Time for a Brain Reset
When stuck, turn off and back on again
I’ve been either traveling, recovering from said, preparing for more of it, or buried in work1 since… June2. I’m exhausted. I know I am, because I cannot creatively function without extreme effort. It’s like paddling a canoe up the rapids. Which can be done, but really, what you need to do is pull the canoe out of the water, turn it over and let it drain, then carry it up and around the worst of the rush, until you can make reasonable progress again.
It’s always upstream. Creative work means you’re hitting resistance (I recently read Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art, and he has many good points but also there’s a lot of chaff. So I recommend the book, with caveats that the second half is missable but read Dorothy Sayer’s wonderful Mind of the Maker instead.) Pushing past that resistance is a little like paddling a small craft up hill, against the flow. It will build your mind up, and that’s a good thing. Sometimes, though, you need to take a break. How to do this without drifting backwards?
Well, I can’t answer that. I’ve had so much going on these last several weeks. Much of it was personal, going to see family. Some of that was very emotional, knowing it was potentially a goodbye in body if not spirit. I’ve also been weaving in research around all the travel, trying to keep my forward progress going. However, that’s all brain work. Not much of it has made it onto paper (or the screen) just yet. Heck, I haven’t even downloaded the camera from the last two (?) trips, nor done all my editing from anything back to June at least if not all the way to the trip to CT in May. I have notes, receipts, photos, but nothing coherent just yet.
What I need is a day or so of empty brain. I need to do a reset. This is… not easy. I know what I need, making the time and space to do it is much harder. I need to redefine my routines, start applying them to myself, and that’s going to take some re-training just like lost muscle tone when you step away from an exercise regime. Which is the other thing I’m weaving into this routine. Again.
I try over and over and there is progress. I just don’t make habits the way most people seem to be able. Every time is like I’ve never done it before. Which is why I write them down, set alarms, use a daybook, have notifications…and still, I forget things. I’ve transitioned the big calendar in my studio over to August. I’m filling it in, trying to balance the design work and Press work with my writing and art. I have a lot. It’s not too much, it’s just overwhelming today, as I pick up the pieces and start the juggling again. Once I’ve got a few things spinning smoothly, I can start adding more again. First, though, is trying not to take on too much too fast.
I have a long, long list of things I need to do. Want to do. I don’t mean the list on the kitchen whiteboard of ‘things to do around the house’ when I say this. I have books I want to write, and have even started work on. I have art I’d like to make, and new art supplies to make it with3 as well as bigger projects on the horizon. I have my studio back for the first time in weeks (it’s also the guest room) and I am raring to do. Tomorrow I’m going to shut myself in there and see if spending a few hours tidying, sketching, and playing music will get the brain kicking back into the direction I want it to go in.
I may have progress tomorrow. I might not. But if I have to get out of the stream and portage, I will. I can’t keep going backwards. The first step is, I know, to get myself upright and ready to work. Which includes as a friend kindly but firmly reminded me today, making time to rest. I’ve done some of that, I have more scheduled on my calendar; it is too important to leave to spontaneity.
If you are in the same boat, Hi! dip a paddle in, and let’s pull together. I was talking to more than one person in multiple conversations recently about the idea of body-doubling and mirror neurons. It’s easier to do something, sometimes, if you know someone doing the same thing, or giving you someone to be accountable to. Particularly when, as I am, you are your own boss and set your own deadlines. They make such an awful sound when whooshing past! My ultimate goal here is to be encouraging and helpful. So if I can be a cheerleader, I will be for you. And I’ll keep writing posts like this filling you in on my attempts to make things.
I can’t not make things. It’s what I was born to do.
Time to get back out there doing.
Not the Day Job, this would be Press work as freelancer.
No, I’m wrong. Since late May at least.
Look, when a certain art store sends me an email saying ‘hey, you have rewards which will expire…’ I am successfully marketed to. Just saying.
So much empathy here. Love the portage metaphor. For me these days it's, "Stop. Lie down. Shut eyes. If you fall asleep, you needed it." This can mean a 20 minute power nap or 90 minutes full sleep cycle. When a 10 minute task is taking me 30 minutes, I'm tired.
OH boy do I understand what you're saying. Packing up and selling a house I lived in for 38 years, moving cross country to a chunk of land that doesn't even have an address yet (which is pain in and of itself, as you can't get power run to a place until you have an address (at least in Tennessee) then we'll have to unpack into a pair of conex boxes we have had delivered, so the stuff can stay dry and we don't have to pay storage, until the house is built, meanwhile living in the RV that we just drove across country in. Plus all the work that starting a new homestead (yes, real homestead, with crops and animals type homestead) meanwhile (I'm slogging through the requested edits on Keeping the Faith, which in many cases comes down to "don't data dump this, write out the dialog for this four hour conversation..." Oh and the editor just loves the Em dash-- which I can't seem to reliably make appear on the screen, for what ever reason. And I've got another book in the hands of my alpha reader, but she's under just as much stress, and hasn't done shit with it for months.