Finding Creativity Again...
or
How I feel like I am chasing my tail over and over...
Creativeness, Creativity. You find it. You lose it. You seek it. You crave it. You reject it. You embrace it. You fight and struggle with it. You chase it around like my new kitten chasing its tail.
Sometimes you are too caught up in domesticity, work commitments, family needs and dramas, financial demands, physical or mental pain, lack of time or energy... any number of one or all of these, and creativity slinks away, retreats to lick its wounds and lay quietly in a dark corner.
And it can stay there, sad, lonely, feeling overwhelmed and useless, not needed. With no attention, deprived of stimulation, it just sighs and goes even quieter.
Will it ever be found and cherished again? And the longer it stays there, it seems like often it becomes more reluctant to come out and play. Shy, afraid of rejection. What can entice it out? Coax it?
Soothing words, the promise of fun. A safe space and place to do it, with no judgement if it fails to live up to the hype it has heard?
Maybe something little and small to ease into gently? Not so intimidating.
Well, it is true, in the last few months my creativity has really been waxing and waning. I have struggled with pain and this has derailed me quite a bit. And there was been some rather large and personal, not for sharing, family dramas, that have pressed hard against my sensitive soul and squeezed me dry.It was an awful end part of the year. But 2017 came along, all shiny and new, and I expected greater things.
But when you lose your mojo, your momentum is bloody frigging hard to find it again!
So that is why I started #projectTlove. Which has been great, and definitely helped me connect with others and get my drawing fingers busy again. But by chance, scrolling through Instagram I found a great feed called Creatively Squared.
There I found an abundance of lovely images, varied and fun. Stylish and imaginative. And enough people to feel invigorating, but not so many it felt overwhelming.
Creatively Squared have challenges every week, with sponsors... and at first I was bamboozled by what was going on.
So I messaged them, and one of the lovely members sent me the email links to the website and info. Straight away I signed up.
Now please know, my email gets full of crap. Lots of it. Tonnes of it. Even when I delete and delete and unsubscribe, it seems to gain monumentally staggeringly large amounts of crap. But these guys actually have short, sweet, lovely, useful stuff. I actually read them. Shock horror!
So without thinking about it too much, I began to take part in the challenges on Instagram. I have only done a couple, but what has been lovely, has been the stirring and whirring of creative juices that I have felt going again. I am hoping I can keep it up, because I know that this problem solving and task orientated challenge really helps to drag that shy old creativity out into the sunshine to play again. Because she really is quite competitive and bullish at times. She does like a challenge, one she feels she can actually really be in the mix for.
And with a bit of play, the creativity muscles build, the confidence picks up, and soon that creative beastie is running and jumping and whooping it up again. Yahoo! And so bloody flipping fab!
