Sometimes, my attitude about creativity can really trip me up. I start getting stingy with my ideas, hoarding them with the thought that I will need these in the future. I worry that I will run out of creative juices, that I might just use them up. And that’s where I create my own problem.
By hoarding my ideas and not expressing my creativity, I get blocked up. In graphic terms, it’s something like being creatively constipated. Creativity, like riding a bike, requires movement, action.
Curling up in a blanket burrito on the couch was doing nothing to help my malaise. Neither was hiding away my best ideas for a later day.
But what about my idea log?
Sure, keep an idea log. Many creatives I know maintain some kind of listing of ideas for future projects. But an idea is just an idea. It’s not going to get you anywhere on your own, and 50 different artists with the same idea will turn out 50 different works.
The spark of brilliance is not in the idea itself, it’s in the action. It’s in the process of creation. Creativity is not a state of being, it is a state of doing. Creativity is action.
Creativity is self-regenerating action
Yes, that’s right, the act of creating will produce more ideas and more creative juice. The more you create, the more you’ll be able to create.
But sometimes we get a little stuck when we’re in the middle of creating. That happens to me, too. But no amount of saving my best ideas for when I’m feeling more creative will break me out of that kind of funk.
What to do when you’re feeling less than creative
Action. Like taking a walk. Get some exercise and get your blood moving
Free writing. Just let it all out. Write till you’re empty and write some more.
Play with color. Fling some paint around. Color in a coloring book.
Doodle. Draw shapes, swirls, doodads, and whatever else pops into your head. Draw something ridiculous.
Get out of your comfort zone. Switch things up a bit. Try a creative activity that is not something you normally do. Write or draw with your non-dominant hand. Create in a way that’s out of character for you.
Just try something different for 20 minutes or so, and then go back to your work and go at it again. A fresh perspective will help.
It doesn’t matter if it’s been 20 years since you last did something you considered creative. We’re all creative throughout different aspects of our lives, from the way we dress to the food we cook and eat. Use that to fuel more creativity.
Journal/Creative Prompt:
What are the ways that you hold back creatively? How is holding back impacting your work?
Check out my Instagram account for daily journal prompts.
Are you waiting for the “perfect time” to get started?
When pondering when to start a journal, or starting a new project or habit, I think we tend to think in terms of milestone moments, or an obvious break in the calendar. I’ll start Monday. I’ll start on the first of next Month. I’ll start January 1. I’ll start on my birthday. I’ll start on my wedding day.
It’s easy to build in a delay, a time buffer into our idea of starting something new.
Building in a delay is not a great way to get started. It is, however, a great way to start procrastinating.
Why do you wait?
Are you questioning how much you really want to do it?
Is it the idea of starting fresh on a new week, month, or year? Fresh starts are not limited to certain time frames. You can have a fresh start right now. Right this minute, you can take a deep breath, draw a line through the air, and say I’m starting fresh right now.
Sure, you’re still in the same place, the same situation. You still have dishes and laundry to do, you still have the same deadlines, problems, and habits, but something is different. When you change your approach, everything else changes.
Don’t give in to perfectionism
Sometimes we wait because we want to make it perfect. I have to have the perfect journal. I have to start on the first because then I can set it up to cover the month perfectly. That’s a recipe for avoiding your journal any time you feel less than perfect.
Your journal is not a place for perfection. It’s a safe place, where you can be you any time of day or night. Any day of the week, month, or year.
If you delay starting your journal till a certain date, it increases the pressure on what you decide to put in the journal. There’s an increased sense of having to write about things you deem important – the big events in your life. But life happens in the in-between moments. It’s those moments that make up the bulk of our time that determine who we are and how we live – the hours and days, as well as the weeks, months, and years.
When to start a journal is when you’re ready
You decide when you are ready to start a journal. Don’t let the calendar tell you how to run your life. It’s your journal.
Whenever you want to start your journal is the perfect time to get started. As I write this post, it’s 7:40 pm on a Thursday and a perfectly acceptable time to start writing. So is tomorrow. Or the next day.
If you want to write, then write. Pick up a pen or pencil and a notebook, or even open a new document on your computer. Then write. It only matters that you write. Everything else is just ornamental.
I see the art journals and stunningly gorgeous bullet journal spreads pictured in Instagram and whizzing through my Facebook feed, and I feel pangs of envy about the art skills on display.
I am a long-time keeper of ugly journals. I love artsy journals. I ooh and ah over beautiful bullet journals, but my journals just don’t measure up. I try to make them pretty, but the harder I try the more tacky they get.
Sometimes I get self-conscious about how my ugly journals fail when compared to the artistic journals of some of my friends.
It’s that comparison bit that really trips me up. Every time.
My journal does not exist for the purpose of impressing other people. I forget that detail way too often.
