Melissa runs her own copywriting and content marketing business, so when the idea came up to start a newsletter for CreativeMornings/Raleigh, she immediately volunteered. She also helps out by updating the facebook page, which keeps our local morning people up-to-date on future events. On event days she can typically be found handing out name tags and sneaking delicious snacks from that month's snacks sponsor. She likes long walks on the beach, tea, and arguing about comma placement.
I know quite a bit about publishing—that includes content marketing, book publishing (including self publishing), magazine publishing and more. I also know quite a bit about the pet industry, both from a business standpoint and from a pet lover stand point. Go ahead, ask me about it.
Meeting new people. I've been in Raleigh about a year and a half now, and while my list of friends is slowly getting longer I really believe no one can have too many friends. I'm a bit bad at getting the conversation started... but I never turn down an invite for "coffee" (where I then drink tea) if I can help it.
If you don't like how something's being run, get involved and make a change — don't just sit on the sidelines and complain.
Melissa’s CreativeMornings activity
I think we all have this unrealistic expectation that everything we make should be good and perfect even when we're learning something new.
Every scary thing you do is just a warm up for the next, even scarier thing.
Minimalism is about balance, about mindfulness... that it is not in relation to more or not in relation to less. It in itself has its place that it's process demands different things for different people.
It's very important that you greet strangers with good eye contact. It's very important that you think about putting yourself in the footprint of the stranger that you're making eye contact with.
At a burlesque show it's really not all about you... We want to entertain you, but we also want to make you think about stuff. And we do it all through the magic of nudity. People have short attention spans, you know?
The idea of it was [enticing], while in reality, everybody was a little bit floppier than you expect.
Krispy Kreme donuts are my favorite and I was eating one and thought, 'Man, this is going to mess up my lipstick.' And my friend said to me, 'You know that's kind of like sex; you're willing to do it even though it'll mess up your lipstick.'
If anybody ever says to you, 'You guys should do a kickstarter!' you need to stop, put your hands on their shoulders and say, 'have you ever done a kickstarter?' because it is the most consuming undertaking ever.
For the longest period of time — I think it was a good year and a half — we were struggling. We got caught up in what I call the infinite to-do list: cross one out, add five.
It's a creative thing, and like any creative thing, it's birthed from passion. Passion is fueled by this idea that you have to do this — you want to do this...
As humans, what we do is we create and we consume; so we create things and we take things away.
I went there to study architecture [...] but I realized it wasn't really the buildings I was interested in; it was the space between the buildings—it was the people, it was the energy, it was all of the different layers that make a city tick.
I have a friend who's a musician and he asked me to sit down and he interviewed me about art. And after an hour's worth of conversation he boiled it all down into this one phrase, which was 'It's what moves you.'
Sometimes bravery is going forth and fighting. Sometimes it means surrendering.