Creativity in a time crunch
When inspiration strikes
I wish my process was different. I wish I could wake up and a call from the bowels of my being(lol poop) nagged at me until I could pick up the phone. I wish I could set aside specific time every week to be creative. Like some free-spirited robot.
When inspiration hits I have no option but to cease it. Right then and there. It comes so infrequently now-a-days that the scarcity hits immediately. What if it passes me by? What if I forget? What if I water the garden first? Can I balance the check book? Will it leave me forever? Will it ever come back?
It’s a crazy reaction, honestly. To be faced with utter abundance, infinite possibility, and the first thought is of when it abandons you. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. A work deadline, an event you promised yourself you’d go to. All potential threat to the creative process.
How do I allow it to inform the process? How would I go about that? I’m testing that out today.
I woke up, tired from a 14 hr day at two of my three jobs. I went to a meeting, prayed to my god that I wouldn’t isolate and eat that day, prayed that I would be a woman of the world, not just my world. Went to a coffee shop and read for an hour. Driving home, inspiration struck. It’s always driving, windows down, utter freedom.
I was scared it would leave me as it sometimes does. I needed to water the plants and talk to my best friend. Luckily one of my prized black eyed susans was damaged in the storms this week and I had to make an emergency floral arrangement. My best friend calls, “I’m in inspiration right now” I said. She asked if I needed time to create, I explained that I’m trying to hold onto inspiration. I’m working on not letting it fall through my fingers but be harnessed when I choose to. When I am in control. (First mistake)
We talked for hours as we usually do. Painting images of the world through our complex thought and stimulating conversation. After the call I feared my creativity was spent. Used up in social engagement. I watched TikTok for an hour. Saved by the bell of a screen time notification, I switched to another screen and ate a late lunch. I was scared the couch took me, took my creativity. I forced myself outside. Maybe my friends the birds will bring it back.
I have an event to go to this evening. It was 14 minutes past the time I wanted to leave. A mixture of social anxiety and stress of running out of time, I passed an unfinished painting that has been stapled to my wall for months now. This must be the perfect time for me to work on it, surely!
I picked a pencil, scribbled, mixed the paint and dug my hands in. Crimson streaks on a canvas. The lifeblood of a time crunch. I picked up my laptop, the words spilling out of me faster than I can type. I would like it to be another way. It’s now been 47 minutes.
Coming out sideways is what we say in recovery. When we act against our intuition, our behavior gets weird and comes out in inopportune ways. Today I’m late to an event because I pushed against intuition. The energy had to come out, and it is always at the expense of being late. I’m coming to terms about that within myself.
I’ve been writing a lot more this week. Small poems to capture what I’m feeling or what I experience. The voice of my internal dialogue changes when the medium is writing vs painting vs cooking vs any of the million creative outlets I have. I hardly can tell which one I need to do at which time. But I’m attuning. I’m attuning to my writing voice. That one is one that needs to be ceased in the moment. This I know.
I can paint any old time, garden any old time or cook whenever I want. Writing is a stream of consciousness that I cannot ignore. When I ignore it, all other creativity becomes inaccessible. When I kill the words, the words kill my creativity.
I’m going to go to this event now. I’m going alone when I thought I wouldn’t be. I don’t want to go but I’m not in the business of breaking promises that I make to myself anymore. Even if going alone, something I have exclusively done over the past 3 years since moving here, feels like I’m going to die. I won’t make friends, I won’t meet people to go to things with if I’m behind a screen. I wrote something last month about loneliness, maybe this is my call to hit publish.
A day later and I’m here. Called to write again. I went to the event, it was good and heartbreaking. It’s hard for me to connect here. But that’s a topic for another day. I will leave you with a poem wrote this morning.
Artist (general)
I wake up
Already behind, a capitalists dream
To-do’s in mind, running
Running errands, running chores
Running, running
A record plays, a romanitcised life
Tidy here, tidy there
Water the garden, weed the garden
Done futzing, 2pm
Exhausted, a capitalists dream
Talk to a friend, over coffee
Can I muster the energy to create?
3 month old inspiration
A layer on a painting,
A disorganized poem,
The pile of fabric sitting on my table
All waiting to be touched
Confused, a capitalists dream
Overstimulated, I sit
The moment passes me by
Will I ever see it again?
Trust the process, inaction included
Forced urgency, unfruitful endeavor
I hate the work
Loathing, a capitalists dream
I ruined it, in fits of pressure
Diamonds never say that
Nature never falters, am I the exception?
If I could funnel it
One medium would solve this
I’d know what to do every time
Whats the fun in that?
Killjoy, a capitalists dream.Thank you for reading my infrequent transmissions!