I have been wanting to write a blog post for two days.
What I have mostly been doing for the past two days, though, is not writing a blog post.
Yes, even professional creativity instigators struggle with resistance sometimes.
No matter how many times I commit to “going pro” and putting my creative work first, there are still times when I fall off the wagon… which is why I always say that the most important practice is just getting back on the wagon. (Click to tweet this!)
But. [Read more…]
Here’s one from the archives, which felt ripe for a revisit. Originally published on January 3, 2013, the principles here are timeless. Enjoy! -xoMelissa
Ah, 1994. That was the summer I “tried to be a writer.”
I was newly married, with lots of time on my hands, having recently acquired a “useless” academic masters degree, only to decide that the dream of going on for a PhD had lost its luster.
With my planned-out career path in a shambles, I felt utterly adrift. “What do I do now?” I wondered.
Writing seemed an obvious answer.
After all, I’d been writing my whole life — what else did one do as a Liberal Arts major in college and grad school but write? Why not turn it into a career?
Strangely, though, when I actually needed it, my gift for assembling words together seemed to have left me. [Read more…]
You don’t have to be a working artist in order to live a creative life—the drive to explore and create is wired into us. As far as I’m concerned, it’s what makes us human.
Whether you’re called to paint, write, act, sing, knit, garden, cook, write elegant computer code, or anything else, when you don’t feed your creative hungers, things start to get haywire. This is true whether you define yourself as a financial analyst or a painter.
But what about being a responsible breadwinner? How do you reconcile your desire to play with your need to feed your family? Does it have to be an either-or proposition?
Believe it or not, even professional artists struggle with this one. I got this email the other day, and knew I had to answer it here (with his permission, of course).
Hi Melissa,
I recently viewed your interview with Jennifer Louden. It struck a chord. Thank You.
I am an Artist (Visual) that has not been able to face the studio since my Dad passed away a year ago. I cannot paint the landscapes that made me steady money for years.
You mentioned being burned out after doing the art that was expected of you. That resonated the most.
I want to go to the studio and just throw paint glue down garbage, paint with my eyes closed etc, I want to give myself permission to fail. But as a Dad and breadwinner that seems irresponsible. I need to Change.
Dan Ryan
.
Dear Dan,
I hear you. That’s a tough place to be in. I’m so very sorry about losing your Dad.
One thing that helped me SO MUCH was giving myself the gift of Creative Sandbox time, where I get to try ANYTHING, fail all over the place, and just have fun.
Even fifteen minutes a day of playing in the Creative Sandbox helped me be able to face the business I had been so burned out on.
Does working in that business make me giddy with joy? No, but it’s tolerable now, even enjoyable sometimes. And meanwhile, my entire life is going better.
I’ve heard similar stories over and over from other people.
My friend, Elaine, works a 9-to-5 job that she’s good at and enjoys, but it doesn’t make her toes tingle and her eyes light up. Singing is her real passion. For a long time, though, her music languished on the back burner.
She had a wonderful husband and child, and life was rich in many ways, but it wasn’t until she joined a klezmer band a few years ago that things really began to blossom.
Her band performs only a couple of times a month, but the difference between her life before and after joining the band is like that iconic moment in The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy steps out of the black and white of Kansas into the brilliant Technicolor of Oz.
Feeding her creative hungers helped her find the joy in the rest of her life.
If your landscapes are a great source of income, you may wish to keep that avenue open, at least for awhile. Giving yourself Creative Sandbox time could make the landscapes tolerable again—you won’t know until you try.
If playing in the sandbox does allow you to face painting landscapes again, even if you ultimately want to give them up entirely, that would help ease your transition. You’d effectively be running one business, while growing a new one around your current passions at the same time, like I’ve been doing.
Whatever you decide about painting landscapes, I am a firm believer that the Universe wants us to create. The hunger you feel to mess around in your studio is there for a reason, just like hunger for food.
Think about it: if we didn’t listen to our body’s cries to get us to eat, we’d starve to death! If there were no sexual desire, the human race would die out!
You were born to create. It’s what you’re on this planet to do.
And part of that creative process is allowing yourself to grow and evolve, to follow the whispers that call to you, even when they take you down a totally different path from the one you’re on!
This is our job as creators. If the work you were doing before feels stale to you, or if you’re burned out on it, believe me, other people can feel that, too. It is your responsibility to follow your muse and find your passion on its new path. (Click to tweet this!)
This is one of the biggest challenges of being an artist!
If our work becomes popular, people want more of the same. If we become bored with that sameness and start moving in new directions, our audience may complain, and we may lose customers.
This is scary!
But remember: people are always attracted to passion. (Click to tweet this!)
The customers who bought your landscapes may not be interested in whatever new experiments emerge from your studio, but there are people who will be.
I believe the most responsible thing we can do is put our own oxygen mask on first. (Click to tweet this!)
