DORA MAE BLOG

On Productivity and Play (And what I really want for my birthday) The Zinger and the Whiff I hit a cross court winner this morning that surprised everybody, including me. Two shots later I whiffed the ball completely, air, nothing, a full miss in front of two friends who are just as new to tennis as I am. (Well it’s been 30 years since I picked up a raquet). And somewhere between the zinger and the whiff, laughing at myself through sweat and an elevated heart rate, I felt something I had not felt in longer than I want to admit. I felt like I was playing. Not performing. Not producing. Not optimizing my morning for maximum output before the real day began. Playing, the way an eighteen year old plays, the way I played tennis for my high school team before life got fast and full and, if I am honest, addicted to getting things done. I turn forty seven this week, and it cracked something open that I did not see coming. The Wound Underneath the Birthday While birthday planning, I noticed myself back in a familiar pattern. Checking in on everyone else's needs before I had checked in on my own. I did not know what I wanted. Or what I wanted to do to celebrate. Or what to ask my mother in law to cook for dinner. Instead of sitting with the not knowing, I filled the silence by making it about someone else, telling her I’d been off my cooking “A game” and Jim hadn't had a home cooked meal in a while. So why didn’t she just ask him what HE wanted to eat. That is codependency in a single sentence. It's not always the dramatic kind. Sometimes it is just a woman who has spent so many years fluent in everyone else's desires that she has lost the accent of her own. So I asked my husband, who somehow knows what I feel before I do, “Babe what do I want for my birthday?”He laughed but said with all sincerity, you want to slow down. You want life to feel like a dance. It landed immediately, because the opposite of a dance is how I tend to move when I’m achieving.  Faster than the speed of light. Efficient. Productive. An extra engine bolted onto an already racing car. My nervous system has learned that I am safe, and worthy, and valuable, when I am getting things done. And when I strip all of that away and ask what my true self actually wants, the answer has nothing to do with getting anything done at all. It has to do with being here. Fully. Without trying to fix this moment or improve it or optimize it into something better than what it already is. That is not an easy thing to wrap up in gift paper. It turns out the practice is the present I'm giving myself. Dora Mae Dance or Deadline So when a friend texted asking if I wanted to hit some balls, I said yes before I had time to overthink it, which is rare for me. I even had an important meeting I’d need to leave early for. But just the feeling of no outcome, no score that mattered, just a few beginners and a bunch of laughing. And that hot and cold rhythm of a perfect shot right next to a total miss, neither one meaning a single thing about my worth. I did not feel pressure to be good. I did not need to take any of it seriously. It was simply fun.  How long it had been since I let something be simply fun? Here is the twist, though, and it is the part I think matters most. My job at Dora Mae feels like play almost all of the time. I love it fully and authentically, and I feel like one of the luckiest women ever.  But loving your work does not make it play. I own the company. I hold the team, the bottom line, and every client's expectations in my head at once, and somehow I let work that feels like play quietly replace the play that has no stakes attached at all. I need both. I had forgotten that. Same Pattern, Different Outfit A few hours later, still turning all of this over, I caught myself doing the exact same thing while planning an overseas trip. Jim and I leave for Paris and Switzerland in two weeks, and my whole intention going in was…play. Follow our joy. Let our own inner sparks decide the day rather than a spreadsheet of Michelin stars and must-see sites. But somewhere in the planning, it started to feel like work again. Like the trip would fail if we did not check off the right list. And I know that is not true, because anywhere I go with Jim, we have a wonderful time. But I have also learned, over years of travel, that if you have absolutely no plan to work from, you can end up wandering aimlessly rather than freely. There is a real difference between the two. So the real question is not whether to plan or not to plan. It is how much structure is enough to hold the trip without suffocating it. A container loose enough that freedom can actually move inside of it. Petals, Not Stairs That distinction, I realized, is the entire heart of Creativity in Bloom. I built the framework as petals rather than steps on purpose. Steps say one, two, three, and then you arrive, finished, creative at last. Petals unfold instead, looser, less linear, more willing to circle back around to a lesson you thought you had already learned. This week I lived this framework on repeat. Presence caught me off guard first: the simple, uncomfortable awareness that I did not know what I wanted for my own birthday. True Self showed up next, through Jim's mirror and through a tennis court full of beginners. And Alignment arrived last, in the tension between an itinerary that frees me and one that enslaves me. I wrote this book as a love letter to myself first. So it should not surprise me that I am back inside one of its own lessons, at forty seven, learning it again from a slightly different angle. That is not failure. That is the spiral doing exactly what the upward spiral of personal growth is supposed to do. So here is where I have landed, at least for today. The gift I actually want this year is not a dinner or a plan or a perfectly optimized trip. It is permission to whiff the ball completely, laugh about it, and take the very next swing anyway. Are you following Dora Mae for our heirloom transformations?! Or maybe for our whimsical, original fine jewelry? Whatever the reason, I’m glad you’re here! Creatively Yours, Ansley 

