Tag: creativity

Artistic Palate Cleansing

MarlonLeave a comment

We all have our go to genres in terms of the art we appreciate. Some people prefer heady and cerebral crime thrillers, while others prefer action packed joyrides. And somewhere in between there are people like me who prefer emotionally gripping and schmaltzy interpersonal dramas. Couple that with the plethora of avenues to experience these kinds of stories—be it books, movies, or TV shows—and you’ve got yourself a vast world of creative works at your disposal, ready to be explored and enjoyed.

Whichever mediums and genres you prefer, you can always count on a piece of art to enrich your day. Whether you like to be immersed and give your mind something to chew on for a couple hours, or you simply want to turn your brain off and just enjoy simplistic artwork, it is important to note the role art plays in our lives and how deep it actually is regardless of the depth of the work itself.

It is in art that we find retreat, renewal, and rejuvenation, but if we stick to one genre and medium for too long, art can become more of a passive pastime activity instead of an active accelerator of time. And it is in that passage of time that determines whether we feel like we wasted it or truly enjoyed it as if it meant something in our brief time on Earth. That’s why, today, we will discuss the importance of cleansing your artistic palate so that we can get the most out of the art we consume in our lifetime.

Retreating Into Art

Life can sometimes feel like a dark and endless tunnel with only a glimmer of light barely shining at the end of it. We all know that we’re all going to die one day, but we live on the best we can in spite of this grueling knowledge, and it can get quite easy to fall into despair and wonder what this life is all for. Sometimes it’s worth pondering so we can make some decisions and move our lives in a proper direction while other times it can be paralyzing to even think of it so a lot of us spend our time trying to escape it.

Art can be one of the best escapes we can have to get our minds off this harsh reality of existence. Through art, we get a window into a different reality that fascinates us whether it’s an out of this world fantasy or one that closely resembles our contemporary world but with a sense of heightened drama. This escape can result in relaxation when the art we view can fill us with hope, or at the very least distract us from the humdrum of day to day life.

But what about the dark and cynical artwork out there? Perhaps this art isn’t what you retreat into, rather it’s a safe way to confront existence with its problems exaggerated and dramatized so it can open our eyes to the dangers and darkness of the world. And perhaps its in this staring back at the abyss that we gain the courage to press on despite of how uncomfortable it may be to watch something like Black Mirror or to read a Stephen King horror novel.

Retreating into art for either hope for life, or confrontation with it, can help enrich our lives by providing us positive possibilities and inoculation from its proclivity to give us tragedy and heartbreak.

Renewal From Art

You can experience a hopeful story to fill yourself with hope where you may be lacking or to strengthen the hope you already have. You can also experience a dark story to feel empathized with for your troubles or to simply contrast the joy you feel in your life. Any way you slice it, consuming any piece of art should leave you feeling renewed for life. You either have hope for life, or at least feel less alone knowing that the darkness within you isn’t yours alone. That it’s shared by others who have created something that conveys it.

But if a specific medium or genre of art no longer gives you that sense of renewal, it might be a sign that you need a palate cleanser. Personally for me, for the past decade or so, I’ve been really into heartfelt and schmaltzy dramas after quite a stint with dark and psychological thrillers. It’s indicative of where I was mentally and emotionally throughout my twenties. First, I needed the dark and twisted stuff to wrestle with my own dark and twisted thoughts, but I grew tired of contending with darkness all the time. But then at some point, I decided I wanted to develop more hope and love in my life and personal relationships, so I turned to watching and reading more heartfelt stories to have them model for me what sincerity with others could look like.

This past decade has been quite the thrill ride in terms of my personal growth, and it’s hard to say which came first; the chicken or the egg? Did I turn a new leaf and that’s what made me gravitate toward the schmaltzy stuff so I can relate to something more? Or did the schmaltzy stuff influence me in wanting to improve my emotional health and mindset? Perhaps they worked in tandem with each other, feeding into each other in this positive feedback loop that has resulted in me feeling a huge sense of renewal.

