Is your creative practice another stick to beat yourself with?
When finding your joy becomes a chore
I originally set my publication schedule for this platform as two posts a week: a reflective piece on the nature of happiness on a Wednesday, and a practical post with guidance on using creativity as a tool for emotional wellbeing on a Saturday. I’ve been a day late with each of these posts so often recently that I’d be better off changing my schedule to Thursday and Sunday. I don’t know why I haven’t, really - maybe I’m hoping that one day I’ll get on board with my own plan. Or maybe I’m worried that once I say Thursday and Sunday, it will quickly become Friday and Monday! I don’t think that anyone minds, though - I don’t believe anyone is checking their inbox or the Substack app on a Wednesday going, “where the hell’s Allegra?!” (If you are, please do let me know!)
It’s hard to stick to a regular schedule when life insists on being so very present. There are work deadlines to be hit, children to look after, a house that refuses to stay clean and tidy for more than four minutes. There’s also a life to be led - friends to spend time with, experiences to be had, places to see. And when your creative outlets become sources of anxiety and stress that keep you back from all that, then we have a problem.
I’ve talked a lot recently about my ups and downs with social media. One of the big issues I have with platforms like Instagram, is that I feel like I’m creating in service of an algorithm, not human beings that I can be of genuine service to. Creating has become a chore, something that leaves me drained, something I’m doing because I feel like I have to, not because I want to. As a creative, we feel we have to build a following if we want to make money from our art - and we need to make money from our art if we’re going to be able to spend meaningful time working on our art. Constantly trying to invest the time and energy required to create art that truly speaks from the soul as a sideline to full-time work and caring for families is a sure-fire recipe for burnout. But then trying to build the following we need to sell our art so we don’t fall over just becomes another thing to pile on top of the stuff that’s about to make us fall over.
Creativity is a valuable tool for emotional wellbeing. It has been proven to reduce stress and anxiety, it can relieve depression, it increases confidence and positivity. It’s even been shown to improve physical health. Creativity allows us to explore who we really are and process how we really feel. It enables us to express the parts of ourselves that long to be seen and heard. It’s also, for most of us who spend time in creative communities like this, something we got into because it’s just really good fun. We started doing it because we enjoyed it, then we got all those benefits from it as a useful bonus. But then we decided to work at it. To take it seriously. Maybe we wanted to build a creative career, or maybe we just wanted to invest time and effort into our own healing and self-development. So we added publication schedules, word count targets, submission deadlines, competition entries, social media challenges, online trends… we gave ourselves a load of things we should be doing, and piled a load of stress onto ourselves, losing sight of the fact that this was supposed to be something that would help us unwind.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t take your art seriously. As someone who writes for newspapers and is in the process of finishing up a book, my creative life is currently very governed by deadlines, and that’s ok. Deadlines help give me some structure and make sure I actually get the writing done that I need to do. I’m not sure I would have finished this book if the publisher hadn’t given me a structured submission schedule. But now I’ve achieved a lifelong dream of seeing a book out in the world with my name on it. Deadlines, and a little bit of pressure, can take you to where you want to go. Just don’t lose sight of the joy.
When your creative practice becomes punitive, or a source of anxiety, you’ve lost the wellbeing benefits, you’ve lost the fun, and is it even worth being able to make a career out of it if you’re overly stressed by it? First and foremost, this should be something that brings you a sense of joy and fulfillment. If that’s gone, then it’s time to reevaluate.
Some things you can do to keep the joy in your creative practice are:
Be realistic about what you can achieve - can you really write 1,000 words a day or paint a picture a week? Or are you setting yourself up for inevitable failure, which is just going to make you feel bad about yourself?
Understand what’s really necessary - do you actually need to write 1,000 words a day? Or would 200 actually be totally fine? Is there something you’re working towards that must happen by a certain date, or is the target you’ve given yourself arbitrary? If you aim for too big a goal, you’re more likely to get discouraged quickly and not get anywhere at all. If you set a smaller goal, it might take you longer to get there, but your chances of actually getting there are vastly increased.
Space out your deadlines - if you’ve got too much going on at once, you’ll just get overloaded. If you’re already working on a submission for a competition, maybe you don’t need to also submit to that publication you just read about that. Maybe that can wait until their next submission round in a few months.
Make time for play - you don’t always have to be working on “serious projects”. Give yourself time to play, to experiment, to try out new things, and to just create for the sake of it.
Let go of the outcome - sometimes we get so invested in whether a piece of work will be a success (whatever that might mean to us in that context), that we lose enjoyment in the process itself. Stop worrying so much about the end result or trying to plan how you’ll arrive at that end result, and allow yourself to lean into the act of creation. Focus on the process, lose yourself in it, and the end result might end up being totally different from what you expected, but who knows what magic that might conjure up?!
Below are two creative exercises:
One to help you let go and get into more of a playful, joyful mindset (and to produce a really fun piece of art)
One that you can explore throughout the week, to inject some joy and wonder into your creative practice, and help you find some joy in the mundanity of the everyday
Enjoy!
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