I wish someone had told me this a long time ago.  You are most creative when you’re not actually creating.  Wait what? LOL. Ok let me backup a bit. In 2024, I made the executive decision that Dora Mae would  be closed on Mondays. My True Self had realized a while back that I needed to build more REST into the rhythm of Dora Mae Jewelry. (I consider True Self my soul who expands beyond “thinking” and living by facts and often fear…and embodies her “knowing” so she can live by faith and freedom.)  I knew it wasn’t just about avoiding burnout and exhaustion - although yes, that’s important too. I knew it was really about expanding as a creative!  To grow exponentially in my creative gifts, I needed to rest exponentially!  The rhythm of rest is built into creation at every level of our universe! Dormant seasons aren’t useless or void of meaning. In fact, they are a vital step in preparation for the bloom!  So, working 6 days a week was not only going to lead to burnout, it was also depriving me (and the clients I serve) of the fullness of my creative expression.  Enter Fear, Control, and Lack. Oh hello old friends! What message have you brought me today? “You might miss out on customers if you aren’t open 6 days a week.” “Retail can’t be profitable if you’re closed that much.” “You wouldn’t want to disappoint or inconvenience anyone. It’s better to be available to meet everyone’s needs all the time. That’s how anyone is successful in business.” “Well, just get ready to have 1/6th less income if you’re open 1/6th of the time.” Ok boos, I hear you. Are you done?! It can be as easy as inviting Love, Freedom, and Abundance to have their chance to speak too. “It’s about your extensive connection with your clients, not your extensive availability.”  “Hustle culture breeds FORCE. Creation culture breeds FLOW.” “Your inner divine wisdom is the guiding light for this business, not the outer human validation.” “Rest is a vital PART of your creative process…not a BREAK from it.  It’s an essential STEP…not a STOP.” If you can close your eyes right now and visualize creativity, you might be able to discern that it’s actually rest that gives creativity its rhythm…its sense of “flow.” WIthout rest, it really is more “force.” When humans are in healthy rhythm and we are tired…what do we do?? We REST.  And if that voice creeps in that equates rest with laziness, simply tell your EGO that while you appreciate its efforts to avoid failure, you are no longer accepting fear as a motivator. Gently release the ego from its duties, reminding it that creativity doesn’t flourish in control but in freedom. And yes, that includes freedom to fail!  It took me a while to heed my “knowing”and close on Mondays because I had to move beyond my ego’s fear and control. The ego is pretty brilliant at using logic and the “thinking mind” to overanalyze and paralyze. It can be quite a spiritual process to move beyond cognition into intuition! But with practice, that process picks up speed and “stuck” no longer needs to be a word that defines us! There’s so much more I could show you about what happens to our creativity when we aren’t creating! But for now, let me end by saying REST is not only good for your body, it also signals to your soul that this is all a journey.  And since there really is no arrival, rest isn’t stopping you from “getting there.” It’s just helping you enjoy the journey a whole lot more! Rest is written into all the best journeys!   Rest says:  “We are already HERE. Life is right now. Life isn’t one day down the road when I’m better. When I’m more creative. When I’m more successful. When I’m more self-actualized.”  Rest says:  “I am satisfied in my soul in the holy Now. I am sinking my toes into the fertile soil of Here.”  Rest is the most powerful way to embody your Already-ness and therefore one of the most powerful tools in your creative practice. Knowing this, we trust that the growth and expansion we have planned for Dora Mae will be deeply served by the extra day of rest. We will prioritize rest as a key tenet of our company culture and as an integral part of our whole team’s process!   Rest is that gentle whisper that calls you from “there” back to “here” - back to your Already-ness, to your deep knowing of your perfection and completion in this NOW moment.  Rest is the gentle yet powerful reminder that BEING is the energy that empowers your DOING. Most of us have that all turned around and backwards! But Rest knows what’s up. New Dora Mae Studio Hours Monday: REST Tuesday: 10-5:30 Wednesday:10-5:30 Thursday: 10-5:30 Friday:10-5:30 Saturday:10-4pm Sunday: REST Creatively Yours,  Ansley Highland