A creative hangover cure

The essay I shared last week took a lot out of me. In the aftermath of writing it, I felt used up, worn out, empty.

This week, I needed a break from that kind of work, so I took one.

I thought about not sharing anything today; I’d like you to think that opening an email or clicking on a link from me will be a good use of your time, and the best way to do that is to make sure that I share high-quality writing that has value. I didn’t think I had it in me to create that this week.

Perhaps I haven’t, but I think if I’m going to write honestly about what a small creative life is or might be, it’s good to acknowledge that sometimes it’s not very creative at all. Sometimes, it’s a slog through things that need to get done, or a slog through the aftermath of feelings that intensive creating can bring forth. Or, let’s be honest: sometimes it’s a slog through feelings or other barriers that come with simply being a human trying to figure out how to live in this world.

Early this week, wading through lethargy, I told myself that I would feel better if I did something—anything—from my (never ending)¹ to-do list that would get me out of my head. I landed on finally cleaning up our spare bedroom, which had become more of a junk room than a place to sleep.

I’d been telling myself I would do it for weeks, but I had done nothing but dump more things into it because I was feeling too tired or busy or dejected or meh to put things where they belong.

In short, it looked like this:

Yes, I’d started putting random things on the floor.

Every time I walked by the door, all I wanted to do was close it. Unfortunately, this is where I go to sleep when middle-of-the-night insomnia is working on me, and it was getting hard to safely find my way to the bed in the dark.

Closing the door and walking away was exactly what I wanted to do last Tuesday, but I told myself that all I had to do was one thing. I decided on making the bed, the easiest task I could see. I told myself that if I wanted to quit after that, I could.

Once I made the bed, though, it seemed silly not to do one more thing. I picked another easy one. I took the bear out of the cardboard box and popped all the bubble wrap in the box and threw it away. Then I carried the box out to the garage. Going outside to the garage was kind of nice, so I thought I might as well also take the paintings out there, where they already have a storage place. Then I filled some bags with things to donate and carried them to the car. Before I stopped, I’d even put the rug in the washing machine and swept the floor.

As it turned out, all the things were easy, when I took them just one at a time and gave myself permission to stop whenever I wanted. (This is, of course, true for many creative projects, as well.)

Is it perfect? No. See that pile of things on the corner of the dresser? But it’s now only one pile, and it’s smaller! The bookshelves are still a jumble and I don’t know where to put that sad bear, but there’s some breathing room in there now, and cleaning gave me a little sense of concrete accomplishment.

Words are neither concrete nor physical. Even when they get out of my head and into a place I can share them, they are still ethereal, and I can’t live in the ether all the time. The air there is too thin.

Sometimes, we need to get our hands dirty—literally—and not because we have internalized toxic messages about productivity or the relationship between godliness and cleanliness. We need to because we need to get re-grounded in the here and now, or we need a small win, or we need a way to feel some control in our lives, or we need a place of sensory calm so our nervous systems can rest.

We need a clear runway for the next flight of our minds to take off from.

---

On a closely related note, I highly recommend KC Davis’s How to Keep House While Drowning, with more and better information/strategies for managing a home when your brain, body, or life circumstances are giving you a hard time. Her idea that “care tasks are morally neutral” was life-shifting.

If her book is out of reach, her website outlines her six pillars of “struggle care” and contains lots of practical resources.

---

If my thoughts spark some of your own, please share them in the comments. I like to think of these writings as an invitation to a conversation.

I would especially love to know about how you manage creative work with the demands of living, or how you recharge yourself when you feel empty.

But really, I love to read any responses you have to my words.

If you like this post, please click on the heart ❤️ and/or share it! Doing those things helps more people see it. It also gives me encouragement to keep going. Think of it as throwing some metaphorical spare change into the hat of a street musician.

If you’re not yet a subscriber, I hope you’ll sign up to receive notices of new posts. Everything here is free.

1. I so appreciated getting a new perspective on to-do lists from “The Next Right Thing” by

Josie George