Revival By Art

Getting into a new genre can be quite rejuvenating as the past decade has been for me with the heartfelt emotional dramas. They have inspired me to be more vulnerable and sentimental toward the people I love and it has resulted in a much more fulfilling life than I could ever imagine. It has taught me that life imitating art doesn’t always have to be in the worst ways possible, and that despite being exaggerated and over dramatic, sometimes we do need vulnerable and uncomfortable conversations with our loved ones akin to how they might have it out on an episode of This is Us. For those not in the know, it was a prime time family drama infamous for making people cry and feel things in every episode, I highly suggest you check it out.

It’s actually in my rewatching of all six seasons of This is Us that made me think about this whole notion of Artistic Palate Cleansing. After a decade of deeply emotional stories for me to consume and have them influence me the way that they did, watching This is Us with all of its emotional intensity made me realize something; over the years I’ve had less and less need for art to punch me in the soul emotionally and force me to cry out a lot of my unexpressed grief with life and myself.

As I’ve grown from my twenties and am currently passing my mid-thirties now, I am grateful to be able to say how much of a better place I am in my life now thanks to loads and loads of therapy and support last year. Because of this, the schmaltzy stuff was no longer drawing anything out of me, and I noticed this as I was nearing the end of rewatching This is Us. The poignant moments in that show were still enjoyable to watch, but while a lot of them still hit pretty hard I found myself coming to the decision that I gotta change it up.

And so, as of late, I’ve kind of strayed away from consuming art that revolves around interpersonal drama and got into martial arts films and pro-wrestling. What a huge change up, right? Well that’s the point. I feel like I don’t need to feel anything too strongly from art and that I can just relax and enjoy it, simplistic as these artforms may be. Martial arts films and wrestling have their own level of depth that people don’t notice, but they are still fundamentally simple in nature.

This massive shift in genre preferences has rejuvenated my soul the same way it did a decade ago, or maybe even more so since this deep dive into the more touchy feely emotional and think pieces have increased my appreciation for all forms of art. From the dark and gritty, to the hopeful and emotional, and finally back to what my inner child loves in regards to stylized violence, these fluxuations in tastes have made my experiencing of art all the more meaningful whenever I’ve switched it up.

Roads to Art

There are countless of roads towards experiencing art that suits your tastes and even more so that can expand your tastes. Whatever you decide you’ll know in your heart what is right for you. Get out of your comfort zone and read a book or watch a show you would normally avoid. If not to get into it yourself, to at least see why other people may like it. Even if you fail to grasp what makes something entertaining, try to set aside your ego and not sneer at it and dismiss it as a waste of time. Instead, pride yourself for having opened your mind enough to try something new even if it’s not to your liking.

In the final analysis, the way we choose to experience art is how we choose to confront our own mortality. When an artist creates something, it is their way of immortalizing themselves by leaving something behind before they pass from our physical plane to the next. In experiencing their creations, we too can immortalize ourselves by being born into and dying out of preferences so that the process of acceptance and letting go can become a bit easier with time.

It’s something I’ve experienced time and time again with not only shifts in preferences, but in watching and reading my favourite stories come to an end, either in satisfying ways or dissatisfying ways. Hell, I’d even argue anything with an abrupt ending has helped me come to terms with the end of life because if a show gets cancelled before it gets a chance to wrap itself up, it’s kind of like the lives of some unfortunate souls that pass too soon. They were all in the middle of their lives still with much left to do and say, and like our favourite TV characters that belong to a show that gets cancelled before it gets a chance at having a proper finale, we are stuck with wondering what could have been or simply accepting that although the ride is over, at least the memories remain.

The Beauty of Imperfection

MarlonLeave a comment

Many artists out there contend with the self doubt and imposter syndrome that they are not good enough to create anything. Other artists skew toward the opposite extreme and think their unreleased work—or released but poorly received work—is just so much better than what’s popular. Whichever way you slice it, art is our attempt at capturing perfection through the execution of our skills and imagination.

But what happens with our skills don’t match up with our imagination? I’ve heard some would-be musicians say they want to make music, but they could never write anything that sounds as good as what they hear in their heads. Or there’s even novelists, some of which I worked with back in my Writing Coaching days, that have fantastic story ideas mapped out in their heads, but have never put pen to paper. What hurt me more were the times I’d help create a mind map of their novels and they’d still refuse to put that organized visualization of their story into manuscript form.

