Living Artfully: What If the Life You’re Creating Is Already a Work of Art?
On reinvention, letting go of the life you love, trusting what comes next and discovering that creativity isn’t something we do — it’s how we choose to live.
A conversation with Claudia Whitney of The Art of Her, featuring Sarah Stone of Starting From Zero.
There are certain conversations that arrive at exactly the right moment in your life, and my recent Substack Live with Claudia Whitney was one of them.
When Claudia invited me to be her first guest for her new Living Artfully interview series, I immediately felt a connection to what she was creating, because her philosophy of treating life as a creative practice is something that has quietly woven its way through almost everything I have done, from my early career as a professional photographer to writing my book Live What You Love, founding Intentional Living Magazine and, more recently, finding my voice here on Substack.
But what made this particular conversation so meaningful was that it came at a time when I am being asked to practise everything I have spent years writing, teaching and talking about.
Not in theory.
Not in a workshop.
But in the middle of my own life, with all its beautiful, complicated, uncertain and occasionally overwhelming moving parts.
You see, after eight years of building a life in New York, my husband and I are preparing to move back to the UK, and although there is so much to look forward to, there is also an enormous amount to process when you realise that the life you worked so hard to create is about to change.
And that was where our conversation began to take on a meaning that neither of us could have entirely planned.
Because what does it actually mean to live artfully when life isn’t going according to plan?
How do you hold gratitude for everything you have created while making space for something new?
And how do you remain connected to your creativity, curiosity and intentions when the practical realities of everyday life are demanding so much of your attention?
These are some of the questions we explored together, and as the conversation unfolded, I found myself returning to something I believe more strongly than ever.
Living intentionally isn’t about creating a perfect life. It’s about learning to participate in the life you’re living, even when the picture is still changing.
When the life you’ve created is about to change
One of the first things I shared with Claudia was something I hadn’t spoken about extensively on Substack, and that was the news that our family is preparing for another significant move across the Atlantic.
When we originally moved from the UK to New York, we were starting again in almost every sense of the word, leaving behind the familiarity of our surroundings, our established relationships and many of the things that had previously made life feel predictable.
It was exciting, of course, but it was also challenging, and looking back now, I can see just how much resilience, resourcefulness and creativity that experience required of us.
Over the years, we built something rather wonderful here.
We created a home we love, established friendships that feel like family, explored new opportunities and experienced moments that I couldn’t possibly have imagined when we first arrived.
And now, with my husband’s US contract coming to an end, we find ourselves preparing to leave much of that behind and begin another chapter.
I would love to tell you that having done this once before makes the prospect entirely straightforward, but that wouldn’t be true.
There have been moments of excitement and anticipation, but there have also been moments of fear, sadness and uncertainty, particularly when I think about leaving the home, friendships and everyday rituals that have become such an important part of our lives.
A friend recently reminded me of something that completely shifted my perspective.
She pointed out that we had already lived through the challenges of moving countries, that we had found our way through the difficult beginnings and created a life we genuinely loved, and that this experience wasn’t going to erase everything we had learned along the way.
It made me realise that perhaps I had been looking at the next chapter through the wrong lens.
We’re not going back to the beginning. We’re evolving.
And I think that distinction matters enormously, particularly for those of us navigating change in midlife, because starting again can so easily feel as though we are somehow abandoning or losing everything that came before.
But what if nothing is being lost in quite the way we imagine?
What if every experience, every challenge, every friendship and every lesson is something we carry forward, even when the physical circumstances of our lives change?
Perhaps reinvention isn’t about becoming somebody entirely different, but about allowing the person we have become to create something new.
The vision we drew before we knew where life would take us
One of my favourite moments from our conversation came when Claudia asked about a practice my husband and I have shared for years, which involves physically drawing the life we want to create together.
Not cutting pictures out of magazines.
Not creating an elaborate Pinterest board filled with beautiful houses and expensive holidays.
Actually sitting down with pens and paper and drawing what we want our lives to feel like.
I shared a drawing we created back in 2016, at a time when we weren’t entirely sure what direction our lives were going to take.
Neither of us is particularly talented at drawing, and I can assure you that my stick figures are unlikely to be displayed in an art gallery anytime soon, but that has never been the point.
We drew ourselves walking along a beach at sunset with a dog.
We drew the kind of surroundings we wanted to enjoy.
We even drew a vegetable garden.
And rather inexplicably, I drew a shed with a pitched roof.
At the time, I couldn’t have explained why that little shed felt important enough to include, but I drew it anyway.
Several years later, after moving to New York, we found ourselves house hunting on Long Island, and when we arrived at the property that would eventually become our home, there was a shed sitting in the garden.
