My Inner Toddler has been a brat lately. Defiant. Stomping his foot. Fighting me tooth and nail against just about everything. Instead of yelling, or ignoring him, I’m starting to talk to him. See what he really needs. It’s been interesting.

Just like a real child, the Inner Toddler wants something. To express something or be heard, at least. There are reasons for the bad behavior.

The irony of coaching

Hello!

I’m making a change around these parts. I’m moving to a new newsletter service called Revue. What this means to you as a reader is that is a change in the way this newsletter looks. Buttondown (the service I’ve been using) is great, and I highly recommend it if you want to start your own email list!

Revue is very tied in with Twitter, and I am creating over there a lot more these days, so it makes sense in that regard. It also seems like it will encourage me to share more frequently. So look out for a different look, and a more frequent emails, starting next Sunday.

Hello friends,

It’s been over a month since I last dropped an email over to you. I’ve been making slow progress on my next animation.

I found the idea of “working with the garage door up” to be inspiring. The gist is that when you do your creative work, you do so openly. This way people can come hang out and share ideas in the moment.

I needed a kickstart to get me focusing on animation again, so I set up a handful of sessions in July. Hope you can pop by one of them.

Funkbuster

Depending on what you’re using to read this you may or may not see the animation, or you may see it a couple times. So I’m providing a couple ways to view it.

Embed:

Five, four, three, two, one

I picked up this exercise from my therapist. When I’m really anxious and shutting down, this helps me a lot. Apparently stress and anxiety overwhelm your big part of your brain. The prefrontal cortex. That’s where we strategize and plan.

When it shuts down, the “lizard brain”, the small brain takes over. It’s responsible for fight or flight. These days, thankfully for most of us it doesn’t mean fleeing from or punching a tiger. But it can make us prone to distractions and give into our basic instincts, which may not be helpful at any given moment.

I’m no therapist or expert on how the brain works. But this exercise has helped me a ton over the last challenging year. It’s fast and easy to do. It can actually be fun, as your lizard brain goes back to rest, and your big brain gets to come back alive.

Hello!

This is the first issue of the newsletter with the updated format and name. Thanks for sticking with me so far.

Mindfulness

I plan to draw and/or animate some of the mindfulness, and anxiety reducing techniques I’ve been learning. Here’s the first one, entitled . It’s the foundation of meditation, but don’t let that give you pause. Deep focused breathing, weather you call it meditation or not, helps get oxygen into your blood and can change your emotional state. I do these short breathing exercises before or after stressful meetings, or really anytime I can safely close my eyes and spend 30 seconds paying attention to my breathing.

Hey, it’s been a while. I’m making some changes around here, and I thought I’d give you all a heads-up. I’m still going to keep my “no tracking” policy. The only thing I know about you is the email you used to sign up. And when people subscribe or unsubscribe. Too much of our digital lives are tracked, monitored and sold for advertising purposes. I find that invasive, and I don’t want to be in that business, personally.

The great thing about having your own newsletter is that you can do whatever you want. The bad thing about having your own newsletter is that you can do whatever you want. At the end of 2020 I had some paralysis by analysis (I just didn’t know what to say here). I talked with some creative friends, which lead me to think through some ways to better express myself and grow as an artist.

I’m setting out to make more art. Sketches, sketchnotes, doodles, visual notes, illustrations, animation. My main focus these days is on learning and communicating ideas about mental health and behavior change. I started seeing a therapist in fall of 2020 and this relationship has helped me in more ways than I could have imagined. I’ve learned some techniques and practices that have helped me with anxiety and being more present in the world. I will share them visually, here in the newsletter.

This is the new description of the newsletter:

Hey, I’m Chad Moore. You’re getting this email because you signed up for The Campfire from Where Light Gathers, a warm place where we can sit at to talk about creativity, and the highs and lows of being someone who makes things. If this isn’t working for you, simply unsubscribe.

Thanks for reading!

Essays & Arrows

I recently learned that the English word Essay is French in origin and it means “to attempt”.

An online dictionary has these definitions of the word Essay.

I’ve got a couple drafts cooking, but I couldn’t really get any of them to the state where I’d want to publish them. So this issue I’m going to ask a question, and share my answer to the same question.

What are you hoping to learn this week?

I asked myself this last Sunday, and have been thinking on it each day throughout the week. My own answer was to learn what parts of a new system & process I have put in place are working, and which are not.

Trees

This week I was having a discussion about learning about and practicing art with a friend. We talked a bit about being “too old to start” and what that really means. We also talked about liking Bill Cosby’s art, but hating what he did. Should and how do we separate the creation from the creator? Maybe I’ll write about that some other time.

Also cantaloupes, we talked about those, but that’s something else altogether.

Some years ago, another friend taught me this expression or quote about trees.

… my dreams are mostly in what I’ll make, rather than what I’ll have.

Uses This is an interview site. They interview creative people to talk about what they use to make their art. The last question they always ask is “?”

One Link

Several readers have commented that I link to a lot of things. First thanks for reading and emailing me. I’ve enjoyed our conversations.

It’s true, I take in a lot of info on the web and I love connecting people to ideas that might help them. Like I love it a lot. I can be a bit much with it, actually.

Hey, I’m Chad Moore. You’re getting this email because you signed up for Where Light Gathers, a campfire you can sit at to talk about creativity, and the highs and lows of being someone who makes things. If this isn’t working for you, simply unsubscribe.

I appreciate you reading this.

Hey, I’m Chad Moore. You’re getting this email because you signed up for Where Light Gathers, a campfire you can sit at to talk about creativity, and the highs and lows of being someone who makes things. If this isn’t working for you, simply unsubscribe.

I appreciate you reading this.

Hey, I’m Chad Moore. You’re getting this email because you signed up for Where Light Gathers, a campfire you can sit at to talk about creativity, and the highs and lows of being someone who makes things. If this isn’t working for you, simply unsubscribe.

I appreciate you reading this.