We recently connected with Traci Blasko and have shared our conversation below.

Traci, appreciate you joining us today. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?

I believe that our lives are a series of decisions and choices. Sure there are moments when I wish I would have begun my art career decades ago, although I know there are reasons why I chose not to. Instead, I’m choosing to embrace today and all that tomorrow will bring!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I have had a desire to create my whole life! I grew up in a wonderful neighborhood where we enjoyed lemonade stands, craft days, creating and acting out plays for our neighbors, and had little carnivals, it was an amazing childhood. My favorite class throughout my school years was, of course, art! I always thought I would go directly to art school as soon as I graduated, but at that time I let fear become a major road block. In order to go to art school, I would need to live on my own away from my friends and family and I wasn’t quite ready for that. My family and friends were such a huge part of my life and my happiness, I couldn’t picture my life without them. I dabbled in art for years, although never had any formal training.

I married my husband when I was 23, raised two wonderful kids, played a part in our family business, which was involved with employee benefits – far from using my artistic talents! My husband and I owned and operated a large spa for ten years, which allowed me to get a little closer to being able to use my artistic side, and then some big life changes happened. I discovered that although I was living a wonderful life, I had become numb in many ways and wasn’t feeling the joy that was normally my operating system. It felt like I was just going through the motions each day and not really living what fed my soul. Realizing that there comes a time in our lives where we need to boldly claim our joy, I began a journey to reclaim mine.
I began living life in more awareness, which lead to big conversations and the decision to rebuild our life with more attention to those things that did feed our soul. Our family moved to North Carolina from Ohio where we had wanted to move for years. We began separating ourselves from our family business because it was healthy for all involved and started to build the life that we truly love, one that is authentically us.

From those decisions, I was able to create my business, Boldly Joyful, LLC. One of my first projects was to create and publish a book called Becoming Boldly Joyful. It’s really more of a workbook where I share tools, ideas and exercises that I used which helped lead me back to joy with the hope that it will help others as well. I then created a companion journal to go along with it and included some of my original artwork!

I recently – many decades after graduation – enrolled in an online art institute and am finally going to art school and getting some formal training!! As the universe works sometimes, I also had my first art show this month! I was given the opportunity last December to choose August as my month to be their featured artist, long before I knew of and enrolled in the art institute. Perhaps confirmation that it’s time! It was an absolutely amazing evening that I joyfully shared with my husband, our kids, some of their friends, our sweet granddaughter, my new artist tribe of friends and many other friends and patrons. I felt very loved and supported and was very humbled by the whole experience.

When I reflect on my life to this point, I choose not to regret how long it’s taken me to focus on my art, because I was doing other things that filled my soul, like sharing time with my husband, kids, friends and all of our family. Every business opportunity I was involved in helped me expand my horizons and become a stronger person. I’m thankful for all of it and now I am overjoyed that it is my time to shine as an artist! My hope is that I will create meaningful artistic creations that will bring feelings of joy and love to others.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

This question made me chuckle because I believe I’ve pivoted so many times in my life, I just picture myself doing the Tango! When I chose to not go directly to art school after graduation, I had to do something so I worked for our family business that my parents started – pivot 1. Then I got married and decided to go to cosmetology school – pivot 2. We had our son right after I got my cosmetology license and our daughter three years later. We chose for me to be a stay at home mom – pivot 3. I opened a salon in our home – pivot 4 then a few years later we started a much larger project with the spa we owned and operated – pivot 5. My parents both became ill and passed away within 18 months of each other. This was a drastic change in our family dynamic and changed many things – pivot 6. Our family decided to move our lives to North Carolina and recreate our life – pivot 7. Although there were times I felt dizzy from all those pivots, I guess the Tango would be pretty boring without them!

My parents always taught us that if Plan A isn’t working, you don’t give up, you just keep adjusting until the plan works. Sometimes that means the result is a lot different than what you initially envisioned and that’s okay.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

I believe there are two very challenging obstacles in a creative’s life and therefore two very important ways to support those artistic friends and family you may have.

The first being the creative themselves. Creating art and “putting it out there” for others to see and perhaps judge creates feelings of vulnerability. I believe it takes growth in confidence to become comfortable in sharing our creations.
Artists and Creatives, learn to love yourself and to not need anyone else’s confirmation that you are talented. Build your confidence by creating. The more we create, the more we learn. One of my biggest lessons so far has been to realize that almost every piece of art goes through an ugly stage! Not only is that okay, it’s often necessary in order to create the most beautiful and meaningful pieces. Be patient with the process and allow it and Believe In Yourself.
For those who tend to be more left brain thinkers who have creatives as friends or family, support them by listening to their process and not being too quick to give your opinion, good or bad. Help build their confidence by supporting their practice of creating. Ask questions about the process!

Secondly, we creatives tend to be very right brained thinkers, not just in art but in life itself. Personally I grew up in an environment of more left brain thinkers, so there were often times that I didn’t understand something in the same way as everyone else. It would cause me to feel one of two ways, either less intelligent because I didn’t understand as quickly or like an outsider because I was the only one in my circle who saw things from a different perspective. It took a lot of growth to be able to understand that it had nothing to do with intelligence or belonging, we were just seeing things differently.
It’s so important to allow each other to have different opinions and perspectives. Let’s not make anyone feel ‘less than’, let’s allow ourselves to grow instead by learning about another way to see things. It’s like learning another language and that’s always beneficial.

Left brain or right, we all need to find our tribe. Find a group of like-minded people who you can brainstorm with, learn from and who are going through similar challenges and victories. It makes all the difference!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://boldlyjoyful.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/boldly_joyful/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/boldlyjoyful