Go Away!
Find Your Creative Self Somewhere Else
Hello Protagonists,
Welcome back to Letters from the Creative Life. These occasional essays explore the quieter corners of living: small reflections on art, ambition, and the tender balancing act of building a meaningful life in a noisy world.
In this post, you’ll find:
💧 What’s Filling My Creative Well—a book and an movie that I adored
✨My Letter from the Creative Life—Go Away! Find Yourself Somewhere Else
As always, thank you for being here, not just as readers, but as fellow story-lovers and co-creators of this beautiful life.
💕, Joanna
💧 What’s Filling My Creative Well
📖 Current book: Into the Blue by Emma Brodie — The novel is labeled as a love story rather than a romance, which initially made me nervous —was I going to get attached to these characters only for them to be tragically not together?! I won’t give anything away, but I adored the ending. I turned around and reread the book; I enjoyed it that much. It’s teaching me something about love in my own life that I hadn’t fully felt before.
🎥 Current film: I love birds, so when a friend told me about the quirky documentary, Listers, I immediately got popcorn. Now, this isn’t a normal nature documentary. It’s a film made by two brothers who are amateur birdwatchers and excellent storytellers. They filmed their experience as they joined extreme birdwatchers for the challenge of finding as many bird species as possible in the continental US in one calendar year. The film showcases artistic endurance, very quirky characters, and amazing bird footage. It’s fringe, so I know it won’t be for everyone, but it’s in my top ten.
Go Away!
Find Your Creative Self Somewhere Else
I’m writing this from a cozy little beach town on the California coast, listening to the ocean, feeling the fog, and settling into a new rhythm for the next week. Did it take a lot of energy and effort to plan and execute this moment? Yes. Is it worth it? Well, let me take you back…
At the start of this year, I led my coaching clients (and myself) on a reflection. I asked: What experiences moved you forward this past year? And what moments did you cherish? Within my own answers, I found an interesting thread–many of these moments occurred during two trips. One very far away, to Morocco, and another much closer to home, to the California coast.
Now, I need to disclose that I am a homebody. Working in my garden, brainstorming at my desk, curling up in my bed, and gathering around my kitchen table are my favorite things to do. I’m terrible at booking trips. I panic over packing. And all means of transport make me motion sick. So, I was truly shocked that some of my most transformative moments had anything to do with travel.
Naturally, I wanted to understand why. (And if I could find similar moments without taking Dramamine.) However, my answers had me loading up my suitcase again.
What I Leave Behind
I realized that one of the most important parts of travel is what I leave behind. Setting aside my routines, responsibilities, and roles allowed me to find new ways of being. Ironically, the very thing that makes leaving hard also makes travel transformative.
In 2025, I went to Morocco sans kids. It took a lot of planning to leave them, but it was a tremendous gift to myself. I got to feel life as a woman with motherhood set gently aside for a week. I realized that I wasn’t even sure what I wanted, separate from everyone and everything else that surrounded me. Away from my usual social and environmental triggers, I got to feel what it was like to move with my desires as the primary driver. My creative energy surged.
I set my work aside too, allowing whatever wanted to arise instead of what needed to arise due to those responsibilities. Again, it took planning to do this, but what I got was space to experience myself without those layers of identity. I could be anyone in this new place.
That said, I learned something by bringing along pieces of my life to see how they felt in an entirely different context. On the plane ride across the ocean, I wanted to revise a draft of my novel. Without the distractions of home, I immersed myself in my work in a new way. I experienced a level of focus that I forgot I was capable of in my usual multitasking existence. I remembered the deep level of work I sustained during my PhD program and saw that with the right support, I could do this again.
My trip to the California coast was a family affair. But I had learned something in Morocco. I signed my kids up for a special half-day camp in order to have space for my creative explorations in a new place. With that time, I dreaming up my first coaching circle and my kids fell in love with goats and chickens. In the afternoons, we all converged on the beach and I got to see new facets of my motherhood as well.
These trips allowed me to suspend parts of my identity and see new sides of myself. I was free of who people think I should be, which helped me free myself from who I think I should be. Sometimes the entrenchment of our routine tricks us into thinking that there is only one way to live, and in leaving the familiar furrow, we see that there are countless.
The annoying fact is that the unease that makes me resist travel, giving up my comfortable roles and routines, is required for the transformation that travel gives me. While stability and structure help me create in an everyday way, I see the deep importance of disruption to support my creative life. Making my homebody uncomfortable is a worthy investment.
What I Discover
In stepping outside the expected, I can then find the unexpected. Each trip exposed me to new people, new experiences, and new ideas, filling me with creative inspiration.
On my trip to Morocco, I traveled with women from around the world who imposed fewer limitations on their desires. They went for what they wanted. They prioritized their health and their experience, and I got to witness it. I saw the possibility and then tried it on.
I signed myself up for a hammam, an ancient steam bath ritual centered on deep physical cleansing and community connection. After sitting in a thick steam until I could only see a foot in front of me, I laid down on a stone table and was bathed and scrubbed like an infant. Tears filled my eyes, as line after line of a poem filled my mind. I never felt called to poetry, but this experience sparked it. It felt like I made space within myself, and fresh creative energy rushed right in.
Neuroscience can help explain the power of travel. Studies show that novel experiences trigger dopamine release, activating the brain’s reward systems, and enhance neuroplasticity, or our brain’s ability to form new connections and pathways. In new environments, our brains are more open to new ideas and more readily interrupt old patterns. I cannot think of a more potent combination for creativity.
After learning this, I asked myself what new ideas or patterns I want to try on my current trip. Over the past several months, I’ve fallen out of the habit of writing my fiction every day, and my recent conversation with Amie McNee on the podcast brought this desire roaring back. I want to restart a ridiculously small daily word count goal, and I thought what better way to use my brain’s plasticity on this trip than to give it a go. So, after sharing this with all of you, I will pull out my journal and build some new patterns.
Take It With You
Understanding the power of travel, I started prioritizing these opportunities and paying closer attention to the gifts I get along the way. Reflecting after a trip is a great way to do this.
I find myself asking these questions on my way home:
What did I cherish most on my trip?
What new beliefs or ideas did I discover?
What aspects of myself did I experience on this trip that I want to take home?
These questions allow the learnings and changes I discovered to extend into my return. On the flights home from Morocco, I made a big list of all the things I desired. And when I got home, I started checking things off. I hung glowy peach curtains in my living room. I started lifting heavy weights. I bought a book of poetry.
Go Away in Small Ways
While booking the flight, packing the bags, and taking the Dramamine are worth all the effort, I think these lessons can help me in smaller ways, too. I wonder how I can lean into the potency of novelty and disruption in my everyday life. Maybe writing in a new cafe. Visiting a friend in a nearby town. Hiking a new trail. Shopping in a different bookstore. All these can help me set aside the expected, experience new provovations, and feel inspired.
Off to my journal!
Share Your Travel Experience in the Comments
🪞If you’ve gone on a trip this summer, what did you notice about yourself?
🌎 What places have inspired your creative work?
✈️ What is your dream travel destination?
We love traveling. In fact, we are just beginning our first family trip to Alaska as I read this! (We've spent the last day in Vancouver and board the ship north in just a few hours.) I love the way you've described stepping away from the day to day too find freedom and focus, among other things.
This is exactly the theory behind Wave Writers. That next trip is April 2027. We'd love to have you join us.
Ideal destination? That's a long list, but we're checking things off as fast as we can: back to France, UK for the first time, the Mediterranean, Australia, Mauritius, the South Pacific... In short, everywhere.
Such an interesting, helpful and inspiring piece. Thanks