It’s a rather belated happy new year from me, in fact we are already nearly a quarter through the year. It was not my intention to only just now be touching base here. I started 2023 feeling fresh, full of plans and ideas, brimming with enthusiasm. Then, rather predictably, life happened. An exciting opportunity with very tight deadlines presented itself, which I grabbed with both hands. Unfortunately this meant temporarily dropping a lot of the other ideas I had. I was still finishing a commission, working on orders and weaving like crazy! So my best laid plans fell away and I’m just now picking them up and dusting them off.
One thing that has been sorely missing from life lately is flow. In all senses of the word. I have felt stuck, wading through the mud. The bright days of spring are beckoning, but my mind was still deep in winter hibernation. The creative juices had run rather dry and I hadn’t had that sweet state of flow for some time now. The one where your heart is alight with joy and your mind is fully absorbed by what you’re working on. Of course, the stress of worrying about not finding flow only increases the weight of the burden. A downward spiral if there ever was one!
Perhaps it is inevitable when you create a business around your creativity, that said creativity becomes scarce. The financial pressure weighs heavily on my ability to engage properly and find that state of flow. It had been months since I made something just for me, something from my heart and spirit. When you’ve become used to analysing sales and thinking about how you will market a handmade item, it is hard to stop and just ‘play’. I’m worried about wasting precious resources: materials and time. It is difficult to embrace the creative path, which always passes the ‘this is rubbish’ phase before reaching the ‘this is amazing’ phase. Creating beautiful, inspiring work and running a business unfortunately use two very different sides of the brain. I can get into business mode, to think analytically about my work and websites, marketing, SEO, finances and all the gubbins that a business owner needs to think about. Or I can think about colour, shape, form and conceptual thoughts. But the meeting and blending of these two, I find difficult to manage. Not to mention the general life clutter and hectic-ness that comes with running a household and having two children!
This feeling of creative block, combined with some intense working hours (staying up until midnight, up at six the next morning) to get work made for the previously mentioned tight deadline, reached its head a few weeks ago. Determined to break through this creative drought and find my zest for making again, I finally allowed myself some time for creative play. Weaving is my specialism but I wanted to try something different. Something quicker, that didn’t take days to set up, that I could dive into straight away. What is more intuitive and playful than simply working with fabric and a needle? I found myself rummaging in my basket of fabric offcuts and naturally dyed samples from last summer, playing with colour combinations and shapes. Creativity came flooding in, the infinite possibilities of the fabric alive in my mind. I started piecing patchwork patterns on the machine, but it wasn’t until I started hand stitching back into them that I felt a quiet calm come over me. A simple running stitch gave the solace I needed to think about my work again. I became a little obsessed with the feeling it was giving me, silence from the business of an overthinking mind. I was also enjoying the portability of stitching, not being ties to the loom! A few days later, I had a few different mini quilts started. Small expressions of ideas and thoughts, with no correlation to each other in terms of colours or style. By the end of the week, I was sketching new ideas for weaves! I’d successfully broken the dam, letting the sweet flow of creativity in once more.
It feels fitting to be sending this letter out on the first day of British Summer Time. Although it is gloomy and rainy here in Herefordshire today, the arrival of spring and longer days always fills me with optimism and happiness. What better time to celebrate feeling creative and excited for the rest of the year!
Hopefully this letter provides a little hope for anyone struggling with creative block. There's no easy fix, and creativity will always ebb and flow like a tide. But sometimes you find yourself in a low tide that takes a long time to come back in. Instead of waiting helplessly on the shore, you can take a step towards it, meeting in the middle. Picking up the needle and thread, brought me closer to the flow of the tide.
Finding Flow
you make such great points here! working with three of my creative clients recently (I'm a business coach) I have 'prescribed' blocks of time to 'play' in their weekly plans - or as one of them decided to name them 'NFA days' (no effing idea!) because she wanted to just go into the studio with no expectation and no firm idea of what the 'output' would be. A recognition and defending of the idea that time to play and mess is vital to staying relevant, happy and creative. You are right that we need to get into different mental states to run a creative business, time to do the 'business stuff' for sure, but time to play and also time to do things like make to sell, prepare workshops, rinse and repeat type stuff. Great post x