A shed that looked remarkably like the one I had drawn years earlier.
I remember sitting on the sofa in that house and recognising so many elements of the life we had imagined, even though the drawing had never specified New York, Long Island or any particular location in the world.
We hadn’t drawn a destination.
We had drawn a feeling.
And that, for me, is where the real power of creating a vision begins.
When we become overly attached to exactly how something must happen, where it must happen or what it must look like, we can unintentionally limit the possibilities available to us.
But when we begin with how we want to live, the experiences we want to have and the feelings we want to cultivate, we give ourselves permission to recognise opportunities we might otherwise overlook.
Claudia shared a beautiful parallel from her own life, recalling how she and her husband had written down the lifestyle they wanted while living in Hong Kong, including things such as farmers’ markets and cycling, without attaching those experiences to a specific place.
They eventually found themselves living in Melbourne, Australia, somewhere that hadn’t originally been on their radar, only to realise that so much of what they had written down was now part of their everyday life.
It was such a lovely reminder that we don’t always need to know the destination before we begin imagining the journey.
And now, as my husband and I prepare for our next chapter, we are returning to that very same practice.
We are drawing again.
We are asking different questions.
We are looking at what matters most to us now, rather than simply recreating the life we imagined ten years ago.
Because the people we were in 2016 are not exactly the people we are today, and the life we want to create next deserves to reflect everything we have become.
Creativity isn’t about being artistic. It’s about being willing to imagine.
Something Claudia and I kept returning to was the idea that creativity is often misunderstood.
We tend to associate it with people who paint, write, photograph, design or make beautiful things, and if we don’t consider ourselves particularly talented in those areas, we can easily conclude that creativity simply isn’t for us.
But I see it very differently.
I believe that every single one of us is creative, because creativity begins long before we pick up a paintbrush or open a notebook.
It begins with a thought.
An idea.
A question.
A different way of looking at something.
A decision to respond to a difficult situation with curiosity rather than automatically repeating what we have always done.
When you imagine how you want your day to unfold, you’re creating.
When you think about how to make your home feel more welcoming, you’re creating.
When you find a new way to connect with someone you love, solve a problem in your business or bring a little more joy into an ordinary Tuesday, you’re creating.
And when you sit down and ask yourself what you would love your life to look and feel like, you’re engaging in one of the most meaningful creative practices of all.
I think somewhere along the way, many of us lose the playfulness that made creativity feel so natural when we were children.
We become concerned about doing things properly.
We compare ourselves with other people.
We worry about whether the result will be good enough.
And eventually we stop experimenting because we’ve convinced ourselves that creativity requires a particular level of skill or talent.
But what if we gave ourselves permission to be beginners again?
What if we could draw badly, write imperfectly, change our minds, try something unfamiliar and enjoy the process without demanding that everything produce a measurable result?
There is something wonderfully freeing about creating simply because it makes you feel connected to yourself.
And perhaps that’s one of the most important things we can rediscover as adults.
We don’t need to become more creative. We need to give ourselves permission to use the creativity we already have.
Making space for the sadness and the possibility
One of the most thoughtful questions Claudia asked was how I am making space for the sadness of leaving a life I love while also allowing myself to feel excited about what comes next.
It was a question that stayed with me because I think we often feel pressure to choose one emotion over another.
If we’re excited about a new beginning, perhaps we shouldn’t feel sad about the ending.
If we’re grateful for the opportunities ahead, perhaps we shouldn’t complain about how difficult the transition feels.
If we’re choosing a new direction, perhaps we should be entirely confident that it’s the right one.
But life rarely works that neatly.
The truth is that I can be incredibly excited about returning to the UK and still feel heartbroken at the thought of leaving the people and places that have become home.
I can feel grateful for everything we have experienced in America while simultaneously wondering how the next chapter will unfold.
I can trust that we will find our way and still have days when the uncertainty feels overwhelming.
And I am learning that none of those feelings cancels out the others.
They are simply different parts of the same experience.
This has also changed how I think about productivity and showing up for the things I have committed to.
Earlier this year, I had planned to go Live every weekday throughout Substack September, and although I loved the idea and was genuinely excited about the conversations, life had other plans.
There was simply too much happening behind the scenes, and I reached a point where I couldn’t continue showing up in the way I had originally intended.
For someone who has spent much of her life building businesses, creating projects and holding herself to high standards, that wasn’t necessarily an easy thing to accept.
But I realised that sometimes living intentionally means recognising when your priorities need to change.
Sometimes it means slowing down.
Sometimes it means stepping away from something you genuinely enjoy because another part of your life needs your attention.
And sometimes it means allowing yourself to experience the sadness of an ending without rushing to turn it into a positive lesson before you’ve had time to process it.
