K7’s first blog post!

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photo by my friend lilly, @gabrielle_22_22 on instagram

So as I made this website by myself at my dinner table...

A couple things occurred to me. I was excited to be making something and exploring a new medium, and I’m always grateful for that joy. But something else was that I was really enjoying the process of getting to tell my story, and make it accessible to the world in a way that feels like it really represents me well. My mom has always told me that there’s a number of reasons creatives should all have blogs, but I realized that having a blog would probably be a really handy thing for me in particular!

First of all, and most importantly I think, I’ve loved writing since I was little. At age 10 I expressed an interest in a journal, and my Mimi got one for me (thank you Mimi,) and I’ve journaled ever since. There’s something about written word that is so special and captivating to me, and in a favorite book of mine, the Vein of Gold by Julia Cameron, she talks about how the tongue can lie without much trouble, but more often the hands can feel when they are writing untruthfully, and I think that’s very valuable.

Then there’s the aspect of reflection and learning! I think reflection can be a really incredible thing, and I’ve learned a lot through reflection, flipping through the pages on which 10 year old me told stories about his day. I’ve come to understand things about myself that nobody else could have led me to, and found lots of growth through that as a human and as an artist!

And then, there’s sharing. I had a friend recommend a book to me called “Someday is Today” by Matthew Dicks, and it really ended up setting my soul on fire and inspiring me to tell my story every chance I got. He talked about how important it was to know your own story, to tell your story, and to listen to your own story when things get tough. So thank you Matthew Dicks for helping remind me that life is too short to wait for someone else to make my dreams come true. Taking accountability is way more fun!

So, this blog will serve the purposes of giving me a place to write often, to reflect on my journey, and to share some of the things I learn and explore with whoever may find themselves reading!

For today, I wanted to share something I was thinking about this morning. I have a way of understanding and pondering myself or any individual in many ways, and this one was something I read in Stephen Covey’s First Things First. He talks about daily upkeep of these different aspects of being, those being the Physical, Emotional/Social, Mental, and Spiritual. In my journalling I’ve slightly adjusted the wording to match what I feel in my own experience, and they became “Body, Heart, Mind, and Soul.” I constantly let my mind work to integrate different frameworks in various aspects of my life. It’s silly, but I feel like I’m constantly in some search for the fundamental rules of the universe, or of my life at least.

Anyways, in projecting those aspects of being onto the creative life, I came up with this in my notes app.

Soul is the sauce. Soul is what makes it real, what breathes and lives and carries the story. In serving the story you transcend time and space, you enter yourself into the collective unconscious and tap into what it has to offer creatively. You become a vessel of life through art.

Mind is really pushing yourself, honing your craft, and studying the greats, then expanding on their art with your own ideas and works. Exposing yourself to great art in all kinds of mediums, it connects you to the whole world of art that exists out there.

Heart is in collaborating and sharing, it’s the community, the shared experience that makes your experience larger than yourself, that connects you to your peers and creates a support system for you.

Body is the practice. As my theatre friends like to say, “Doing the thing is doing the thing is doing the thing.” It’s getting the reps in, sucking it up and sucking for a while, getting your sea legs so to speak with the tools you’re learning to use and eventually make your own.

It might seem like it’s in reverse order, but I actually read it from the bottom up, thinking about it like a pyramid, reflecting the elements found in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

I think it may be fun to explore each of these aspects and document them a little bit for my Instagram and for my next blog entry, so I’m gonna set some goals here.

Soul goal: Keep telling my story, post another blog entry about my real experiences and thoughts!
Mind goal: Learn how to make something new that seems challenging or intimidating
Heart goal: Share a little bit about my journey to my currently blank social media page 😅
Body goal: Get a couple takes of this self-tape audition for a friend’s short film that I wanted to audition for! (I’ve never recorded a self tape before so I’m kinda nervous)

Cool! Seems doable. I’m giving myself 'til the 31st to report back and either talk in minimal detail about my successes or in great detail about my failures 🫡 But no matter what, I’m gonna show up for myself, and for whoever is out there supporting me in their hearts and minds.

I have no clue who is seeing this, or when, but if you’re K7 from the future, I hope you’re doing well and exploring your creativity every day! Thank you to whoever has read this first blog post, and I hope you enjoy following me on my artist journey!

With Love Always,

K7

P.S. - The website builder I’m using to write these blogs and stuff, when I opened this to write this blog, automatically opened up an AI blog writer and I almost barfed all over my laptop. I wish I didn’t have to say this, but all of my posts will always be written by me and not some weird algorithm copying everything that has ever been written. If it wasn’t for my mom I’d probably have tonssssssssss of typos in here anyways, so thanks mom for reviewing my stuff.