I see you.
Your head is pounding, like waves crashing into the shore, before dragging you back out again into the ocean, the air bubbles fizzing in the sand…a moment of calm, the sun dappling the thin sheet of water that is left on the soft mouldable beach; before the rolling thundering tsunami slams you back to where you began, you cannot breathe, you do not know where is up and where is down. This is a beach that anyone who spends a lot of time in the creative realm will know all too well, and it is often a deserted one, that no-one else knows how to get to, they don’t know the overgrown dirt track that asks you to walk barefoot on scorching black sand, they don’t know the sharp sandstone caves you must crawl through to get to this beautiful ..sometimes painfully beautiful place.
The balancing act of life, making money to not only get by and support a family but to fund our art, and just the drone of what feels like never ending pointless tasks assigned to the modern person, can feel very heavy, and by the time we can carve out a moment to materialise and alchemize the works we have been fantasizing about all day while doing said pointless tasks, we are already running on the fumes of an oily rag.
So those moments we dreamed of all day end up being used for trying to re-energize our tired, but also angst-ridden body and mind. I feel like I go in cycles, sometimes I can push through the fatigue and I will literally run around trying to fit a good two days metalsmithing into six hours, and while I am capable of doing that, I will pay the price after a few weeks or even months of creating in this way. That burn out is real! and it has taken me a lot of letting go, to be able to shift this behaviour born out of a feeling that there is just not enough time left for what really matters…after all these pointless tasks I keep mentioning. I think this is difficult for everyone living in this way, I mean, when you really pull that veil down, of course it is hard to live in a way that is a totally constructed unnatural game, where very few people are winning players. But I think it is especially hard for artists.
I don’t have a list of tips to be more productive or how to hustle, I am not about that. But what I do want to tell you is this. If you feel that pounding of the ocean in your head, have a drink of water, make sure to eat something. If you still feel the push and pull, the sharks biting at your ankles so much you cannot focus because your thoughts are getting dragged around by the thrashing, do you know what I am talking about? Don’t answer…I know you do. That space where so many mistakes are made, mistakes you don’t normally make. Just stop, because you know what they say, you can’t keep flogging a dead horse, and in this case the horse is you.
use the time to clean your space, then have a shower, and call it a day. If you still have the creative urge but materialising it still going all wrong, read those books that inspire you, draw out those designs in detail and write a list of exactly how you are going to execute them. Coming back fresh and inspired to a clean space with a clear idea of execution is a real treat!
Because creating is not linear, and we need rest.
We all need rest.