Claudia shared something that I thought was particularly beautiful about how she approaches leaving a place.
She tries to live those final weeks as though she has only a short time left there, making an effort to visit the places she’s always meant to explore, reconnect with people and enjoy the experiences that can so easily be postponed when we assume there will always be another opportunity.
And it made me think about how often we save our most intentional living for special occasions or significant transitions.
We suddenly become more present when we know something is coming to an end.
We make time for the friendships we’ve been meaning to nurture.
We visit the places we’ve been talking about for years.
We notice the small details that have quietly become part of our everyday lives.
But what if we lived with that level of appreciation all the time?
What if we didn’t need an ending to remind us how much the present moment matters?
The small rituals that bring us back to ourselves
As our conversation moved towards the everyday realities of living artfully, Claudia asked what practices help me stay grounded, particularly when life feels busy or overwhelming.
And my answer was surprisingly simple.
Because although I have spent years exploring intention, energy, creativity and personal development, I have come to realise that the practices that support me most are often the least complicated.
The first is setting an intention for the day.
When I first joined Substack, I wanted to create a little more consistency in my own life, and I began thinking about how helpful it would be to wake up and consciously choose something to focus on.
Not a lengthy list of everything I needed to accomplish.
Not another productivity challenge.
Just an intention.
Something that could gently shape the way I approached the day.
Eventually, I began sharing those intentions as Substack Notes, and what started as a personal practice became something I could share with other people.
Some days I return to the intention later and explain why I chose it.
Other days I don’t.
And that’s okay.
Because the point isn’t to create another obligation or another thing to feel guilty about.
It’s to create a moment of awareness.
The second practice is getting outside.
We now have two dogs, Cooper and Cookie, and although walking them is obviously part of our daily routine, it has become something much more valuable to me.
When there are so many practical things happening at once, from preparing for an international move to making decisions about our next home and managing the everyday responsibilities of work and family, it can feel as though my thoughts are constantly competing for attention.
But stepping outside changes something.
I notice the air.
I look at the trees.
I listen to the sounds around me.
And for a little while, I am reminded that not everything needs to be solved in that exact moment.
The third practice is reflection.
At the end of the day, rather than focusing exclusively on everything that remains unfinished, I try to acknowledge what actually happened.
What did we accomplish?
What felt good?
What did I learn?
What was one small thing that moved us forward?
Because even on the days when the list of things still to do feels impossibly long, there is usually something worth recognising.
And sometimes one thing is enough.
As a recovering perfectionist, that has been a particularly important lesson.
I have spent years working in creative industries where attention to detail matters, and while that has served me incredibly well professionally, it can also make it difficult to accept that something doesn’t have to be perfect to be worthwhile.
But I am learning.
And perhaps the phrase I keep returning to is imperfectly perfect.
Because the intention doesn’t have to be profound.
The walk doesn’t have to be long.
The reflection doesn’t have to fill pages of a journal.
The practice simply has to be something that brings you back to yourself.
The art of creating a life together
Another part of our conversation that I particularly enjoyed was Claudia’s observation that creating a vision with somebody else can become a beautiful practice of connection.
When my husband and I sit down to draw our intentions, we don’t necessarily imagine exactly the same things.
His career ambitions may look very different from mine.
The things that excite him may not always be the things that excite me.
And that’s how it should be.
Because creating a life together doesn’t mean that two people have to abandon their individual dreams in favour of one shared picture.
It means understanding where those dreams overlap, recognising what matters to each person and finding ways to support one another as you grow.
We might both imagine walking along a beach at sunset, but the details of what we want to create professionally or personally may be entirely different.
The beauty is in finding space for both.
Claudia shared how she now involves her husband and son in her annual Choose Your Word practice, and how meaningful it has become to hear what each of them feels proud of, what they hope to create and what matters to them as individuals.
I loved that because it reinforces something I believe about intentional living.
The life we create becomes richer when we make room for the people we love to create alongside us.
And perhaps the most meaningful part isn’t the finished drawing or the list of intentions at all.
Perhaps it’s the conversation that happens while we’re making it.
Perhaps we’re all artists of our own lives
As we reached the end of our Live, I found myself thinking about how naturally the conversation had moved between creativity, reinvention, relationships, uncertainty, daily rituals and the choices we make about where to place our energy.
And that, in many ways, is exactly what intentional living has always meant to me.
It isn’t a single practice.
It isn’t a perfectly organised morning routine or a vision board filled with beautiful photographs.
It isn’t about being positive all the time or pretending that difficult experiences don’t exist.
It’s about recognising that we have a role in shaping the way we experience our lives, even when we cannot control everything that happens within them.
