#071322: Getting lost in creative pursuit

Thoughts on wanting to write

There are hundreds of dated entries in my notes app. They are ideas and essays that I have been writing and ultimately holding but not completely deleting because I can’t discern if they’re any good. What I mean by this really is whether they’re worth making public — whether they’re worth the risk of exposing.

It is kind of disheartening to hear myself say this — historically I have prided myself on the relentlessness with which I have often pushed myself to take an emotional risk, like laying out my own vulnerability. For the past year or maybe even longer though, every time I sit down to write or make sense of a knotty feeling (I usually feel it before I can understand it), this cynical linebacker who sounds a lot like me intercepts and tells me to quit. Sometimes I can push through and make something meaningful but often the linebacker takes over completely and I retreat inwards, allowing any expression of creative work to explode only through analyses of towels or what makes a shirt or pair of shorts or a kind of a bag good. And I love doing that too, but lately I’m yearning for greater risk.

Originally, I was blaming my reluctance to push through the peanut butter of self-doubt and criticism on how infrequently I nurture long-form thinking these days — on how short-circuit thinking just gets you physically further, or enables survival when you have young kids.

There’s an entire school of thought that rejects the notion that multi-tasking is even a thing but I dissent when I consider what gets done in the frame of 50 minutes, before 7:45 on a weekday morning (kids beds made, kids dressed and lathered in spf 50, breakfast made, workout booked, plates cleared, texts answered, groceries ordered, e-mails sent, arrival at the bus stop) although for sure there is something to be said about the way this fragmented thinking makes it hard to complete a full thought.

I learned some years ago that some people think in pictures and others in sentences. I am definitely among those who think in words and when I think about the time I spend with my kids and in particular while we’re running against a clock, I can see these sentences outlining the tasks I am doing starting to form but fade out before they’re complete. So it’s like, “Clean the di—, get their lotion o—, they need a clock for their—, did I move that mee—?”

But then, you know, once they’re on the bus and time becomes mine for a long stretch of hours, I’m still in the short circuits and can’t seem to get out so I try to detangle the knotty feelings but when I sit down, it’s ——.

Until it’s not. I think I needed to write this to recognize that I was locked in a room somewhere hollow in my head, a victim to the circuit, longing to return to long form thoughts, unclear how to get myself there, whether I could at all. But I know exactly how because I’ve already started: establish a routine to help you, I mean me, stretch out into the sentences that become tangents then turn into different paragraphs, essays, and who knows, a book? Read and read and read. Do breathwork and stop making fun of yourself every time that you mention it. It works! And I stand by that.

It surprises me still how much time it takes for me to stop judging a thought. It’s like, I first realized late last month while I was away on a work trip that my thinking was different when I am alone. I observed how much time it took to re-enter the valley of long-form thoughts. I diagnosed the short-circuits, thought about when they work and when they start messing with me (usually after the kids have gone to bed and my head is still spinning though I want to slow down so I pour a glass of wine or scroll through my phone, but would be much better off opening a book). But from there it’s not like I jump to solution, first I languish a little, contemplating whether I’ll ever be able to write again.

Then I socialize the idea — pulling it out of my head, into conversation and often it’s there that I realize important truths, like how useful routine is. It sounds obvious, but some people hate it. I’ve always found it kind of entrapping, and with freedom among my top priorities, you can see how this could be challenging, right?

One thing I heard myself say last night is that sometimes I find the most freedom in safety and that this safety is often nestled into the routines I create and commit to. There’s a difference between the etch out and the ones you let dictate your time. To the point though about languishing, which probably relates to the initial fear that I’m stuck, which in other words means that I’ll never be able to do the thing that I’m saying I want to, I realize with more and more conviction that I can be very self-cynical.

My view of the world is pretty positive, or at least it is constantly seeking. Looking for a silver lining, the meaning and message and spirit of good to be found wherever I turn. Wherever I turn except inward. I should know better than to keep it locked in, I write with a flashlight in hand to take what is couched between the dark of the corners and prove to myself it’s nothing to hide.

I think I’m describing the difference between doing what you have to, even if you love it, and getting lost in a creative pursuit. Feeling the soul-full nag of your antsiness — that urge to take a greater “risk” — when you haven’t pursued in a while. I didn’t mean for this to become a plea to make time to do it, but I did and it feels so nice.