It all comes to self worth and self perception when an artist is either too doubtful of themselves or overly confident about their abilities, that they forget that creating anything of value comes from a place of humility, respect, and authenticity as I’ve outlined before. So today we’re going to look at the top three things that should encourage you get started on that project you’ve only dreamed of:

1. So Many Fundamentally Flawed Works Are Published and Produced All the Time
2. Let That Inspire You to Risk Doing the Same
3. Doing Something Badly is Better Than Not Doing it at All

The World is Full of Flawed Work

You’ve probably heard your friends, online critics, or even your own mentors trash talk a piece of art out there in the world. In fact, that’s usually what we’re bombarded with most of the time; people being discontent with the state of art and literature as opposed to the rare few people out there who have the guts to be earnest with their love for art.

Think of infamous things like the Twilight Saga or basically reality TV (if you can even call that art), and you’ll start to see that the world is full of flawed artwork. Now you can easily pick them apart and say how much better they could be, especially if you’re well educated in your field of creativity, but the real beauty lies in trying to understand why it strikes a chord with some people.

While there are some pieces of art out there that are well known, but not popular at all, and definitely not well received at all, there are super mainstream things that everyone accepts as crap, but it’s loved anyway. Once again, case in point, The Twilight Saga. I remember in my writing class my teacher actually brought Twilight to dissect as it was an easy mark to display bad writing.

But as she was picking it apart for the low hanging fruit that it was, she was also surprised by and remarked on the passages of the book that were actually well written. This got me to thinking; is the book really all that bad or is hating it just a fad as much as it is for middle aged housewives and teenage girls alike to be in love with this romantic violent vampire story?

Upon reading it myself and watching the movie adaptation, I came to the conclusion that the answer is yes to both questions. It wasn’t really all that good as people hyped it up to be, nor was it really as bad as people trashed it to be, but I could see why they might see it that way. Either way, it doesn’t really matter because no matter what the critics say, Stephanie Meyer made a goddamn killing off this series and I’m sure she’s laying in bed at night, wiping her tears with $100 bills because some asshole on the internet said her book sucked.

Even putting money aside as a possible measurement for an artwork’s success and value, the very fact that she wrote these books is already a feat in its own. Writing a novel to completion is hard work. Trust me, I’ve done it, and I’ve yet to publish anything. So while I’m proud that I’ve completed several drafts of several different novels by now which is more than a lot of would-be writers can say, I’m still stumped by the onslaught of other books out there that were published by the sheet courage and determination by those authors. Stephanie Meyer or otherwise.

Let That Inspire You to Risk Doing the Same

So for every piece of got artwork out there, there’s thousands more that suck, but nonetheless they’re out there in the world for anyone to engage in. Crappy movies, shitty books, poorly produced TV shows, etc. This alone should inspire you to get your own work done and do away with what the critics might say. While every creator is different and handles criticism differently, the fact remains that their work is out there whether people like it or not.

In fact, people not liking your work is a guarantee. I’ve had people tell me straight up that something I made was boring and yes that was a huge punch to my confidence. But you know what? I shrugged it off and continued making stuff anyway.

Why? Because unless a critic gives me a valuable suggestion on how to improve my work, then I usually discount what they have to say because maybe what I make just doesn’t resonate with them, and that’s fine too.

If someone does give you useful feedback, it’s worthwhile thinking about and considering. Remember, it’s the mark of an intelligent person to entertain an idea without agreeing to it. This is why it’s valuable to join a critique group or get a mentor because having that outside perspective can really give you perspective on how you can improve.

But whether you take their criticisms to heart or not, what matters is that you create regardless of how you think it’s gonna be received. Of course we prefer people to praise us to high heavens, but you shouldn’t create anything to seek that kind of external validation. Nor should you not create due to the fear of being criticized because that just comes with the territory.

Doing Something Badly is Better Than Not Doing it at All

You can’t call yourself a creator if you don’t create. Even if you create badly, it’s better than being someone who is all talk and no walk. As I’ve harped on preators before, you will already be ahead of the curve if you just decide to work on something that is the expression of your purpose. Whether you express yourself through music or literature, it’s important to get that out of your system rather than letting be an anxiety that builds up over time.

