PODCAST 130: Making a Life with Melanie Falick

It’s no secret that I am and always have been that weird artsy kid, the one on the fringes. I remember points in my teen years when I literally prayed to be more normal and others where I climbed to the peak of weirdo mountain, planted my freak flag and fully embraced my Nicoleness. The thing that helped me spend more time loving myself on weirdo mountain than hiding in my closet wishing for the impossible, was making.

Making has always been there for me. It’s helped me learn to embrace my otherness, find my people, and light a path that’s allowed me to support myself making and helping other people make for over 20 years. I believe that art can save your life but it can also make your life. For me it’s done both. And, I know I’m not alone in this.

In her book Making a Life, our guest today on DHL TV and our podcast, Melanie Falick shares the lives of several makers around the world through stories, interviews and photographs that reveal how making has saved, shaped and created them. Melanie’s book investigates and celebrates the role that making by hand can play in making a good life.

So, what does it look like and feel like to make a life? To artfully and intentionally live with making as a central focus in your life? That is part of what we’ll explore on the podcast today along with talking about Melanie’s own journey leaving her lucrative publishing career to take her next step, even though she didn’t know what that step was exactly. Melanie and Nicole talk about Melanie’s career in publishing, why making is so vital and valuable in the modern world, slowing down and making for the sake of making rather than selling or sharing, what a good life looks like and more.