For me (and I suspect for you, given what you shared), my art is my oxygen mask. Yes, most of us (almost everyone, in fact) have to spend time at things that don’t light our fires, in order to put food on the table. So we need to find other ways to fuel our fires.
If we’re lucky, sometimes there’s some overlap there, but almost never is it 100%.
Sending you strength. I hope you’re able to give yourself that permission to fail. It doesn’t have to take over your entire art practice… yet! And you may be surprised by what happens when you do just throw paint around.
As I said, people are drawn to passion. They can sense burnout. You’re evolving. You’ll figure it out.
PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!
As long as I’ve been an artist I’ve yearned for a spacious, organized, beautiful studio to create in. Instead I’ve always felt cramped and cluttered, the sheer weight of stuff — in piles, in drawers, in cupboards — creating an irritating psychic hum that I can’t escape.
Like the sound of a jackhammer at the next house over, it’s something you get used to, but it’s a constant drain.
When I see someone else’s well-organized, uncluttered studio, I feel a rush of many emotions at once:
Envy (I want that, too!)
Shame (There must be something wrong with me that I can’t create that…)
Despair (I’ll never have a studio like that…)
For years I’ve felt intense embarrassment whenever someone enters my workspace. The fact that it’s upstairs makes it easier to keep informal visitors out of it, but it’s not possible to keep everyone out, and I cringe every time someone steps in the door. I don’t want to see the look in their eyes. I imagine they will think less of me when they encounter the truth…
“I’m an artist, not a housekeeper,” I’ve learned to say, and this is true. But beneath this truth is another one that I can’t avoid: a person can be an artist, and have a clean, organized, uncluttered studio!
Oh, how I long to be that kind of person!
Making that kind of identity transformation is not easy. If it were, I’d already have the kind of studio that other people search for pictures of to pin on their “Studio Porn” Pinterest boards.
For a long time I’ve been convinced that the true solution would be found in more: more and better organizational systems, more and better containers, more space — if only I had the money to afford a warehouse, a loft, or just a larger home with three bedrooms instead of two, so I could use two whole rooms for my studio!
More recently I’ve been coming to terms with the opposite idea: that the true solution will be found in less.
Less stuff will mean I need less stuff!
Less stuff means fewer containers and less furniture to store it, and less time to put it away.
Less stuff means more floor space and airspace and mental space.
Coming to this realization has been huge, but still, letting go of my stuff is hard. Sometimes it’s stuff I cling to because I think I might want to use it again, and I’ll be so frustrated if I don’t have it when I want it. But it can go deeper than that.
Sometimes letting go of stuff means acknowledging a mistake, like the hardwired Ikea lights I bought when I moved into this place… then never had installed… I feel a weird sense of guilt (or false guilt, really, since I haven’t actually hurt anyone and am not truly culpable), a feeling that I should be using this thing, whatever it is. So I hold onto it… but still don’t use it.
Of course, if it’s still in my space, I’m bombarded regularly with that same false guilty feeling! When I let it go, I’m no longer reminded of the mistake.
Sometimes letting go of stuff means turning the page on a chapter of my life that’s over, but that I’ve been reluctant to completely leave behind. Like the dozens of full-size samples of my ketubah prints that I paid good money to have archivally bagged with foam core boards, to display in my booth at wedding faires. I haven’t done a wedding faire since 2009, and have no desire to do one ever again, yet there’s still a fear of burning bridges.
I’m learning, though, that space and freedom are more important to me than bridges to old paths I’m no longer interested in walking.
Sometimes something gets stuck in my space because I can’t figure out where to take it. I’m loathe to send anything to landfill if I can avoid it, but what the heck do I do with the two old halogen photo light sets, for example? The reflectors and stands are perfectly good, but three out of the four lights themselves — the piece that the lightbulb screws into, with a cord that plugs into the wall — no longer work, and are probably not fixable, nor even worth fixing.
In cases like this, if I set a clear enough intention to let the thing go, eventually I find a solution. Freecycle. RAFT.
I’ve also learned that in order to clear out my own space, I have to be ruthless, which sometimes, yes, means landfill.
I’ve made multiple passes at clutterbusting over the past several years. Each one has been good… but not enough to get me the studio of my dreams. For that, more drastic measures were required than I was capable of taking at the time.
I just wasn’t ready to let go of enough to get me there.
Now I feel like I’m finally ready to go the distance. It may take me much more than the month of April to get there, but I have a sense of calm and ease this time. I’m finally ready to release my grip on so much that I was clinging to before.
I think holding onto stuff gave me a false sense of security. Something has shifted lately, so that the stuff I’ve been clinging too feels more like chains constricting me and weighing me done than like safety. Letting go feels like freedom.
I should be clear: I’m not dispensing with all my worldly goods. I am, however, acknowledging that, as Ann, one of the members of The Great ClutterBust put it, everything in my life is borrowed: my stuff, my home, my body. I own nothing — I’m just borrowing it for the time I get to use it in this life.
