My relationship to being creative has always been sort of rocky. A constant battle of wanting to just allow it to come and go as it pleases, but also having the desire to create “consistently.”
Sometimes it feels forced and that leaves me feeling almost imposter-like. Shouldn’t this be easy? Shouldn’t this come naturally? Sure. But, creative energy – every time you feel it – is never the same twice.
It’s a spark with its own character and composition each time it arrives to you. It can’t be replicated or industrialized. There’s no manual for it. No recipe to rinse and repeat either. It simply begins to exist within you as a feeling or a soft light that you give awareness to, respond to, and mold until the energy slowly dissipates and transfers to whatever you made with it. That’s creativity.
A moment in time that moved you.
You can’t put it in a bottle and save it for later. It can’t be summonsed and dismissed whenever you please. It’s a click moment, a deep breath, a second of unity, a lightbulb in your mind. It’s a natural process. And of course, like everything natural and beautiful, we’ve commodified it in the name of capitalism. But fuck it, if it allows you peace in a world built to overstimulate you, then so be it. If you have a creative job, and you feel burnt then read this.
But be kind to yourself. Creativity arrives to you. It will always come back. Relax. The turmoil in returning from a creative hiatus is that we expect the same creative energy to return again in the same form as it did before. No.
If you’re struggling to feel creative, you have to return to the spaces that inspire you (music, cooking, movement, bookstores, nature, your faith, your tribes). You need to question more, conclude less. Move slower, breath deeper. I know this is sounding really tree hugging, but I’m so serious.
Don’t allow your creativity to be dictated and motivated by external validation and algorithmic metrics. It’s not something you force. Force (not to be confused with tension/friction which are great motives for creativity) is the antithesis of creation. Flow is the mother of it.
When you’re out there experiencing life, you’re responding to the world. You’re interacting with it.You make space for thinking. Then creativity arrives as a byproduct. You make space for thought, you have a thought, you create something. It’s actually the most simple system ever.
“But Keyla my thinking is blocked”
Well because you’ve been scrolling on socials for 2 hours and looking at a rectangular box all day. Mindfulness coaches and gurus have been saying this for YEARS and we still think we know a better solution to mind blocks. Plan time to be without technology, read a damn book, and actually sit and think for more than 2 minutes.
Tune your mind to remember that doing for the sake of existing is different than for the sake of performance or demonstration. When you have an idea, spend some time with it alone before sharing online. Enjoy it as a piece of art you made for you, not for show. When you’re doing only for the sake for show, after a while it’s repetitive, unsustainable, and stale. When you’re out there in the world, less thinking space about how you’re being perceived, and more presence in the experience. This creates room for responding to your environment. You do this for you, not for them.
The overall message is that if you’re in a creative block and attempting to return from a hiatus, the trick is to spend intentional time alone, do something that brings you joy, and be with people who make you feel warm and protected. The feelings that then arise are surely to inspire creative energy to return to you.
