Thursday! 2-40: Creativity on Hold
V2, I40
The way I have my schedule built right now, I write Thursday! on Tuesday1. Usually that works out, especially because my job as it currently exists, gives me a bit of time to think about the weekly topic and how I want to present it to you on Monday and Tuesday morning. By lunch time on Tuesday, I usually have a pretty good handle on what I want and start writing. Tuesday night is for finishing, editing, formatting, and a review from my beloved wife.
This week? Not so much. I’ve been in a training class the past two days over Zoom2 that runs from 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. We get breaks throughout and a one hour lunch break, which is fine for the class but not fine for writing anything of consequence. So, here we are: You, expecting a clever and useful newsletter longer than a couple of hundred words; and Me, without much clever and useful to say and very little time to figure it out.
What happens in this case? Well, some writers fall back on the “greatest hits” model — “Sorry, folks, I ran out of time to write the newsletter so here’s one from the halcyon days of 2018.3” Others simply skip the newsletter without explanation, or with a hastily-written “Sorry, folks. No time to write this week. Here’s an apology and a gif of a rabbit with a pancake on its head!4” I’ll admit, I’ve done both and wasn’t very happy with myself after the fact. We do run out of time to create the things we want to, or have to5, create. It happens. Heck, it’s happening to me this week. I don’t have much time at all to give you the normal issue of Thursday! you’re used to at the quality level I want. I’m not alone here, am I? Training classes come along, family emergencies press us, the car breaks down, the cat gets sick, we get sick, and we get run down and run over by events for which we couldn’t plan. In a word: life.
[I’m making a go of professional writing. It’s weird and frightening and there’s a huge chance I won’t make it. But you can push back against those odds. Be my Patron: $2, $5, or $20 a month! ]
I’m here to tell you it’s okay. It doesn’t feel okay when you’re in the middle of it. Your inner critic lives for those times and has a whole big speech just ready to roll about how you’re pathetic, you aren’t ready for the big time, and how you should probably just give it up and stop disappointing your parents, your housepets, the Pope, and the rest of the world. Besides, if you don’t suck it up, work long into the night, and make yourself sick, what audience you have gathered about your feeble and sickly art will leave you in disgust and tell everyone how awful you are. I know this speech because I’ve heard it more times than I can count. I’m hearing it right now, as I bang out these quick thoughts on my lunch break. I have 30 minutes to get everything down and settled and, trust me, my inner critic6 is all up in my business right now.
I’m ignoring him. I have the time I have. I knew about this training in advance. I knew this newsletter would be relatively short and quick. I knew it would be short and quick and follow last week’s short and quick newsletter. I know some of you will hate this and unsubscribe7.
But some of you — most of you — won’t. Most of you have this same problem from time to time and it bugs you. Most of you think you’re not a “real” artist because you have all this other crap that gets into your schedule and crowds out the time you’re set aside to be your very best creative self.
Guess what? You’re still your best creative self even while you’re sitting in a training class, listening to dry statistics about stress management.8 You’re still an artist even if you don’t get to work on your art for a few days. You’re still an artist even when the inner critic has you convinced you aren’t. It’s okay. You’re okay.
I don’t know who needed this today, but I mean it. You’re still an artist and your life will open up soon enough. Until then, do what you can when you can and don’t panic.9 I’m here if you need. Well, after my class is over and I’ve had a few minutes for my brain not to feel like over-blended rice pudding.10
[Know what will help me have fewer scheduling problems? If I could be a writer all the time. You can help me get there. Seriously! Be my Patron: $2, $5, or $20 a month! ]
What I Wrote Last Week
Or Monday, if I get a hot topic in my head and time opens up during the day. Then I publish Thursday! on Wednesday. Make sense? Great! I’m totally lost.
I’m training to be a peer counselor for my Agency’s CISM team. The irony of this is not lost on me.
Birds sang. Fish swam. We walked freely in the sunshine. We did not fear the sound of a cough. We bought groceries.
You doubt this exists? Oh, my friend. You underestimate the Internet!
We do lock ourselves into creative cycles that we consider obligations. We’re not wrong to do this, except when the pressure we put on ourselves to fulfill those obligations cause an inappropriate level of anxiety. Otherwise, “have to” isn’t a dirty phrase for a creative person!
Who hates me and is a right bastard.
And if you feel that way, you should! I won’t be upset at all. Trust me on this. I have no desire to be just another newsletter you don’t read. The world has way too many of those, right?
I mean “three pieces of white bread toast, slightly burned, with no butter, left on a sidewalk outside Tuscon, AZ for an afternoon in late July” dry.
*brandishes his towel*
Ew.