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| "Reverie," John William Godward, 1904. Digital image courtesy of the Getty Open Content Program |
Hello friends,
For a long time I've always thrived on creativity breaks. Breaks from everyday life doing boring, non-creative things where other people are the boss of me when I can tell all that stuff to chill out and take time to just sit down and make something awesome. Something that's completely under my control, purely an expression of my feelings and desires. These creativity breaks have been essential. Sometimes what gets me through my workday sometimes is knowing a project I'm in love with is at home waiting for me.
But sometimes being creative can get overwhelming, especially if you put constant pressure on yourself to do so. That includes keeping a creativity blog (heh - note recent respite).
For the past several weeks, I have been swamped. And in a way it can be good to be swamped - it means you're active, needed, and not bored. It can even be invigorating, but only when that swampedness is being counterbalanced with a healthy dose of R&R. I have not been so much with the R&R having lately and what I have learned about myself is that for me, creativity is kind of like work more so than R&R.
Part of it is because I put pressure on myself and create all these internal deadlines that really don't need to be there (honestly, Emily, nobody cares if you get that scarf finished this weekend, including the person you say you're making it for). And part of it is that I view my creative pursuits and crafting as a kind of twin-from-a-parallel-universe career, the career that I would like to be having if I thought I could make any money at it and weren't totally risk averse instead of my actual one that's not as fulfilling as I would like it to be. Maybe that's why I put the unnecessary pressure on myself. Or maybe it's that my bedroom has been completely taken over by craft supplies and I'd like to finish some projects and get them out of there!
In any case, while crafting is certainly fulfilling it isn't necessarily fun. And, low on time and energy and emotional resources, I haven't been doing much of it lately. In fact, I just spent the last week in Florida having a non-vacation helping out my parents, and I brought several creative activities down with me that I didn't even touch. Instead I spent what little alone time I had on my phone playing this silly cartoon choose-your-own-adventure romance game, and another one where you have to save up to buy furniture and then enter into realistic looking interior decorating challenges (that's actually kind of creative, right?)
In the past few weeks I've also bought a new computer - long overdue - done some networking, severely neglected my poor boyfriend, dealt with work drama, taught a music class that I had been preparing for months, started attending choir rehearsals again, attended a launch party for an amazing new natural beauty shop in Georgetown, gone to several Mary Kay parties and participated in a poker tournament. And I'm pooped. And I keep coming home and taking a look at my new loom that I was so excited about and I just don't want to do it. I don't even want to cook. I want to order delivery, crack some wine, and play Dice Smash for three hours. Is this what adulting looks like?
I'm trying to tell myself that this is self care and not failure. And I'm getting better at it every day.
Am I abandoning creativity? Certainly not. I'm sure one day I will wake up and be excited again. But right now, I'm tired! So I'm giving myself some time off.
To be frank I think I've always labored under the misconception that every moment should be spent doing something productive. People ask me how I manage to do everything that I do and I explain that 1) I don't sleep (true) and 2) I don't watch TV. Or rather, I only watch TV if I'm doing something else in front of it, like making jewelry or knitting. And I think that's part of why I don't read for pleasure - can't hold a book and craft at the same time.
This is the first time in my life that I've finally understood that this is bullshit. Maybe this is just the first time in my life that I've been this tired.
In any case , I'm confronted with a new kind of challenge, one that is in its own way creative: What is this R&R I've been hearing so much about? Or, rather, what does it look like for me? Bubble baths? I hear it's supposed to involve bubble baths. Sounds kind of boring.
I'm inspired here by my friend Kim's recent blog post on the importance of fun breaks. She talks about what she does (or would do) to just have fun and be silly, and encourages others to share their thoughts on this. I, however, suck at this, so I've created my own exercise: just a list of things I like to think about that make me happy - without me having to do anything or put any pressure on myself. Baby steps, you know. And not just vast, obvious categories like "puppies" and "chocolate." Oddly specific, idiosyncratic, utterly me happy things. Weird stuff. Frivolous stuff. It's tough if we're talking about this in the context of taking a break from creativity, because the stuff that makes me happy is inevitably linked to creative projects and ideas I have, whether as supplies or photography subjects or inspiration sources, but in my head I will do my best to separate them out and just appreciate them for themselves.
So here we go:
1. Farmers Markets
2. Lavender branches
3. Alpacas, specifically the caramel colored ones, especially with funny haircuts
4. Marble surfaces
5. Space cats, especially space cats posing with burritos
6. Scented candles that smell either like men's cologne or fairy tale forests
7. Walking through the perfume, beauty and accessory departments at high end department stores
8. Shooting bobas through the big straw like a spit ball (have done it, will do it again)
9. Metallic gold nail polish
10. The 1920s
How about you friends? What do you do to take not just a creativity break but a break from creativity? And what is on your list of things that make you happy just to think about them? Discuss in the comments.
Emily
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