My journal exists for a lot of reasons
It helps me stay organized
It helps me set goals and work towards them
It helps me plan my days, weeks, months, and years
It helps me figure out how I feel about an issue
It helps me figure out my next steps
It helps me understand what happened
It helps me figure out how to move on
It connects me to the deepest parts of myself that are otherwise difficult to access
It’s those deeper issues that really draw me to the practice of journaling, and it’s those deeper issues that keep me coming back again and again.
There’s nothing wrong with making it pretty
Sure, I like to doodle in my journal. I play around with prettying it up. I love to add stickers because I can add interest without relying on my limited drawing skills. I use a straightedge to draw lines. I use markers. I color code. Sometimes I trace images or try to free-hand images I see in coloring books. There are a lot of things I do to make my journal more fun and appealing to me.
I practice drawing, and I’ve created and evolved a number of layouts that I use to help organize my journal. I love those aspects of journaling and playing around with art. I love looking back over old journals and seeing how my creative skills have improved just with practice in my journal. This is so much fun for me, and it makes me happy.
But sometimes it goes too far
Your journal should not be a source of stress in your life. There have been times when I chose not to open my journal because the thought that I needed to create something beautiful was too stressful.
There have been times when I went to pick up my journal and then put it back down again because I didn’t have time to draw out an entire layout.
There have been times when I didn’t go to my journal because I didn’t have the right pen handy.
Whoa! Wait a minute!
My journal is not a place for perfection
My journal is my sandbox. It’s the place where I figure things out. Where I try things out. Where I practice. Where I learn and improve. It’s the place where I play.
My journal is my safe place.
If you have to be perfect in your safe place, it’s no longer a safe place.
A journal is what you make it
Ultimately, you write the rules for your own journal. If you want your journal to be a showcase, that’s awesome. But if you find yourself getting stressed out about your journal, or holding back, maybe it’s time to give yourself a break, and take a chance on letting it be ugly.
Each time I lose a friend to cancer, this question comes up. When Gwen asked this of me after our friend Carrie died, the question took on heavy new layers of texture. You see, Gwen understood that she was probably next.
I stammered around, trying to come up with an answer, but I had nothing.
Gwen died a year ago.
I still haven’t figured out an answer to her question.
I wanted to answer her question. I intended to. The question never left my mind, and I’ve been stewing over it since Carrie’s memorial service. I’ve been carrying around these deep thoughts and this half written post for a year and a half – reworking sentences and angles as I go about my day, but I still haven’t fully answered the question for myself, making it difficult to coherently discuss.
How do you keep going when your friends keep dying?
In truth, I was scared. I was afraid of examining those feelings to closely, of allowing myself to feel the pain deeply enough to understand it. But mostly, I was afraid of imperfection, of falling short and saying something that was less than what the situation, and Gwen, deserved.
It’s not lost on me that Gwen’s motto was “Be Brave.”
Then last month, over the course of three days, two more of my friends died from breast cancer. I had to dive back in, and ponder, again, the imponderable.
This is my reality.
In each of the six years since my own breast cancer diagnosis, I have lost several friends to cancer. I refuse to keep a tally, so I’m not sure of the exact number, although I could come up with it fairly easily if I decided to do so. I don’t want to reduce them to numbers; I don’t want to carry a number in my head that just keeps having to be updated. I remember smiles, the sound of their laughter. I remember their stories, their quirks, and I remember the way each of them enriched my life.
The interesting part of this is that for each death, the grief is different – because my relationships and my memories with each of these women were different. There is no pattern, no rhythm to sink into to ease my way through the recurring process of grieving my friends. I have to figure it out all over again each time. Even in this past month, my experience of grieving these two women who died so close to the same time has been conflicting. I find myself in a denial stage for one, and at rage for the other, or some other combination that will not allow my mind a moment’s rest.
How do you do it? How do you keep it together, and keep on keeping on, and keep showing up when your friends are dying?
The fact that she asked this question of me says a lot about Gwen. Here she was, knowing she was descending into the valley with no way to stop it, and her interest was in how it all impacts me.
I guess the first answer is that I don’t always keep it together. I fall apart all the time. And then I pick up the pieces, with the help of my friends, and try to figure out a way forward.
I don’t always keep on keeping on, either. Sometimes, I get stuck. I get stuck in the sadness, the futility, the unfairness. Sometimes, I just check out for a while. But again, my friends help me find my feet and get going.
I don’t show up for them as much as I show up because of them. I show up because I need my friends.
“Why?”
The other question I get all the time is, “Why?” Why do you surround yourself with women whom you know will die?
This question leaves me sputtering every time.
Everyone dies. Eventually.
These are women who understand me, who know better than anyone what I’m going through with the long-term physical and emotional effects of cancer and it’s treatment.
I do volunteer with an organization that supports young women with breast cancer, the Young Survival Coalition, but I’m there anyway. People may assume there’s some kind of nobility in this kind of work, but I show up because that’s where my friends are. That’s where I go to be understood – to participate in sharing this heavy load together.
