As August comes to a close, I’m thinking about realities from the past few weeks that made engaging in a creative endeavor every day more challenging. Whether it was working a lot, having chores to do, managing a busy schedule, being with my family, or a bump in stress, it took some extra doing to stay with my creative process. I got some insight into why it’s hard to do something creative every single day. Sometimes, the time just runs out. Sometimes the fatigue is too great. Sometimes the stress is too distracting.

What to do when these deadly horsemen arrive to mess with the best of our intentions?

I noticed that for me, it helps to have at the ready a list of things I like to do or want to do that have different time and focus commitments. For example, recently I had a lot of chores to do outside and in our garage. I needed to clean, straighten, toss, and arrange so much stuff, in part to get ready to scrape and paint our shed. Well… I was bummin’ because I can’t very well weave and sweep at the same time, and I knew that the manual labor I’d be doing would make my arthritic hands and body tired at the end of the day. BUT, I had creative things that I wanted to do that are also passive. For example, making black walnut and chokeberry dye was something I wanted to get done, as well as clean some deer antlers that a friend gave to me. I realized that the passive time required for boiling the berries, nuts and antlers could be used to do something else (like clean the garage). So, I set up my portable cooktop on a table in my driveway, got to boiling antlers and tended to my chores, periodically checking how things were going. The antlers required scraping/washing, scrubbing to get the muscle, skin, and hair off the skull part, but I did that in between other tasks.

No one can accuse me of being a one-trick-pony!

By the end of that afternoon, I had accomplished what I’d needed to chores-wise, and had some beautiful deer antlers to show for it.

On another day, I did more outdoor work and boiled the black walnuts and the chokeberries separately, making beautiful red and dark brown dyes. I also prepared a chokeberry tincture which just requires putting berries and vodka in a sealable jar and putting it in a dark spot (with a commitment to shake it every day).

And on yet another day, I washed a lot of wool while I scraped the paint off the shed, using the sun’s energy to keep the soapy water hot.

When fatigue was the main bad actor keeping me from my creative goal, I did my best to get clear on what my fatigue was about. Too little sleep? Stress? What was out of balance? There were several days when I didn’t have the bandwidth to sit with my more focus-required projects, so I continued to let passive interests save the day. I simply put fabric strips into the dyes I made and let them be. I also laid flowers between folds of dyed cloth and let them rest under weight in the sun. These were fun experiments that hit creative chords but didn’t take any energy from me. I do feel like I benefit from being a “let’s just do this and see what happens” kind of person. No one is going to find meticulously kept notes of how I do things on my bookshelves, but I always have random thing around to use in a project.

The stripes on that cloth you see below? That happened by accident when I laid the wet material on a rusty steel wire shelf. The lines appeared immediately and I was like, HEY! Look at that! As Bob Ross would say, I made a “happy accident”!

I’m also a big fan of taking pictures of things I see that I think are beautiful or interesting. I aim to keep them in a folder on my computer that is to do with inspiration I glean from the world around me.

When longer work days were the issue, I did things like spray paint dried plant stalks to prepare them for projects I’m working on. I also sanded some things and basically got my project ingredients together.

I learned that stress is the most killer of distractions for me. Stress mixed with worry is the monster that steals my creativity. On those days where that kind of stress was in the mix, I listened to people I admire. I looked for my mentors’ words and anchored myself in wisdom. On those days, that was enough.

When I actually had time to devote more than a couple of hours to my making, I took it, guilt-free and pressure-free. I chose a project to commit my attention to and went for it. That was glorious. I felt so grateful to have that time with myself, and the woven piece is done, just waiting to be mounted!

These are examples of what I do. I have my Creativity Options that suit whatever might be true for me on a given day. If I had to rely on having hours in my studio every day dedicated to my making, I would either be chronically disappointed and resentful, or I’d be neglecting other responsibilities I value. I’ve learned over the years how to excavate time and opportunity to make and tend to my making, and for me, it’s worked.

So, here’s some questions to ask yourself:

~ are there any creative things you do that have built in down-time moments? i.e., solar dyeing, cooking/baking/steeping/drying.
~ are there things you like to do that, if you have them around and easily accessible, would be easy to achieve in a short period of time? i.e., drawing/painting paper and brushes/pencils on the counter where you can play while something is cooking, or clay you can sculpt with while you listen to a lecture, or yarn you can knit/crochet/weave with while you wait in a waiting room/attend a conference/wait for water to boil?
~ are there things you like to do that you would do more if only you had a few hours to dedicate to them? i.e., working on larger pieces, sculpting, writing… if so, are there ways to take advantage of open time and claim it for yourself, rather than fill the space with a bunch of shoulds?
~ are there ways to organize your environment so that when the moment is right for any one of these things, you can act without having to think about it too much? If you have to dig out a bin from the back of the closet that has your art stuff in it, how likely are you to do it when you only have a half-hour? How can you arrange things so you can just as easily pick up a colored pencil as your phone?
~ on those days that are stressed and/or worry-filled, from what well do you draw insight, comfort, and support?

If you tried to be creative every day in August, how did it go? What did you do that supported your efforts? Where did it fall apart?

As we head into this next month, I am going to focus on keeping my environment arranged in such a way that I can continue to engage with myself creatively within my life, not as an effort separate from my day to day living. Might you join me in this?