All posts tagged: creative process

Candid Chats w/ KO

Published by Khadijat Oseni

Last year at BlogHer15’s Experts Among Us conference in New York City, I met fellow blogger, Liv of Unbelievably Human and we connected on travel and life experiences. I invited Liv to be a part of my #100DaysofConfessions project and she equally had a few questions of her own for me regarding thoughts on travel and self-love. View our candid conversation below! Has travel always been apart of your background? or Did something call you to Travel? Travel has always been in my genes and from birth I’ve been nomadic due to having parents from different cultural backgrounds creating a delicate tight rope between America and Africa. Tracing where I was born and raised always turns into a geography lesson of sorts with the most frequent stints in California, New York and Nigeria so roaming has always been a natural extension of who I am at my core. However, despite my frequent movement as a child, I truly didn’t appreciate the character growth that stems from travel until my junior year in college when I …

Confessions of a Jetsetter w/ Naomi Jackson

Published by Confessions of a Jetsetter

“I spent the summer of 2012 working on my first novel, The Star Side of Bird Hill, in Barbados. While I was there, my days were simple – writing by longhand every morning, eating a mango every day after lunch, watching bad TV at night to give my brain a break. I spent many long afternoons hanging out, reading, and drinking overpriced, but great tasting coffee at Surfers Cafe in Oistins. The cafe is right on the beach and when I was there, I felt the sense of being exactly where I was meant to be. That summer of writing alone in Barbados was made possible by many years of practicing the fine art of enjoying my own company.  An appetite for solitude is an essential quality to cultivate for any writer, and traveling alone has taught me to confront myself when I have nowhere to turn besides more deeply inward. I certainly had plenty of time to wrestle with myself and my work during that summer in Barbados. That said, it’s hard to feel truly …

Mid-life crisis 100 day project

Mid-Life Crisis Averted!

Published by Khadijat Oseni

The journey from 25 to 50 days of confessions was a spirited test of endurance. The continuous momentum I was able to gather at the beginning of my challenge with lining up subject after subject, who readily respected deadlines and the collaborative creative process, vanquished and I was left stuck and muddled in a path that only seemed to lead to frustration. I agonized about whether my questions were engaging enough…I wondered if I was too passive or assertive with follow-ups…I pondered about whether I was crazy for taking this task on in the first place… Yet, every time I questioned whether my project was effective with my initial intent of connecting, inspiring and redefining cultural norms through shared travel experiences, I was reminded of its significance via little nudges in the form of a kind note of appreciation from one of my subjects, inbox inquiries from strangers wanting to be part of the project and general enthusiasm over the idea popping up in water-cooler conversations. It became apparent that I didn’t have a choice …

Quarter Life-100 Day Project

Hitting A Quarter Life Of Memories!

Published by Khadijat Oseni

Hitting the benchmark of Day 25 of my #100DaysofConfessions Instagram project over the last four weeks has been quite an exhilarating, adventuresome ride! Within these past 25 days, we have all collectively explored four continents as artists, photographers, teachers, musicians, students, perfumers, foodies, writers, designers and have even been proposed to in the middle of a beach in Deba! The greatest takeaways from my quarter journey thus far are: people and their stories matter and people are generally open to sharing their narratives when the request is coming from a place of genuine interest in wanting to truly understand what their personal journeys and processes have meant to them. There have been many days during this project where I’m anxiously scrambling behind the scenes to find my next story and subject for the day. There have been many times where I’ve faced disappointments and setbacks with staying on a consistent schedule – currently a day behind my intended challenge and posting at all sorts of random hours whenever stories trickle in! There’s been lots of …

Confessions of a Jetsetter w/ Shannon Hemmett

Published by Confessions of a Jetsetter

“After flying overnight from Vancouver to NYC, I found myself at the Museum of Modern Art standing in front of Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon… I was having a creative drought at the time and was eager to experience paintings that I’d only encountered in my books…I’d always been interested in Picasso’s attraction to masks and they play a central role in this piece. The brush strokes are confident from afar, but they are not clean on close inspection and one of the mask-like faces on the right hand side has been aggressively reworked in comparison to the rest of the painting… Yes, I realized that even Picasso reworked his canvases! It was important to see the potency of the imperfections, it was a pep talk about letting go and keeping an open mind in my own art practice…” – Shannon Hemmett // @shannonhemmett   018/100 of #100DaysofConfessions Instagram Project