I wanted to tell Gwen it’s not a burden. It sounds like a burden, and when I let it get to me, sometimes it feels like a burden, but really, it’s not.
It’s an honor.
It’s painful, and sometimes feels unbearably so, and dammit, it’s so unfair!
It’s a privilege to be a part of their lives, even when such a short time is left, and to have them be a part of my life – a part that stays with me forever.
How do I explain what this feels like?
I thought of comparing it to a horror film, unfolding unbearably slow, as your friends get picked off one by one. But there are no basements we shouldn’t have entered, no one went off by themselves. While myths abound regarding early detection saving lives (Gwen was diagnosed at stage 1), or ways cancer can be prevented or cured, the truth is that not one of us deserved this. Horror films have rules, and cancer doesn’t play by rules. You can do everything right, and still die.
I thought of the frequently referenced battles, and the band of brothers-in-arms. But battles suggest both sides are armed, that there is some give and take. There are rules in warfare as well – oft ignored perhaps, but they exist. A band of brothers in a battle can cover each other, there are opportunities for daring rescues. No such opportunities exist in cancer – Believe me, if we could do that, these amazing women would have saved every one of us by now.
Perhaps it could be explained better with a reference to the Golden Girls.
I get by with a little help from my friends
My grandmother lived 99 years, but the last two decades were arguably the happiest of her life, where her interactions with her close circle of friends were daily; they all lived in the same building. Grandma also experienced this phenomenon, where her dearest friends were dying at an accelerated rate. That’s to be expected in your nineties, but it doesn’t make it easy. It doesn’t mitigate the pain.
I watched this play out in her life for years before my own cancer diagnosis. The friend who didn’t show up one day, and the worried phone calls. A friend’s failing health, and the helpless feeling of not being able to make it better. When they go away towards the end, and the family takes over, restricting access. The death watch, when you know its down to days and hours, praying for them to hang on a little longer, and at the same time praying for them to let go. Simultaneously feeling relief and utter heartbreak when they pass. Wondering if you’ll be able to participate in the memorial service, or if you’ll even be invited? What will you say? How will you find the words?
For a while there, I had my own real life Golden Girls as I spent time with my grandmother and her friends. I watched them discuss food, politics, grandkids, art, and that cute new guy who just moved in on the 16th floor. I think about Grandma and her friends often as my experiences at times mirror what I watched her go through. The pain, yes, but mostly the amazing, fierce friendships. I marveled at her circle of friends, forged in fire, and sealed with brandy over a shared crossword puzzle.
They mourned their losses together – and laughed while remembering, together. There’s something to be said for the collective memory. To recall a friend with someone else magnifies the experience. You remember more. You share details. You learn more about that person and so your memory becomes richer, more robust. They live on through our memories.
There is a cliche that misery loves company, but like all cliches, it’s born of a kernel of truth. We grieve better together. The process is more efficient, more healing, when we do it in the company of others who share our pain.
Self-Care is crucial
There’s a phrase we use within our circle of cancer survivors; we say, “I’m going to Target.” It’s a way of letting each other know that we’re ok, but we’ve got to step back for a while, indulge in a little denial, and pretend like our only problems are regular things like tantrums in the candy aisle, running out of laundry detergent, and finding cool looking school clothes that don’t aggressively sexualize our pre-pubescent kids.
“Going to Target,” is a timeout. It’s artificial, because the reality of life with or after cancer is that it never really leaves us. There is the very real and looming threat of recurrence or progression. There are all the long term side effects of treatment and encompass a wide array of issues including heart damage, nerve damage, metabolic and digestive issues, and teams of specialists who don’t always agree on the best course for treating our competing complications. It’s a good problem to have, I suppose, considering it means I’m not dead yet. Cue the survivor guilt.
So how do we get by when our friends are dying?
The answer to your question, Gwen, is that we hold on to each other, we revel in memories, and we pop a bottle of champagne to toast your memory while flipping cancer the bird. We embrace those who are still with us, and carry forward the memories of those who have gone before us.
It’s not easy. It’s hard. It’s painful. It requires courage. And stamina.
It’s also achingly beautiful. And full of laughter.
I heard Carrie’s voice, saying, “You should do that,” pushing us forward as Katie and I built our journaling class. I hear her all the time, as I finally set to work making dreams I’ve held my whole life into a reality.
I hear Gwen saying, “Be brave,” even as I write this post. She taught me so much about courage. And I need courage by the bucketful. This kind of writing is terrifying.
I hear Michelle’s riotous laugh, and I remember to let loose. Life is meant to be enjoyed. Right up to the last minute.
Too many of my friends are dead, but they’re still with me. They still influence me, and because of that, they influence the world I live in as I move forward, carrying their light with me.
So how do you go on living when your friends are dying? You love harder, you embrace your friends, you remember together. And sometimes, you go to Target.
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