:54:40] Well, that was the child before that, right? You got... I got to go back there, and not in a way of living in the past, but as a memory of, like, all of this is possible. You can access this joy at any time. So yes, I'm a big believer in going back and looking for what you enjoyed as a kid. And you mentioned classes.

[00:54:59] On my list is to take a class in stand-up, and, um, I'm scared to death to do it But I've wanted to do it for so long just to see if I even can. So every time somebody brings this up, I think, "Annmarie, register for that class. Just do it." And so we 

[00:55:16] Minette: have to push a little bit. Yeah, well, you love speaking. You love speaking.

[00:55:19] I do. So it's just one more step. Yeah, improv, I would... It would be fun to take an improv class, but for me, my version of stand-up would be singing, right? Would be taking some vocal lessons or, or doing some singing lessons. So yeah, there's always that thing that scares us a little bit, and Steven Pressfield talks about that, is like the area of greatest resistance is often our area, one, of greatest growth, but also our, our greatest gift to the world as well.

[00:55:50] Like, the bigger the idea and the dream, the bigger the resistance, and we spend so much of our time in this space between bouncing back [00:56:00] and forth. So I think that's fun to think about, you know, what are you resisting in, when it comes to creative expression? 

[00:56:08] Annmarie: It's also a fun way to think about reframing resistance.

[00:56:12] So maybe it's not a negative. Maybe it's a huge positive, and I just need to give myself a little push. Like, even me saying on this podcast, "I wanna take a stand-up course," is a push for me because, okay, you put it out there, and I'm not somebody who likes to put something out there and not follow through.

[00:56:29] I mean, that's, that's the re- the recovering overachiever in me. But I also wanted to bring up a class that you're offering because the name of it itself stopped me. So you're calling it Down the Rabbit Hole, an Alice in Wonderland-inspired event, which, I'm sorry, just sounds fun. But I want you to give us the details on that.

[00:56:51] I believe it's online, so people wherever they're listening could join, and August something, right? 

[00:56:59] Minette: Yes. It is August 22nd and 23rd. It's two mornings for two and a half hours each morning, afternoon if you're on the East Coast, and the idea of it is this is, this one is all collage-based. There are... I do these, we call them Mythical Makeover Experiences, and we use story as metaphor for redesigning our life and midlife and beyond.

[00:57:25] And so this one is inspired by Alice in Wonderland, but I wrote a, a, a version of what happens when Alice grows up and is faced with that white rabbit and the rabbit hole, and how many times in our lives have we gone down these rabbit holes and then struggled to find our way back to center again? So midlife feels like that, like we have been flung down the rabbit hole.

[00:57:50] We're standing in the hall of doors, and we don't know which door fits, right? In the original story, she drinks the potion that makes her too big, and then she [00:58:00] drinks more, and she's too small. So how do we find the fit? So we're gonna do that in a really fun, playful way inspired by the original Alice in Wonderland, but looking at, you know, who is that Alice in me, and what is it that I'm seeking on this journey, and how can I reconnect with imagination and story?

[00:58:20] Annmarie: I am in. That sounds like so much fun. Where can people find information about that? 

[00:58:24] Minette: Yeah, on the homepage of my website. I'm so easy to find everywhere. It's my name everywhere you go, minetteriordan.com. Um, we'll have probably information on our social media, and I hang out a lot on YouTube, so probably be some videos about it over on my YouTube channel as well.

[00:58:44] Annmarie: That sounds great. Well, I have loved this conversation. I feel like we could talk for hours and hours. Yes. Um, people might not stay with us, but- 

[00:58:51] Minette: Oh, we'd have 

[00:58:52] Annmarie: fun. Um, yeah, we did. That's right, and that's what this is all about, right? Uh, hopefully, it was fun for us. Hopefully, it was fun for you, and if the conversation did get you thinking about creativity and where to put your attention, don't think you have to have all the answers because the first step is always just curiosity.

[00:59:12] I think you mentioned early on that you had a list of things that you left out for what you were gonna do for your morning practice, and pick what feels good that day. Obviously, if you're interested in Minette and some of the things we've talked about, she does live retreats as well. You can find all that at her website, and I'll conclude all those links along with the books we talked about in the show notes.

[00:59:35] And if you're looking for a more gentle place to begin reconnecting with your curiosity and creativity, you can subscribe to The Wonder Project, which is my free four-week email series that is filled with simple prompts, playful invitations, and some small moments of wonder designed to help you reconnect with those parts of yourself that may have gotten buried under all the busyness.

[00:59:58] And those you can [01:00:00] find at annemarieboyle.com/thewonderproject. And before we head back to real life, because I know you need to refill your coffee cup, if you are enjoying I Used to be Fun, I'd be so grateful if you'd follow or subscribe to the show wherever you're listening. It truly does help more women find this little corner of the internet.

[01:00:23] So I wanna thank you again for pulling up a chair today and l- having this conversation with Minette and I. I will see you in a week, and until then, I hope you keep uncovering a little bit more beauty, a little bit more creativity, and of course, a little bit more fun

I Used to Be Fun is hosted by Annmarie Boyle. New episodes drop weekly.

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