My creativity ebbs and flows. It dips and rises in sync with the seasons of my life. When I feel like I am being pushed forward relentlessly, my urge to make things simply disappears. I cannot find the energy to reflect when I am focused on living, on finding my way out, or through. I'm not talking about periods of depression; I'm talking about the outward-facing or exhausted dark times of the soul. Times when maybe some part of you is being forged, and you cannot stop to describe it. The days (weeks, months...) afterward can be even worse for my productivity. Numb and quiet days spent staring at my phone, or consuming art instead of making it. Although I should be used to them, times without creativity still scare me. That never goes away. It always feels as if they will never end. Is that it, I ask myself? Will my ability to bring new ideas into the world just run out some day? Has it run out already? Am I going to feel bored forever, unable to shift? You never get used to it. It is hard to have faith.
Everyone is different, but here are some things that help me when I get stuck like this. Re-reading the chapter on creativity in Women Who Run With The Wolves. Designing a playlist of brand new music for inspiration. Remembering that this has happened before, and will happen again. Plenty of time spent alone, drinking coffee. Forcing myself to move, as difficult and unnatural as it feels, pick up my camera, my notebook, my laptop, whatever, and make something. Asking myself as gently as possible to remember and to recreate the parts that hurt. Come to terms with the fact that whatever you make will be shit. The finished result is not the point - the point is to unblock yourself. I am clearing out my creative drain. I don't need to have something for Instagram at the end of it. It doesn't have to feel good.
Limiting my time on social media also really helps me. The other day I went out and bought a pin-board, and some cute rose gold pins from Paperchase. It just felt like something I wanted to do, and I'm glad I did. It's provided a physical space where I can work on visual ideas quickly with my hands, without picking up my phone and falling into a vortex. I haven't added a page to my kink scrapbook in a long time, even though I have more than enough raw material to draw from. I'm planning to make a series of works inspired by my last stint as a stripper, and for that, I know I will need all my skills warmed-up and ready to go. I also want to do a few pages on magic and witchcraft. The pin-board is practice space, an experimentation and reminder. I'm taking more pictures, writing more posts, and I have a clear vision of my autumn content. Bringing it all into the world has already begun, but for me creativity is a wave that I have to ride, as I wait patiently for it to reach its peak. I have a tendency to burn myself out faster than I need to, and speed up the repetition of the cycle. As I grow older, I want to learn to accept the waves however they crash, and learn to harness them better when they come. For they will come.
