Life is kind of…a lot right now. (Understatement of the year.)
It’s been so unbelievably difficult to scrape together the motivation to do anything. Even the stuff that has to be done. Life admin and dishes are sucking up every last ounce of energy I have.
And that’s presented itself as a bit of a problem for me. And maybe for some of you!
Because being creative in some form or fashion helps keep my head screwed on straight. But given the current state of politics, ongoing burnout, personal responsibilities, and work stress, when I get to the end of the day, I mostly want to bury my head under a pillow and not move.
I have been trying to embrace methods to get less offline and open myself to more free time. But it’s been a bit of a struggle.
Trying to build free time into your schedule while you’re working and parenting two children is definitely more “life hack” territory than anything else. What would really give me more free time? Maybe a system that supported parents more fully and made it less exhausting to exist.
But I also know that I waste a fair amount of my time doing things that are not helpful for my mental wellbeing. (Or is it that these periods where I scroll or what TV the only time of the day I am allowed to have a smooth brain and so are absolutely necessary for decompression purposes?)
So, I posed myself the question: is there a way to be creative and build on your happiness even when everything feels like way too much?
And then I thought about what that would look like and how I could write a post about it.
And then I thought about it some more.
And then two months passed.
As it turns out, I have not solved the problem of how to be creative when you’d rather be rotting on your couch. But I have (unevenly) applied a couple techniques that have (sort of) worked (for a limited amount of time).
If you are looking for an actual life hack here, I’m sorry. I don’t have any.
I thought about listing some of the things I’ve tried and the level of success I’ve had doing those things. And maybe it would be a useful exercise for reflection? But then I decided that I don’t really want to talk about whether the focus setting on my phone helps me spend less time on Instagram. (It does, by the way.)
Instead I want to think about what it means to be bone tired to your very core and still have the desire to make something. Even when that desire is barely more than a spark.
While I think the tortured writer stereotype isn’t entirely accurate, there is something there. Even well-adjusted people are a little tortured sometimes. Even if your personal life is okay, sometimes the circumstances surrounding you are…decidedly not.
Do we create art to help us deal with the hard times around us? When you have reached your limit, does creating something beautiful (or ugly or difficult or messy) help you process it and work through it?
Is the act of creation when you’d rather be doing anything else somehow one of the most amazing accomplishments you can achieve?
That’s maybe putting it too strongly, but at the same time, it is amazing!
There’s the bit inside of us that wants to roll over and stop. That wants to turn on the television. Or go to sleep. Or play the video game.
And listen, there is nothing wrong with doing any of those things. Sometimes doing one of those things is exactly the right thing to do.
But when you hack away again at the creative thing, the thing that puts your vulnerability on display, the thing that you have to do even if every bit of you is screaming every time you actually sit down to do it, then that is something.
It really is.
I have written several books in my life. None of them are published (yet), but that’s fine. I don’t need them to be. I wrote those books because there was something in me that had to get them done. The ideas kept poking at me and I kept coming back to it. Sometimes I didn’t want to, but the act of finishing the first draft of something is such an accomplishment. I have rarely had a better feeling than finishing the first draft of a book. Something inside me was clawing to get out, and it made it out! Not in a polished or complete way. Not in the way I had dreamed up in my head. But there it was. And still is.
When my youngest was born at the end of 2020, I was too tired to try to write the next book. (I was too tired to do pretty much anything for a little while there.) But I missed writing. So in 2021, I started up this blog in attempt to write something on a semi-regular basis until I was ready to go back to books. That carefully laid out schedule lasted for less time than I would care to admit. Another chunk of time passed until the fall of 2023, when I started up my Shakespeare podcast. A different way to tackle the bit of creativity that I wanted to get out. Earlier this year, life intervened, and I’ve had to cut back on the podcast and other creative endeavors.
In all those times where I haven’t been working on projects, I’ve still thought about them. Sometimes I’ve thought about a particular idea every night for weeks, crafting it and refining it while making myself feel monumentally guilty for not having started it yet.
And then, I never did it. I never put the words to paper (digital or otherwise). And I started to tell myself that I had failed. That it was time to walk away. That maybe I didn’t have it in me to be a creative person anymore.
I haven’t written a book, a chapter of a book, or even a paragraph of a book in more than four years. I have been intending to write this very article for a couple of months. There is something inside me that wants to create but every time that act is about to happen, something stops me.
Sometimes that obstacle is bigger than myself. Sometimes it’s not. But beating myself up about not overcoming didn’t make the project get done. It just made me feel bad about myself.
Creativity doesn’t have to flow easily or consistently to still be there. And sometimes it disappears.
It’s a matter of fits and starts. And miniature successes and bigger failures and sometimes it means looking at the part of you that you used to consider one of your defining characteristics and wondering if it will ever come back.
Will I ever write another book again?
I think so. One day.
Will I want to write it every time I sit down to work on it?
Definitely not.
So, how do I make it happen when I’d almost rather be doing anything else?
Not sure yet.
But, hey. I did finally write this article.
So that’s a start.
Gabs Writes 