Especially when there’s already so much artwork out there that gets scrutinized from now until kingdom come. Don’t let that stop you. In the wise words of Mr. Rogers:

Whether you’re a hobby artist or a professional one, don’t ever let the quality of your work prevent you from enjoying the process of creating it in the first place. If quality is what you strive for, there are tremendous resources out there that can help you get to the skill level you want to get at. It takes a lot of hard work and patience, and we will talk more about how to develop that patience in a future post!

Using Creative Anxiety to Your Advantage

MarlonLeave a comment

A lot of creative people are often intimidated by the magnitude of their own work. Contending with perfectionism, self doubt, and the overall difficulty of creating anything of value can prevent many would-be geniuses from ever expressing themselves, thus disallowing anyone to ever bask in the beauty of their work or even the creator granting themselves the glory of the act of creating in the first place.

I’ve noticed really creative people are very anxious a lot of the time, especially when they haven’t created for a while. It gives them anxiety how hard it is to get back into something they had long since abandoned, and then it feeds into the cycle of avoiding it even more and building the anxiety even more and more as well.

Today, I’m going to provide some advice that I’ve been reluctantly, but fruitfully taking myself, and I hope that despite of how hard it sounds to do, I hope you try it on and share your experience with me. The top three things anxious creators need to learn are:

  1. Anxiety is Unspent Energy
  2. The Results of Releasing That Energy
  3. How to Recharge and Harness That Energy

Anxiety is Unspent Energy

Creators are often anxious because the creative project that nags at them at the back of their heads is simply built up energy that is being left unspent. It’s not negative, per se, but it can definitely weight on you the longer you procrastinate on something you know that’s in you to express. Creators have something to express through their work and not allowing themselves the privilege can lead to a whole lot of anxiety.

It’s easier said than done, but you really just gotta go do damn the thing in order to spend that anxious energy wisely. Otherwise, the months and years will go by and maybe from time to time people will ask you “how’s that book coming along?” and you’ll be hard pressed to come up with a better excuse than the one you gave them five years ago as to why you still haven’t published it, let alone began writing it in the first place.

If this sounds like you, I highly suggest you get over yourself and the prospect of what others think, and just get to work on the thing you know you need to do. There’s a locked up emotion in you, be it anger, sadness, or even joy, and not expressing any of that emotion through your art is gonna lead to a psychological blockage until you get it done.

As creators, we generate themes and ideas in our hearts and minds all the time, and while it may not be possible for everyone to create an endless library of work that expresses every last theme and idea they want to express, it’s the very act of trying to do so that will lead to a much more fulfilling creative life than it would be to just not challenge yourself at all.

And that’s what we really need. We’re already making things hard for ourselves by anxiously thinking about that thing we know we need to be creating, so you might as well lean in to that difficulty by allowing yourself the privilege of being challenged by your own work. Creative work is not easy and it is not always fun, but believe me when I say it’s always a damn good time once you get to the other side of it.

The Results of Releasing That Energy

Another thing creators tend to contend with is simply feeling relief rather than pride upon completing a project. If you’ve turned your novel, painting, or song into something you “just need to get done,” then you’ve turned it into a chore, and it’s definitely no accident that chore rhymes with bore. Art can be difficult, but it should never be boring.

The frustration is normal because you are challenging yourself to create something with your full potential tapped into it, and with each passing project, you should be stretching your growth-edge further and further so that you can continue the ongoing growing pains that come with creating art. But just because it’s frustrating and isn’t always as easy, fun, and free flowing as it can be when you’re randomly motivated, it doesn’t mean it should be boring.

I’ve recently had the experience of choosing to “phone it in” with the fifth draft of It Starts at Home. The first three acts of the book, I wrote valiantly and with joy, but the last two acts, I started to just rush through it and wanted it over and done with rather than taking my time to enjoy the process. While the novel is technically done, it’s not at the quality I know that it deserves and the it’s certainly not at the quality that I could personally be happy with. Especially considering the 10th year anniversary of that novel’s conception will be in just a few months as of writing this blog post.

