keeping the creative fires burning….

Welcome to Tuesdays with Chel.

Each week Chel Micheline of gingerblue dot com will offer her perspectives on our Bliss Habits. Please enjoy the wisdom and clarity she offers.

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”
-Pablo Picasso

First, and foremost, Happy Valentine’s Day! Please do something special and nourishing for yourself today.

Okay… now, let’s talk about creativity…

The first few weeks of the year are always a challenge for me, creatively speaking.

December is a busy month- I usually participate in several daily creative projects and preparing for the holidays is a creative endeavor in itself. Plus, there’s all that inspiration- holiday color, twinkling lights, dreamy decorations. And, to make it easy, the craft stores are full of products specifically for the holidays. It’s too much to resist.

Then comes… January. No special art supplies for January, are there?

By January first I’m usually completely worn out, and feel like I need a break. But when I take a break, I find it hard to get started again, especially if I take more than just a few days away from the art studio. But the idea of doing more makes me want to cry. So what to do when you are facing creative burn-out?

There are actually two schools of thought on what a person should do when they feel creatively burned out.

On one hand, there are many psychologists, authors, and well-being experts that believe that creativity is like a muscle- it needs periodic rest in order to grow and strengthen. It requires regular breaks, so that it can renew itself.

On the other hand is the opinion that creativity is a constant, something that remains on all the time and needs to be nourished and attended to in order to stay strong.

The first approach always appealed to me. I’m big on the idea of little breaks, little times of relaxation and nourishment. But I realized this year that taking a “breather” just doesn’t work for me.

To me, my creativity is a fire. It requires a little bit of tending every single day in order to keep it alive. When I spend too much time away from it, the flames die down and it takes a lot of work and effort to get them going again. I’ve learned that it’s much easier to throw a tiny bit of wood into the fire every day than it is to keep building new fires from scratch every few months.

So every day I try to be creative, even in tiny ways. Some days, I have the focus and energy for big projects- I pull out all the stops, dig into all my supplies, and it feels like magic happens.

But there are *so* many days when it’s all I can do to pick up a Sharpie and make a doodle on a scrap piece of paper. When I just pick up a magic marker and write down a quote on an index card. When I make up a little story in my head. When I rip out a page from a magazine and paste it down on a blank page in my art journal. When I sit and sort my beads.

Just *something*- anything- feed the fire. And then the next day, or the day after, or whenever it is my energy returns, I find it so much easier to sit down and make something big happen.

I’ve come to realize that those little doodles, little scraps of story, those quotes, those random images pasted in my journal- they are all so important. They may never develop into anything, but they keep me moving forward, they keep the fire alive.

In the last ten years, my life has changed a lot. I got married, my daughter arrived, opportunities and responsibilities changed. Ten years ago, the only thing I really had to focus on (besides my health and basic daily responsibilities) was my creativity. I could create when I felt like it. I was able to be “creatively moody”, meaning that I was able to be creative when I felt like it and step away when I needed to.

Now it’s not so easy. I get a few hours during the evenings, and that’s it. So I can either make use of that time or lose it. It’s … different. And it took years to adjust to.

I finally realized the key to making creativity work is just to keep going.

And it doesn’t NEED to be a big deal. Not at all. Like I said, just simple doodles. Words scribbled on a scrap of paper. Even a COLORING BOOK, confiscated from your kids’ stash (or easily picked up at the local grocery store next time you’re running errands) will work.

If not art, then words. Write a paragraph about something silly. Create a haiku. Make poetry out of words cut from junk mail and glue it in a cheap notebook.

When my daughter first came home, what I found myself doing was writing fiction. Lots and lots of it. I could write it in my head while I was with her, and when she napped I would dash to my computer and type it all out. I’ve *never* written fiction before in my life, and haven’t really since then. But it kept me going, it kept the fires burning.

If not words, then food. Add some different vegetables to your pasta, mix two cereals together in the same bowl, try a different kind of coffee next time you are at Starbucks.

You see what I’m getting at? Even if you don’t think you are all that creative, or feel *really* burned out, don’t let the fire die. Just tend to it, as much as you can, in the smallest way possible. I promise you that when you are ready to get back into it, the fire will still be burning and waiting for you.