On the table sits my watercolors, my set of oil pastels, a huge pad of unopened expensive paper. My pencils are sharpened and my favorite journal is here too. And yet I get up and go to the fridge, check my phone, decide I better wipe the counters down and oh, I forgot I need to order a sprinkler for the greenhouse. And then I settle in to create content for my job. And now it’s time to go pick up the kids from school and the animals need tending to and…..
Julia Cameron says:
“People frequently believe that creative life is grounded in fantasy. The more difficult truth is that creativity is grounded in reality, in the particular, the focused, the well observed or specifically imagined.”
“Art lies in the moment of encounter : we meet our truth and we meet ourselves; we meet ourselves and we meet self expression. We become original because we become something specific.”
In meeting my creativity, I must be myself. I cannot skim the surface or pretend or sit in a puddle of vagueness. I must commit — pencil to page, color on brush, myself on paper. Am I so afraid to see what comes forth?
Or am I terrified that nothing will come? Am I afraid that the unique self has vanished? Or that the connection to Source is dried up? Will I too put away the paints and paper, save them for the elusive someday? For when I have more time or more space or more….
I look back through my journals, finding the poems that speak truth. Studying the shape of the letters, imagining my hand writing them. Where was I? What was life in these moments?
And I finally catch on — I’m sitting on the front porch, every morning, listening to the birds. I’m near the lake, in stillness, watching the ants steal the crumbs from my muffin. I’m away on a solo retreat, allowing deep emotions to surface and be expressed. I’m imagining the next iteration of life, full of possibility and inspiration. I’m recording the way my daughter’s eyes flutter just after she’s fallen into deep sleep. And my son’s first day of school and how I cried all the way home after dropping him off.
The specific, the particular, the focused. The depth of emotion. The permission to be in stillness, in silence, in prayer. The noticing. The deep dreaming with no attachments.
How long has it been since I awarded myself these wonderfully normal moments? I am caught in the tailspin, in the pressing forward, the achievement, the building. There is no time to listen to them breathe as they fall asleep — for I, in my own exhaustion, am asleep first. There are no still moments, for there is always work to be done.
Creativity lies in the moments where we are most present. The sketch of the fern’s intricate leaf, the deep breath as the water laps the shore, the extra minutes spent smelling the fresh herbs at the grocery, toes in the ice cold river, looking for stones shaped like hearts.
When this creative cup overflows, it spills onto the page, unable to be contained a moment longer. We must learn to let creativity manifest where it will — not where we will it. Because it will never be the sensible thing to do with our time. Creativity in itself is abundance, it is extra, it is luxury, it is what we were made for, it’s innate.
And, I would argue, it’s necessary for our wellbeing, for our wholeness.