Knowing that everything is borrowed is helping me to choose more carefully what I want to surround myself with.
It’s like a library (another idea from the brilliant Ann): I don’t want to borrow every book, just the ones that are relevant, uplifting, or useful, and that I plan to actually read during the check-out period!
I’m painfully aware, all of a sudden, of just how many “overdue books” I’ve been hoarding…
Some time ago I went from ready to eager. Suddenly I was champing at the bit to clear out my excess stuff.
Even with my new state of readiness, though, I knew doing it alone would be rough going. So I did something really smart: I rallied a community around me, and created The Great ClutterBust.
There are 31 of us in The Great ClutterBust as of this writing (and more continue to trickle in). We share “before” and “after” pics of our spaces. We cheer each other on. We share resources. We empathize.
Most days there’s some kind of live session, either preplanned or spontaneous, in which those who are available can check in to say what we’re planning on tackling, then we go off and clutterbust in our own spaces, together. In today’s “live” ClutterBust session people cleared out closets and shelves, I wrote some wedding thank you notes (mental clutter that’s been weighing me down!) and drove my packed-to-the-gills car down to RAFT, where they happily took everything off my hands, including those old photo lights!
Score!
As the brilliant Ann pointed out, we used to think “Score!” when we found some wonderful object to bring into our homes. Now we’re thinking “Score!” each time we get rid of something!
And astonishingly, we’re having fun! This herculean task I’ve been avoiding for so many years has become fun! Who knew?
That’s the power of community. We energize each other. Our enthusiasm is infectious.
(Even husbands are getting involved! When I first told Miracle Man of my plan to run The Great ClutterBust, his response was “But I don’t want to clutterbust!” I assured him he didn’t have to. Then, what do you know, he started getting fired up by what I was doing, and joined in! Other members have reported similar husband-buy-in.)
Before the official start of The Great ClutterBust, someone posted in our private Facebook group a report on what she referred to as her “desk archaeology.” Oh my goodness, what an apt metaphor! My desk, every drawer and cupboard and shelf and surface in my studio (and home!) are like archaeological sites that my job is to dig through, sorting the metaphorical dirt from the treasures.
This is a big job. A Very Big Job. But shovelful by shovelful, I am unearthing the studio of my dreams, and that feels so good.
Wanna join us? There’s still time. The Great ClutterBust runs through April 30th. Click here to be part of the movement.
PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!
I have so much shame around my clutter.
What’s helping, though, is knowing that I’m not alone. Gathering a gang of fellow clutterbusters around me has helped loosen some of that shame for all of us in the group, AND it’s already gotten us busting clutter, even before the official start day of The Great ClutterBust!
Here are some pics of the Closet of Doom in my studio, before the first pass of clutterbusting:
And after the first pass:
Granted, there’s still a lot to do — ALL the shelves need clearing, but the difference now is that I can see what I need to do, and I feel a remarkable sense of fluid freedom to do it — with ease. I never thought I’d experience that!
Why was I able to tackle the previously impenetrable Closet of Doom today?
Well, The Great ClutterBust tribe is a big part of it. Having our private Facebook group to share what’s been holding me back helped me process the clogged up feelings, so I could finally let go of the clogged up stuff!
A lot of what I’m clearing out is related to a part of my business, and styles of art, that I’m no longer as intensely focused on as I used to be. I realized I was holding onto this stuff mostly out of fear — of moving on, of letting go of a part of my life that was so important to me for so long, of burning bridges.
It’s scary to do that. It takes a kind of trust in the future, which is why it’s taken me so long to let go of the physical residue.
But sheesh — some of this stuff I’ve had in a closet — and not used — for fifteen years or more. (!!!) Letting it go will help me make emotional and physical space for what’s important to me now, and it will be of so much better service going to someone who will actually use it!
So goodbye, ketubah print samples — I spent a lot of time and money making you so I could exhibit my ketubot at wedding faires. Now you will work harder for me in the print racks of some of the local Judaica shops that carry my work, or you will find a second life as the paper for someone’s new artwork, and that makes me very happy.
And goodbye, matts and boards and papers and perfectly good frames and mouldings I never used — I spent a lot of money on you, but have neglected you for years. It will make me very happy to think of you in the hands of school children or developmentally disabled artists who will love you as much as you deserve to be loved.
This is just the tip of the iceberg — for the Closet of Doom, and for the rest of my studio. And my home, too!
Perhaps the best part? Thanks to the loving, supportive, enthusiastic energy of my fellow clutterbusters, this thing I’ve been dreading and avoiding for years is actually becoming fun!
Wow!
I’m excited to see what my studio looks like after a whole month of The Great ClutterBust. I suspect we’re all going to be transformed in some ways we can’t even imagine right now.
Stay tuned…
Wanna join us? There’s still time. The Great ClutterBust runs through April 30th. Click here to be part of the movement.
PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!
