4 excuses to avoid making art
the mental and emotional barriers in the way of your highest creative potential.
Since I left New York for indefinite travels around the world, I’ve been delighted by how easily I’ve settled back into my daily rhythms for working and making art. How easily transportable these creative routines are —as if simply part of my luggage, easily foldable and expandable to fill the space I have.
But I remember how angsty and frustrated I used to feel, years ago — when I wanted to write, to make art, but I never felt “inspired,” I felt too paralyzed by my own anxieties, fears, and expectations for my work. It took a while, but eventually I realized that it wasn’t about a lack of connection to “the creative flow,” but simply having not overcome my own mental and emotional barriers.
I will list these excuses now, and share how I’ve overcome each of them. Welcome to the voices inside my head, circa 2016.
Excuse #1 - I don’t have enough time.
Write down every moment of how you spend your time, and ask yourself if any of those activities is truly more important than your own truest, deepest creative work. (The problem is that you don’t know what that true work feels like, yet. But can you guess? Can you imagine? Not with your brain, but with your heart.)
Time is always there — it is a river flowing.You decide how to enter its stream, and for what. You don’t need “a lot” of time. Do you have half an hour? No?
How about 15 minutes, everyday? Can you really say no to that? Start there.
Excuse #2 - I have more urgent commitments, like work and my family.
You mean, you have commitments to other people. External commitments. What about to yourself? What kind of commitment do you have? So do you work to live, or do you live to work? And how will you feel, twenty years from now, having spent the preciousness of your life on other people’s bureaucracies?
So tell me, what is the role of creative work - art making - in the theatre of your life? Is it destined to be your major character — a heroine, if you will — or is it merely content as a background actor, a small character waving at you from the crowded world within? Make a clear distinction between the important and the urgent.
Excuse #3 - I’m not in the mood / I don’t feel inspired.
Feeling “inspired,” and being “in the mood for art” are total illusions. You can recalibrate your creative rhythms, just as you can recalibrate your eating, sleeping, and exercise patterns. To find flow, you need structure — they are two sides of the same coin. Commit yourself to carving out a window of time that allows your innermost creative wisdom to take a long stretch, and to share its secrets with you. Trust that it will.
So, how do you begin? Find a small exercise that you can do daily — a small painting a day, writing one sentence a day, taking one photo a day — and collect them like coins. Soon you will have a gold-filled vault.
Excuse #4 - I won’t get anywhere, I can’t make any money, I’m not good enough, I won’t be famous anyway, so what’s the point?
Making art has to be a personal must. It has to be important enough to you that you would do it even if you were the only person existing in the world. You have to do it without validation, without permission, without promise of recognition or fame. You do it for the process, for the pleasure, for the intimate relationship you build with the work itself. You do it because it makes you feel alive, because it makes you feel truly you. Ann Lamott talks about this in Bird By Bird, and the first time I read it, I didn’t get it. Now I do.
The recipe to building a body of creative work is very simple
Reflect on your reason why - why art matters to you, what it means to you, how important it is to you.
Make a daily commitment. You can start small — even 10 minutes a day is enough. Touching it once is enough.
Do it, rain or shine. Everyday.
Have I dismantled your excuses? Do you have more excuses that I haven’t addressed? Please write me and let me know, and I will post about it next time.