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Charge your creative flow in 12 days with this (secular) Advent Calendar!
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I am secular AF and rarely sentimental about the day of December 25th over my enjoyment of the food, drink, and merry-making of the "holiday season" in general, but if there's one thing from the Christmases of my childhood I'd love to get back, it would be the enthusiasm and joy hidden within a freakin' cardboard advent calendar. (First, a note: If you are religious in the Christian sense, I love that for you. No shade is intended and I hope you understand as I continue to curse and be super crass and secular all over this bitch. If reading that kind of shit is not your jam, you've been warned: Feel free to skip this one and I'll catch you in the next email!) Every year until I was probably in high school, I had a paper advent calendar hanging in the kitchen.... .... Every morning I'd pop open that day's door to reveal a tiny illustration about god (or something, probably)... .... Each day building up to that unparalleled prize hidden behind the paper doors of the 24th of December: A glorious, chocolate Santa Claus, christ be damned. The chocolate was not quality, even in my youth, I knew this; but the reward was oh-so-fucking-sweet. It wasn't just the shitty chocolate or the subtle indoctrination of the cute little bible pictures—it was watching the days building, enjoying the slow progression toward an eventual and inevitable reward that made me feel so joyful. ❄️❄️ This December, I want to recapture the excitement of that advent calendar energy. And I want to share it with YOU! ❄️❄️❄️ To that end, I've created a digital advent calendar of free-writing prompts to charge your creative flow! It's awesome and it's free. I HIGHLY recommend!
Every day for 12 days, you'll get a writing prompt to do some stream of consciousness writing around. ("A 'prompted' 'free-writing' exercise, you say?" Yes, whatever, just go with it it's going to be amazing, I promise.) Like the advent calendars of my youth, this gift is a slow burn: You'll see the rewards build as you stick with it!
If you click that link today, you'll wrap Day 12 on the day before the Catholic cooption of Indigenous celebrations of winter solstice 🎉 (sometimes called Christmas Eve, in the colonial imperialist mainstream vernacular), which, fwiw, is when my childhood advent calendars would peak, too. Tomorrow evening also being the start of Hanukkah, there's serious trans-spiritual signs out here that now is a sweet time for reflection and opening our spirit to change. The "advent" here doesn't have anything to do with the 25th of December: For you, it may be the advent of the new year. Advent of whatever you're celebrating. Advent of whatever you want to call into your practice next. The Advent of what your relationship to your creativity gets to be from here on out! The year's not over: There's still time to create changes this year and start 2026 with a bang. So come take advantage!
See how much change you can create in less than 2 weeks, just 20 minutes a day. No doubt it'll be sweet!! Sam |
Sam Sundius | life artist & visual coach
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