It’s never actually a good time to do creative things, have you noticed this?
There’s always something else, something more pressing.
For me, it’s the mundane things that make my world run smoothly.
The grocery shopping for dinner, the laundry to be folded, the crumbs to be swept off the floor.
These are all satisfying tasks. Things crossed off the to-do list. I find comfort in completing them and having the clockwork of my life run smoothly.
And yet.
It’s a catch-22 because if I do not have the details of my life managed, if things are chaotic and disorganized, my stress level rises, rises, rises and I cannot create.
However, if I spend all my time doing the mundane work and work until the wee hours, I cannot create.
That’s the narrative that I sometimes believe.
It’s convenient because then I’m somehow absolved of doing the work of creation. I’m too busy, you see. I don’t have time. I’m not feeling inspired. I don’t have the ideas, the writing isn’t flowing.
It’s a bunch of nonsense, I’m sorry to say.
Sorry not sorry.
Because the work of creation is a holy task. It’s a task that so many of us avoid, put off, tell ourselves that we cannot do. We are not organized enough. We are not good enough. We are not experienced enough. We are not enough.
How do we ever expect to be enough if we are not even trying?
And I know that trying is scary, oh do I know.
Putting yourself out there, taking the innermost feelings and fledgling expressions and displaying it for potential rejection is horrible, so much easier to do the laundry and the shopping and the sweeping and let the thoughts, the words, the music languish in the land of “another time” and “when I have time.”
If we, the creative forces of the world, do not make time, we will not find the time. There is always something else to watch, to read, to organize, to sleep through. And those things are also good and have their time and place.
But the laundry can wait. Dinner can wait (you can always serve cereal, it’s a totally valid option). Paperwork can wait.
Take just twenty minutes, a half hour. Set a timer. Whatever it takes. Make the effort. Take the time. Life is too short to not create.