About this site

Do you want to live a creative life? Do you want to create a life you love but don’t know how? Join me on the journey!

About this site – the short version:

What makes me happiest is being creative – actively creating. And teaching/encouraging/inspiring others to do the same.

Writing, visual art, music, dancing – it doesn’t really matter. I’ve done – and do – all of these things, even made my living at some of them. I’ve followed my Bliss, and created a life and career from my creativity.

But Bliss evolves. And following it as it evolves is not always easy.

After almost 15 years of building a business as an artist and calligrapher, it’s time to make a change, time to evolve my life to follow my evolving Blisses; to create a life in which I’m spending more of my time doing what I really want to do, instead of what I have to do; to truly live a creative life.

This site is the record of that change.

The experiment

I present myself as a human guinea pig in my own personal experiment gone wild: what happens when a Creative sets out to break the rules, follow her Blisses, and build her own unconventional empire?

The path is winding, the view is clouded with fog at times, but I have several teachers to help me along the way.

I invite you to gawk, comment, even laugh at my efforts. And hopefully you’ll learn something useful for you.

About this site – the long(er) version:

I am a Creative, and a Renaissance woman. I always wanted to be a Renaissance woman, at least since I first heard the term (which I’m sure I first encountered as “Renaissance man,” this being a sexist society and all), but I never thought I could be. In fact, I spent a lot of time beating myself up for not being a Renaissance woman (and for not being a Genius, for that matter, which was something else that at the time seemed very important to be, but more on that elsewhere).

Meanwhile, I found my Bliss (which, seeing as I’m a Creative, was a creative pursuit) at a relatively young age, and dutifully followed it.

But then a funny thing happened: life.

First, my Bliss was taken away from me. I was devastated, and believed that I’d lost my one and only chance of Bliss-following. I gritted my teeth and resolved to trudge onward, despite the lack of a Bliss of my own.

Then, some years later, lo and behold, I found another Bliss! A miracle! Hallelujah! It hadn’t even entered my mind that I might have more then one, but here it was!

I dove in and dutifully followed my second Bliss (another creative pursuit, not surprisingly), and then, voilá, my first Bliss was delivered back to me (albeit in a modified form). Suddenly I had two Blisses! I was very blissful.

Being a driven kind of person I turned Bliss #2 into a career, which was a really cool and exciting thing to do, but also, sad to say, took some of the shine off of it. Gradually I stopped doing Bliss #2 “for fun.”

Then, as a way to feed what wasn’t being fed anymore by Bliss #2 (seeing as Bliss #2 had, by this point, become “just a job”), I discovered yet another Bliss (you guessed it: another creative pursuit), which I also dutifully followed.

THREE BLISSES!

Even though Bliss #2 had become “just a job,” I still loved it passionately, though I didn’t do it as much as I wanted (at least for myself, as opposed to for a client, which is an entirely different animal). But it was still my Bliss, and I had three of them.

Oh, I was rich in Bliss!

It was probably around this point when I first overheard my mother calling me a “Renaissance woman.” I realized that all that time I’d spent wishing I were a Renaissance woman, and lamenting the fact that I wasn’t, was a big ol’ waste.

It turns out all I needed to grow into my Renaissance-ness was time. Time to find, lose, re-find, and find yet more Blisses.

Age is a wonderful thing.

Now, well into my adulthood, I’ve discovered that, for better or worse, I am the kind of person who will never be happy doing one thing, and only one thing. No, I am destined to follow multiple Blisses, which comes with its own set of challenges (more about that elsewhere). But it’s something I’ve learned to embrace about myself.

And as you may have guessed, my Blisses didn’t stop at three.

Recently, though, I’ve discovered that Bliss evolves. The life I created for myself, which was so cool and amazing when I first dreamed of creating it, is no longer the life that I really, really want. Right now I spend the bulk of my time doing things that are not particularly fun or creative. They’re made somewhat less painful by the fact that they’re for my own business, which is a cool and amazing thing, but I haven’t been entirely satisfied for a long time now.

So this year, thanks to the inspiration that major life crises can bring about, I’ve decided to make a change. My Blisses have not just grown in number, they’ve evolved. They’ve gone bounding off the path I so carefully built to follow them, while I kept trudging the same old road.

Well, no more! I’m not exactly sure how, or what this will look like, but I’ve committed myself to creating my life exactly the way I want it. Being a Creative, this means spending the majority of my time actively creating.

My goal is to record my journey here, for two reasons:

1) to help me process what is working, what isn’t working, and continue to refine the Bliss-following techniques

2) to share what I learn with others who might also be interested in following their evolving Bliss(es)

Oh, and in case you were wondering, my name is Melissa. I make art and design for weddings and lifecycle events, I sing jazz and write original songs about the absurdities of life, I help businesses communicate more effectively with their marketing materials, and I write about my experiences and thoughts to help single women find themselves while looking for love at my other blog, TheDatingQueen.com. I’ve also taught dance, yoga, voice and calligraphy (the last all over the country), and I live in Silicon Valley with my two cats, who keep me sane when they’re not driving me crazy.

Any questions?