We can choose what we give our attention to.
We can choose how we respond.
We can choose to make space for creativity.
We can choose to nurture the relationships that matter.
We can choose to rest when we need to.
And we can choose to remain curious about what might be possible, even when the picture in front of us looks very different from the one we originally imagined.
I think that’s why Claudia’s Living Artfully series resonates with me so deeply.
Because life really is a creative practice.
Some chapters are full of colour and excitement.
Others are quieter, messier and much harder to understand while we’re living through them.
Sometimes we know exactly what we’re creating.
Sometimes we have no idea what the finished picture will look like.
But perhaps we don’t need to know.
Perhaps the real art is in being willing to keep creating anyway.
And as I prepare to leave one beautiful chapter of my life and begin another, that is the thought I am choosing to carry with me.
We don’t have to know exactly what comes next to believe that something beautiful can still be created.
5 takeaways from our Living Artfully conversation
If our conversation has inspired you to look at your own life a little differently, here are five simple practices you can begin exploring, whether you’re navigating a major transition, looking for more creativity in your everyday routine or simply wanting to reconnect with what matters most.
1. Start with the feeling, not the destination
Instead of beginning with a specific job title, location, income figure or external achievement, give yourself permission to imagine what you want your everyday life to feel like, because sometimes becoming too attached to a particular outcome can prevent you from recognising an opportunity that might offer everything you were hoping for in a completely unexpected way.
Try this: Take a blank piece of paper and draw or describe an ordinary day in a life you would love to live, including where you wake up, who you’re spending time with, what surrounds you and how you feel. Don’t worry about whether you’re good at drawing or whether the vision seems realistic just yet. Begin with what matters.
2. Allow two feelings to exist at once
You can be excited about a new beginning and still feel sad about what you’re leaving behind, just as you can feel grateful for your current circumstances while knowing that something needs to change, and learning to accept those apparently conflicting emotions can make life’s transitions feel less like a battle between what was and what will be.
Try this: If you’re navigating change, write down two things you’re grateful for in your current chapter and two possibilities you’re looking forward to in the next. Give yourself permission to appreciate both without needing to choose between them.
3. Make creativity playful again
Creativity doesn’t require artistic talent, expensive supplies or hours of uninterrupted time, because sometimes the most meaningful creative moments happen when we stop worrying about whether something is good enough and simply allow ourselves to explore an idea, imagine a possibility or approach an ordinary situation in a different way.
Try this: Spend ten minutes doing something creative without a goal or expectation. Draw a picture, write a few sentences, rearrange a corner of your home, make a playlist or simply brainstorm something you’d love to experience. The only rule is that it doesn’t need to be perfect.
4. Create three simple rituals that bring you back to yourself
When life feels overwhelming, it can be tempting to search for an entirely new routine or complicated system to help us feel more in control, but often the most sustainable practices are the small, familiar things that gently reconnect us with the present moment and remind us that we don’t need to accomplish everything in order to have had a meaningful day.
Try this: Begin your morning by choosing one intention, make time during the day to step outside and engage your senses, and finish the evening by acknowledging one thing that went well. Keep it simple enough that it supports your life rather than becoming another obligation.
5. Create your next chapter with intention, but leave room for possibility
A vision can give us direction without becoming a rigid set of instructions, and one of the most valuable things we can do when imagining the future is to remain open to the possibility that what we eventually create may be different from what we originally expected, while still reflecting the feelings, values and experiences that mattered to us all along.
Try this: Ask yourself, What am I ready to carry forward, what am I ready to leave behind, and what would I love to make space for next? Write down your answers, share them with somebody you trust if that feels right, and choose one small action that brings your next chapter a little closer.
Continue the conversation with Claudia and me
I want to say a huge thank you to Claudia Whitney, creator of The Art of Her, for inviting me to be her first guest in her Living Artfully series and for creating such a thoughtful space to explore the beautiful, messy and wonderfully creative experience of being human.
Claudia writes about creativity, rituals, personal growth and what it means to approach life as an evolving creative practice, and I would love for you to discover her work and become part of the conversations she’s creating.
Subscribe to Claudia Whitney on Substack
And if you’re new here, welcome to Starting From Zero, my little corner of Substack where we explore what it means to start something new, start again and create a life and business that feel aligned with who we are and who we’re becoming.
Through personal reflections, practical ideas, honest conversations and the occasional reminder that none of us has everything figured out, my hope is to create a space where we can continue learning, growing and supporting one another through all the different chapters of life.
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I’d love to leave you with one final question, and perhaps it’s one you might want to sit with for a little while.
If you stopped worrying about what your life is supposed to look like and started thinking about how you truly want it to feel, what might you create next?
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
