Taking Care -The Creative Process pt. #4

I had a new post halfway written for this week, but I felt I needed to be honest about where I was with my own creative process. Because I only want to give advise and share wisdom that I myself act upon. I only want to talk the talk if I’m going to walk the walk. So I’m going to be honest and a little bit vulnerable. 


My creative process is extremely closely tied to my mental health. So much so that one is always impacted by the other, and lately things have been difficult. So I haven’t painted in three weeks, and I miss it. But I can’t seem to bring myself to pick up the brush. I tried drawing a few days ago and promptly lost interest. It’s just been one of those seasons, one that’s lasted for far longer than I would like. 


You see sometimes the creativity flows like a raging waterfall and it take nearly no effort on my part to feel motivated to create. And sometimes the difficult circumstances that life throws at you get in the way, they get heavy and the fog gets hard to walk through. Sometimes it hurts more to create than it does to sit down and just be. 


The creative process isn’t linear, it isn’t black and white, it doesn’t stay in its lane. Often when times get tough I run to art, to find a way to get the hard stuff out of my system, to bleed it out onto the canvas, believing that once it’s been given form it won’t be as hard to handle. But there are some things in this life that I don’t get to force my way through, I can’t paint it away and leave it collect dust while I pretend it isn’t happening anymore. There are some things I need to sit with for a long awhile and figure out how I’m going to handle, not just try to banish it from my system via art. It sucks, it’s been a very hard lesson for me to learn. 


I’m trying to become more whole, more healed, and that means taking my mental health seriously and it means taking care of myself. I’ve been getting better, the times seem to be getting a little lighter, the air a littler easier to breath. Because I started reading my bible again, and writing in my journal, and handling myself with care. With time I know I’ll be able to paint again, and draw again, and maybe even start a few happy projects again, I just have to allow myself time to be.


In this time of taking care of myself well, I’ve rediscover my love for knitting. I’m not very good at it, to be specific I more so am just not very talented I can only really make scarves. But it still has been so good for me. To simply do some creating for the sake of creating. There are no stakes in it and that helps greatly. It helps to settle my mind and settle my heart, to create only for creating sake. 


Although times has been hard and the creating even harder I’m still trying. Still going after it, as my dad would say, because it’s what I believe in, it’s what I’m passionate about. So I’ll be back next week with some more insights and a little less emotion. But I just wanted to say, it’s okay. It’s okay if your creativity has taken a back seat, if it’s taken a hiatus. You can always come back to creating, as long as you’re willing to try there’s always more time to create. It’s not too late. 

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