No matter how frustrating and elongated the creation process is, we must never disparage its place in our lives, and always remember what we’re trying to express through it, as well as honouring what it’s trying to teach us. Just because we come into a project with the intention to potentially teach others about a revelation we may have had, it doesn’t mean the project won’t surprise you in its creation process and give you something even more profound than whatever you intend to provide to your audience.

So in releasing that energy, remember to honour your art for what it is and not resent it for the difficulty it may give you. And you certainly don’t want to resent it for not garnering the views, likes, or even profit it fails to deliver because that’s kinda like having children you hate. Sure, they turned out crappy and no one likes them, but whose fault is that? It’s your responsibility to do the best you can with the knowledge you have, and have the trust and faith that no matter what missteps you may have taken along the way, that you’ll always have the opportunity to do better next time.

How to Recharge and Harness Creative Energy

Now here comes the slightly controversial part. When it’s all said and done, give yourself a huge break and turn your brain off a little bit. We’re not built for constant and consistent conscious use of our mental cognition. While I think a lot of brain fog can and will clear once we do the things we often procrastinate on, especially by engaging in mindless activities like scrolling through social media, it is actually that kind of mindless activity that can allow us to recharge after giving an artistic project our all.

Just don’t mess with the order, of course.

A lot of creative people are tempted to consume other art or even turn their brains off before they decide to sit down and right. Hell, before I wrote this blog post, I procrastinated for an entire hour before I sat down and decided it was time to write for the next four hours in the afternoon. What did I do? I watched a bunch of YouTube videos, almost all of which I didn’t even watch into completion. My excuse? I need to wake my brain up.

But writing this blog post is actually part of a big experiment that I’ve been trying out on myself and the hypothesis seems to be correct:

If you suffer from brain fog and anxiety, challenging yourself to do difficult things can actually clear all of that away, if not a huge portion of it. Before I decided to write today, I spent a couple hours debating myself over whether I even should write today. “I’m tired, though,” I rationed to myself. “I didn’t enjoy my weekend enough, so why not one more day?”

Because then I would have lost the energy I had today to write in my journal, to write this blog post, and write a script for a short film!

For the longest time, I thought that playing video games and watching movies felt better after getting some work done because I earned it by being productive. But that’s not what it’s really about. It has nothing to do with any moral licensing and earning anything, rather it’s more of a matter of mental activation.

I’m starting to realize lately that video games and movies are more enjoyable after getting some work done because writing demands all of my mental faculties and so I am forced to turn my brain on in doing so. Even if it feels like a drag the first few minutes, once I get going, I really get going. Video games and movies are passive activities, and while you do require some cognition and input for video games, it’s still reacting to spoon-fed stimuli, whereas creating a piece of art requires your full cognitive attention.

The brain wants to work in full activation. It needs to be depleted before being open to replenishment through entertainment.

CONCLUSION

If you’re a creative person with a whole lot of anxiety, just remember life is too short to leave your emotions unexpressed. Answer the project that calls to you so that you’re in a calm and civil conversation with it instead of having it become the thing that screams for your attention at the back of your mind for days, weeks, months, or even years on end.

Once you get to it, remember to honour it for its value to not only your potential audience, but to you as the creator having the intimate experience of being challenged by it and conquering that challenge by honing in on all your training and built up skill you intend to display through it. Chores turn into bores, so remember to enjoy the process even when it gets difficult.

And finally, allow yourself some passive consumption of art, social media, or anything else to give your brain the rest it needs. In a future post I’ll talk about the importance of active recreation, but for now bask in the permission to waste some time away. Not because you’ve “earned” it, but because you’ll just be giving your brain the variety and novelty it needs in shifts between the active and passive use of it.

The Top 4 R’s Creators Need to Know Retiring

MarlonLeave a comment

As outlined in a previous post, every creative project has its cycle that kind of resembles a marriage. There’s a honeymoon phase where everything is fresh, fun, and exciting. Then when things start to settle down happily ever after is only possible through commitment. Yet, despite the commitment creators put into their work, sometimes we reach a point where we might have to divorce ourselves from a project before it can be completed.

