Stepping back into the creative mindset is like trying to contact a person that you just recklessly abandoned for no reason. She’s going to resist you, she’s going to be angry and she’s going to withhold forgiveness again and again until you prove to her that she means everything to you.
It will not be easy and you just might fail.
I’m exhausted.
It seems like the last two years I have been riding on the curtails of my previous work. Paintings and drawings that caught the attention of many and allowed me to turn a profit and help support my family. I remember thinking that I was going to quit my job and run my little business full time-which of course meant part time because then I would have all this time for hiking and paddle boarding and growing my own food.
Wrong.
Turning creative joy into ‘work’ is a difficult task that not many can be successful at. When times are quiet and profits are low, I start to wonder if I’m doing a disservice to my creative Spirit by sharing it with the world. Then I remember, ART in all its forms is what brings the collective together in so many ways. We are supposed to share it. Finding the balance between creating and creating as WORK is not something that I am good at. When all the "business" is done, there is little energy left to create new things. And for myself and many others I know, this is soul crushing.
Being the creator, the manager, the marketing department, IT department, logistics team, processing orders and shipping and then dealing with a few people that don’t believe in karma….my garden died. I gained weight and slipped into a mild depression that I have only recently come to recognize. I look around at my people and brace myself for disappointment when they don’t live up to my expectations. I have resorted to letting my inner child tell me things that she was raised to believe instead of me showing her how magickal she actually is. I feel like everything slowly died all around me. It's like I have lost all sense of myself.
I feel broken and lost and so very disappointed in myself for how I have allowed myself to abandon such a large piece of who I am. The Writer, The Artist-these have always been dreams of mine and I have allowed the 'must do's' of the day to day take over. This morning it really hit me hard, I'm not comfortable here now, in this life, because I'm simply NOT living it. Now, I’m not saying that it’s because my creative juices stopped flowing, but maybe I kind of am.
I am happy when I create because even if its a project that I do plan to earn from, it’s MINE. I say what its supposed to be, I choose the colors and it is ME that bleeds on that canvas or onto that page. Creating is a way for me to dance with my Demons and give myself grace for enjoying it.
So now what?
How do we get it all back and how do we open up to the probability that it’s never going to be the same again anyway? How do we search for something new while still honoring what we have allowed to sink back within us and turn to stone?
How do we wake up? How do we start again? How do we allow ourselves to KNOW that creating brings us back to the core of who we are and how we process life? How do we begin to apologize to our creative spirit for abandoning her? She is like our compass and our companion all in one and the truth is, she never leaves us no matter how many times we turn our backs on her.
We just have to …start again.
And trust that with each step we take, small pieces will begin to move back into place.
So, here I go....