As artist are we aware enough of the value of doing nothing? It seems everyone I talk to is so busy and finding time in their head, not to mention their heart, to create is really quite difficult. Then again, we also need to ask ourselves are we limiting what we call creativity to one, single thing?
Another question we need to begin to ask ourselves is why are we creating anyway? Is it for ourselves or for others? Are we creating to seek attention or creating to fulfill our hearts?
If we loose our true creativity, we need to ask ourselves why? I began journaling daily again and realized that in my own case, it gets lost when I get too busy doing other things and do not make the time to do “nothing”. I need the down time to allow the creativity to flow so I include daily meditation in my self-care ritual. I have learned a lot and also found that having a variety of creative activities and a variety of ways to create make a huge difference in the power of my creative life.
A few self-care tools.
When I “create to sell” I find myself falling into the trap of what Jenny Odell (author of How to Do Nothing) calls “the attention economy”. The attention economy is what was sucking away my creativity and my mental health…constantly looking for what others thought, who was commenting on my social media posts, etc. I had to ask myself who gains from this because I clearly was not. Also, who looses? In this case, that was me but I am sure there were many others. Some people this works well but for me it didn’t so I needed to step back, slow down, observe my life and create for myself. This was important for my creativity and for my self-care.
Meditation is a big part of Kim’s self-care!
Of course, this kind of digging deep takes time, it takes patience, it takes reflection and I must admit for me, it takes courage.
Andrea comes from a different place in that she does so much caregiving around her elderly mother that she finds time a huge challenge. She writes:
Lentils getting creative as Andrea cooks.
Self care : sometimes I just don't have time to paint but my whole being needs me to paint. Then I cook. I have to cook anyway for my loved ones so I put all my creative energy into cooking tasty vegan meals. Here's today's menu: red cabbage sautéed with oignons, Indian spices like turmeric, cumin, black cumin, brown mustard seeds and smoked tofu plus an apple simmered in coconut milk for 45 minutes. We had rice and brown lentils on the side. The preparation of the red cabbage was extremely satisfying, on the inside it looks like a gorgeous drawing and it reminds me the spiral of the Fibonacci numbers 😃
Fibonacci Red Cabbage…completely fascinating and does cause one to pause as we do everyday tasks.
There are so many ways to practice self-care and they are as individual as we are. Most of us practice several forms of caring for ourselves. What about you? How are you taking care of yourself? How are you fueling your creativity? I really would love to begin a strong conversation here. It is one thing to write all of this down and share it with you but it is an entirely different thing to dig deep into it with you! I hope we can dig deep.
Collecting colorful ingredients is a part of the process.
As you can see, on this journey of blogging will be Andrea! This is going to be an Atelier 325 adventure and we are looking at what it means to Live The Artist Life. Thank you so much for joining in.