We all hope that we get to see our creative projects to the very end. For every completed work of art out there—published novels, movies with theatrical releases, music that the whole world can listen to etc.—there are probably thousands of other works that go left unfinished each day. This could be due to a number of factors like budget constraints, creators being swallowed by resistance, or in some unfortunate cases, death.

Because tomorrow is not a guarantee for any of us, we must try to do as much as humanly possible, each day, to see our vision come to life. Whether we get to the end of the project or not, it’s important to give it our all each day so that God forbid it’s our last, we would have had a lot to show for it rather than dying with the regret over how much we procrastinated. This may sound a little too morbid, and edging on the toxic productivity side, but I assure there are many ways around burning out from keeping this in mind, while also being able to create as boldly as we can each day.

Today we will cover The Top 3 R’s Creators Need to Know Before Retiring:

  1. Resilience
  2. Reward
  3. Reflection
  4. Recovery

Resilience

We often talk about the resistance that comes with creativity here on Your Write to Live. The resistance that our ego feeds us by filling our heads with doubt, perfectionism, and maybe some full on self loathing, which will all prevent us from sitting down and doing the work that is important to us. The positive antithesis to this resistance is resilience, which is your ability to withstand boredom, frustration, and distractions.

When a creative project starts to wear you down making you feel bored and/or frustrated, you need to develop the resilience to push through that resistance. If you are under the obligation to complete a project for a paying client and you have hard deadlines to meet, this is just an unfortunate blow to your energy levels that you need to take to see it to the end. But if you’re a hobby creator, there’s a bit more leeway to pace yourself and reduce the amount of work you do each day, but in no way should you quit when revelations in your work just might be on the other side of resilience.

When we begin to feel bored and/or frustrated by our creative projects, it is also easy to get distracted by unimportant things and end up using them as excuses for our early retirement for the day. Or maybe even for life if we let it get that bad. That means reducing your use of social media, not playing as many video games as you usually do, and most importantly resisting the urge to reward yourself too prematurely.

Reward


While it is important to resist the urge to reward yourself too prematurely, it is still important that you do reward yourself for your efforts. This can look like many different things based on your preferences, but personally for me, after a hard day of work I like to reward myself by playing video games or watching a movie. If I’ve engaged my brain enough in cognitively active work, it’s nice to finally sit back and engage it more passively with entertainment.

I’ve said before that the real reason why we can’t relax and enjoy things unless we’ve done difficult things is because of brain activity more than it has anything to do with our moral standing. To recap, it’s not about chastising yourself for not being productive, and that you don’t deserve to reward yourself if you haven’t been creating, rather it’s about having turned your brain on enough and emptied it out of its potential content before soaking in someone else’s artwork that makes entertainment more enjoyable.

Furthermore, as good as these post-work-session rewards may be, you must also remember to perceive your work as the ultimate reward to yourself. To your soul. You’re expressing something from every fiber of your being whenever you decide to engage your creativity, and that’s serious business, so give it the respect that it deserves by giving it your full attention.

Reflection

After you’ve created as much as you could for the day and rewarded yourself accordingly, then it’s time to reflect on the day. Think about all the hardship you may have faced during your creative hours and assess yourself as honestly as possible. Were there moments where you were just phoning it in because resistance was creeping up? Was the reward proportionate to the amount of the work you did or was it too excessive? And was the reward in any way valuable and appropriate to your purpose?

Ask yourself these questions and more so that for the next day, you know how to do better. Every day we create something, we learn a little bit more about ourselves. Sometimes it’s about how we handle the process itself in regards to how patient we might be with ourselves when faced with difficulty. Or sometimes our own work that’s meant to touch the souls of others ends up touching our own and opening our eyes to something about ourselves in ways that were not possible had we not took on the project in the first place.

If you’ve been around Your Write to Live for a while you know this, but if you’re new here I must state that that’s what we’re all about here: growth through daily milestones. So long as your growing in any amount of increments you’re capable of, small and large alike, that’s all that matters. So reflect on how you can grow from today’s work and allow these lessons to carry you for the next day and beyond.

