#73 Lofi poems, hip hop, and Notion
I'm telling you, something's in the water because this spring is feeling good ✨
Going to bed at 2AM last night might have been a mistake, but sometimes you just have to follow where your energy takes you. For me, it was a mix of vibing to some really good music—I’m kinda a trance, techno, deep house kinda gal for the most part—while I finish off a big 4.5k-word project ahead of a busy week.
On top of it, I briefly moved some of our furniture and plants around for a quick self portrait session, did some jigsaw on our kitchen counter, kicked off some ideas I had bouncing in my head, finished up a photo gallery for a local painter (will share next time!), and wrote out a big to-do list that I’ve been slowly ticking off today.
(OH, I just realised, this is my first newsletter post-birthday. I think this yearly milestone brought something back to me that I’d been missing ✨)
Side note: I’ve been really enjoying remixes of some classics like:
Sam Giancana, Robbe & DJSM - Barbie Girl (yes, I count that as a classic)
And this Weeknd’s house mix (great for background music)
It’s almost like everything coincides and falls into place to make you feel so creative, inspired, and excited. It’s a feeling I don’t think we get anywhere near enough. It’s something you want to hold onto for as long as possible.
And speaking of this creative flow that makes you fall in love with the world again, let me tell you about Travis Taborek, a content marketing pro. He recently shared on LinkedIn about his poetry work being printed. What an achievement!
But this was achievement was just one of his bucket-list goals:
“Five years ago, I accomplished my dream of becoming a digital nomad when I went to Barbados in October of 2020. When I did that, I realized I could do anything I set my mind to if I worked at it long enough and didn't give up. With that, I set three goals. I wanted to be:
1) A 6-figure business owner
2) A published poet
3) An author with a book outGetting my poetry published accomplishes one of those 3 goals. I accomplished the 3rd one the year before when I released my ebook My Robot Butler Bradbury, a guide on ChatGPT for content marketing. This year, I hope to accomplish the first.”
Sea Change, the anthology that features his poem Pura Vida, is available on Amazon, but it’s not the only literary project Travis has been working on.
What caught my eye was also his lofi hip-hop poem collection, an idea created for his friend:
“Since moving to South Carolina in 2023, I've been working on a collection of poems inspired by my favorite lofi hip-hop tracks. My friend Lisa came up with the idea of printing them out on flyers and putting them up at poster boards.
I started at one location a few months ago. Soon I hope to revisit this project, called "lofi poems to chill / relax to", and begin distributing them at bars and coffee shops all around the city of Savannah, where I currently live.”
Featured alongside the all-so familiar lofi playlist tracks that have kept many of us head down while studying, working, building, or creating, the three poems are: Shimmer, Leaves, and Saudade.
Poems are published on Notion—I love finding Notion users in the wild. For Travis, he just needed something simple that creates standalone pages without a setup hassle. “It helps me share and spread the poems easily, which is what I needed. I also use Notion as part of my core project and task management, together with Todoist,” he says.
As for that beautiful state where you can fully lose yourself in your art, Travis finds it’s not that easy to find time for it. His business development projects and client work take a big chunk of his time, often leaving hardly any space for passion projects and regular self-care.
“I do my best writing in the morning, when I'm most energized, focused, and motivated. I try to wake up between 5:30 and 6 in the morning on weekdays, so sometimes I'll start my day by writing out a poem before I settle into my workday. Friday evenings and Saturday mornings are sometimes a period of free creative work for me as well.
My poems and other creative projects often develop over time. When inspiration strikes and I get an idea for a story, a poem, a blog post e.g. I'll jot down notes in a Notion page and play around with different words, ideas, rhyming schemes, themes, hooks, and structures. I call this part of the process "word doodling", because it's like sketching doodles on a notepad, but with words.
Then, I'll give it room to breathe and let the seed germinate into a full-grown idea days or weeks later. Sometimes, I complete poems months after I wrote down the first few lines.”
But it’s more than just filling sheets of paper with words. It’s a part of his identity and growth. If Travis hasn’t written a new poem or started a new creative writing project in a while, it’s a sign something’s amiss. “It's a signal to me that I'm creatively stagnant, and that often coincides with stagnation in my career or business growth. I take it as my creative spirit telling me I need to travel, change locations, or try something new,” he explains.
“I'm extremely privileged and lucky in that I got to make a career and a living off of my creativity, but writing poetry and for my own pleasure gives me an important purpose in my life. It sharpens my creative writing muscles, which in turn helps me to be more effective in my client work.
Even if, for whatever reason, I have to pivot away from writing professionally, I'm going to write until I die. It's just who I am.”
But how do you find YOUR thing? And what do you do when you’ve found it, but you’re working full-time and seemingly there’s never the right time to sit down for your creative practice?
“Start small, and do it frequently. You get better over time just by getting started with a few small projects than by putting them off until you can devote a big block of time for them. Consistent effort over time yields more and better results than sheer, raw effort alone,” says Travis.
Beyond that, Travis also encourages:
Put yourself out there (this one’s even for you, introverts)
Take a chance on yourself and show your work to other people—friends, family, social groups
Just start talking about your poems and creative writing projects (or anything else that you find fulfils your creative battery)
Believe in yourself—you might be surprised by how good you are
“Community is important. Look for open mic nights and weekly and monthly writers groups near you. Your local coffee shops and bookstores will often have information about local writer communities, and there's always Eventbrite.
Make a goal to go to at least one open mic night per week.”
And I can’t disagree. I’ve been making it a conscious thing to go back to doing more projects with strangers—one of them being my 2025 version of a lockdown photo project I led for 10 women across the world. For a whole month, we all did one photo daily based on a new theme I sent each day. It was a fulfilling, challenging month, and it made some of those dark lockdown thoughts feel lighter. And at the end of it all, I designed a beautiful work of everything we created.
Creativity, community, sharing ideas and different perspectives—it’s how we stay connected to our true selves irrespective of what our society expects of us. It’s how we grow and reflect.
P.S. Connect with Travis over on LinkedIn, Instagram or Threads to catch updates for his lofi poems and other writing projects.
That’s all from me this week—if you enjoyed this newsletter issue and haven’t subscribed yet, you can click the button below. I’d love to have you here! Hopefully, catch you next week.✨