Recovery

After everything is said and done then it’s time for some rest and recovery. I know I sounded morbid earlier saying how we don’t have much time on this Earth, so you better create as much as you can each day or it’s a waste, but rest and recovery is just as important as the consistent creativity we aim to strive for when it’s feasible and possible. You just have to be honest and realistic about where you’re at physically, mentally, and chronologically in terms of other life responsibilities.

It’s all about meeting a healthy balance between hard work and rest, never straying too excessively on one side for the sake of the other. Even if you’re under a strict deadline, it’s never worth your physical health to get something done, or you will literally put the dead in deadline. Likewise, if you’re always in rest and recovery mode when you’re more than perfectly capable to get back to work, you might die a little on the inside at the level of your soul. You’re a creator. You’re meant to create. Not doing so leaves with you a lot of unexpressed emotion and potential.

Take as much time as you need and no more and no less. For instance, as of writing this blog post, I have gone six straight weeks consistently writing in my journal, writing for this blog, and working on my passion project every single week day almost without fail. I may have missed one of these things on some days, but for the most part I’ve remained consistent. I can feel myself feeling tired from all the effort I put into stifling my resistance, so I know that next week or two weeks from now, it would be wise to either slow it down considerably or take a week long break to recharge.

As should you if you’ve done all you could to stifle your own resistance.

Resisting Rejuvenation

MarlonLeave a comment

For as long as I can remember, I have contended with resistance to expressing my own creativity. This has ranged from writing novels, writing music, and editing videos. I often question how these things I find so enjoyable can also become so difficult to jump back into, especially when it gets to the point where I constantly have to remind myself how good it feels to get into the flow state because I can’t seem to as quickly as I once did when I first started a project.

Couple that with life’s little curveballs and it could be a recipe for disaster. Competing for our attention, there’s work, maintaining an active social life, and other responsibilities that seem to get in the way of our creative self expression. When all of these curveballs are successfully caught, evaded, or even if they end up hitting us in the face, it can seem pretty easy to feel like we just don’t have any energy left to work on any of our creative projects.

The crazier thing is that even when you do have a full day, week, or even a month to do whatever you want, resistance can still creep up on you. I’ve certainly experienced this throughout my life where I’ve had a significant amount of downtime from working, while all these creative projects I know I want to do work on fell by the wayside. Despite remembering the joy these projects brought me, I rationalized that I deserve to sit around all day like a potato, binge watching stuff on Netflix and YouTube, playing the hell out of video games, and then dozing off in the middle of the day when all entertainment options have been exhausted.

If you can relate to this, then I’ve got the solution for you, and it’s actually quite simple. It may seem counterintuitive and pretty obvious in hindsight, but what we must do in the heat of resistance is push through it and get to work anyway.

Even when you’re not feeling it, nay, especially when you’re not feeling it.

Here’s why:

Creativity is Our Life Blood

If you are a creative person with a ton of ideas, with little to no execution of said ideas, you know very well how excruciating it may be to “not have the time” or “not have the energy” to create something. All the while your other creative friends and family members, along with other creatives who have their work put out into the world, are pumping out piece after piece, and you’re stuck staring at a blank page or canvas.

Or maybe you’re not even at that stage, and instead choose to distract yourself with TV and video games, but no matter how hard you try to pay attention to your distraction, the back of your mind is nagging you about that thing you know you should be working on. That project you tell all your friends and family about with the utmost gusto like it would be the coolest thing put out into the world, but you’ve yet to put pen to paper.

Something I learned recently is that creativity actually fuels us, not drain us. You may feel mental and/or physical fatigue from the stresses of life, but actually starting a project can wake your soul back up and bring you back to life. Creative people die inside when they’re not creating because all of these ideas get locked up inside our minds and the overwhelm of having things left unexpressed brings about a ton of anxiety.

The funny thing about anxiety is that it’s really just a bunch of unspent energy. At the psychological and emotional level, anxiety is all about fearing death and being too afraid to act in the face of it. Yes, there’s a sense of possible death when we dare to do something creative because if you plan to put your work out there you risk getting criticized and having said criticism make your work feel like a waste of time. It would hurt to admit your ego was right, that you’re not that very good at the thing you do.

Or if you never plan to put your work out there to share with the world because you’re more of a solitary hobbyist, you can still run up against that perfectionism and potential fear of death. You may be doing it just to entertain yourself, but being your own worst critic and hardest fan to please, what would it say about you if you can’t even entertain yourself?

All these anxieties and more are there because creating art is a risk for the reasons above and more. While valid, you shouldn’t let them stop you from simply expressing the depths of your soul in whatever form you choose.

At the physiological level, anxiety and excitement are exactly the same. That surge of adrenaline coursing through our bodies that makes our hearts race? That’s our body’s way of readying itself for action, and if that action isn’t taken, that energy stays locked up inside and eats away at you.

It’s pretty much the same thing as wanting to confess your love for someone. The longer you keep it in, the harder it becomes to take the next opportunity to do so, all the while just feeling the pain of having something meaningful to you left unexpressed. Art is the exact same way, except it’s you confessing your love for yourself, and by extension, your love for the world and expressing how you see it so others can see it the way that you do.

This is why it is of utmost importance that if you do have a creative project constantly brewing in the back of your mind, that you get to it as soon as you have the time. In fact, I’d say you should make the time. It’s important. It’s in your soul to express it, so instead of creating excuses as to why you can’t or shouldn’t do it, just create the thing to begin with.

Free Yourself From Your Ego

Even when you have “good reasons” as to why you shouldn’t start that project, what it really comes down to is your ego getting control over you. It’s afraid that it’ll die once you start working on something, and so it tells you you’re not good enough to start yet, that you’re not ready, and no one is going to care about what you create, so why bother, right?

If these excuses sound familiar, then it’s time you recognize your ego for what it is and learn how to fight back. If you’ve ever been in a flow state while creating something, you know very well how good that can feel. Time seems to fly by and all your worries go away.

That’s the death of the ego.

The ego wants to stay alive by robbing you of the present moment because all it wants you to do is think about your past failures and regrets, and all the fears you have about the future. Creativity, on the other hand, brings you straight to the present and converts your mind’s proclivity to obsess over the past and future into a wonderful tool.

If you’re writing a novel, then you start to think about what has happened in the story so far and use that to inform the current scene you’re writing, and that’s a useful function of our ability to recall the past. And since novels aim to have an end goal in mind, you also start to think about what needs to happen next as a natural consequence to what you just wrote, and that’s a useful function of our ability to think about the future.

Life only happens in The Now, the present moment. When you experienced the past, that was the form The Now took, and when the future comes, it only happens in The Now as well. This is all we ever have and then seemingly in an instant, it’s gone. So why waste time worrying about the things that have past and things that may yet to be when you can seize the moment and create something that immortalizes your soul for eternity?

How to Achieve Immortality

If it’s the fear of death that stops us from creating, perhaps it’s the very act of creation where we achieve immortality. When you stop to really think about it, all of the artists that have come before us still live on in their work.

Jimi Hendrix’s physical body may be dead, but his spirit lives on in the music he bestowed upon the world. Those tasty guitar licks and funky vocals of his are the encapsulation of his soul at certain points in time of his life. Every studio track and live performance is a record of not only his existence that we can experience from now until eternity, but also the deepest depths of his soul with what he expressed through his music.

You may or may not reach the level of stardom Jimi Hendrix has, but one thing is for certain; if you too create something that is the genuine expression of your being, a piece of your soul will live on in that artwork for all time. Assuming, of course, that you have a means to preserve it and ensure that it remains preserved long after your physical being fades away.

Just having anything created is one step closer to immortality. If you’ve got a painting, a document containing your novel, or a sound file containing your music, that is a piece of your soul you’ve captured for any potential audiences to experience long after you’re gone.

Whether you do it for yourself and/or for the world, that is how immortality can be achieved. To what degree do you want others to remember you by is completely up to you and that’s why there are many services out there that provide ways in which your work can be shared and preserved.

So next time you’re not “feeling it,” take a moment to stop and think. If we’re all destined to be dust one day, why not express what big emotions we have in the very little time that we have?