Someday I want to write a self-help book called What Works for Me. After we are adequately clothed, sheltered, fed, and protected from violence what helps us to flourish is slightly to very different for each person, with obvious commonalities.
Recently I’ve been experiencing some stuff that feels hard. I’m aware (thankfully) that if you’re measuring my hard up against the whole of human experience I’m actually lying on-top of a light and fluffy lemon souffle. But knowing this doesn’t stop me from occasionally feeling like I’m buried under a mountain of sucked-dry olive pits. And its the butt end of winter and the garden’s a mess and… there are so many things I don’t want to think about.
When there are things I don’t want to think about it blocks up my creative life. It certainly blocks up my writing. There are ways of unblocking. I know what mine are, even when I don’t do them. Writing them in list form helps me to remember them.
Here they are:
- Journaling for a set period of time each day on those things I don’t want to think about. Writing without stopping is the best way to go about it. Just getting down all of those first thoughts a la Natalie Goldberg’s brilliant Writing Down the Bones.
- Collaging or any form of visual art that I find fun without caring about the outcome
- Anything combining movement, rhythm and music– the more engaging, the better. For me this is usually Dancemeditation practice, Flamenco, or Funk.
- Water– showers or even better herbal baths or if I’m very lucky swimming in the ocean.
- Sleep– lots of it
- Good sex
- Laughing with friends and loved ones (even if it feels forced/difficult)
- Time spent in nature
- Adventures
- Reading poetry or spiritual texts
- prayer/chanting/recitation
- Experiments– any and all kinds
- Inspiring conversations
Traps: i.e. what I wish would help me because its generally what I think I want to do when I’m stuck, but never actually helps and sometimes-to-often makes it worse. Jennifer Louden calls these ‘shadow pleasures’. Writing them down in a list helps me to avoid them. I’m not judging these activities in and of themselves, mind you– not confessing my sins. Its just that when I do them in an avoidance pattern they are unhelpful.
- Trolling around on the computer
- Reading escapist fiction
- Cleaning beyond the basics of daily maintenance (This seems like it would help, but in my experience it sadly does not.)
- Shopping
- Eating mindlessly
- Worrying (as Clarissa Pinkola Estes says, worrying is like praying for what you don’t want to happen.)
So now I have my lists along with my newest experiment– seeing if they get me out of my latest stuck– and maybe someone else too… Want to play? I know there are hundreds of different lists out there that are all inspiring…
What are some of the things that work for you when you’re stuck? What are your traps?
Hey Kate,
Here are mine. (we have some overlap
What works for me:
1. Writing “morning pages” (Got the idea from The Artist’s Way. Similar to the journaling you describe, I write three long-hand, stream of consciousness pages each morning upon awakening. It isn’t writing. It’s dumping the blah, blah, blah out of my head – whatever I’ve been worrying about. Often (usually a page and half in) something unexpected forms on the paper – I discover how I really feel (as opposed to what I tell myself I ‘should’ feel).
2. Artist Dates (also an idea I took from the Artist way). Once a week, I take my ‘artist’ (my creative self) on a date. “We” do whatever sounds like fun to “us” at the time – usually it takes the form of an excursion – exploring a new neighborhood, an afternoon getaway to the beach, playing with the makeups at Sephora, etc.. etc… Especially now that I am in a relationship, this alone-time fuels me and my creativity.
3. Good sex.
4. Long, hot baths.
5. A homemade, nourishing breakfast.
6. Reading good fiction (especially Fantasy, my favorite genre). For some people, this doesn’t work, but for me, the more I read the better I write.
7. A walk in the woods.
8. A little time alone.
9. Beauty in my environment
10. Feeling loved.
11. Reading poetry or gorgeous prose.
12. Going on adventures.
13. Inspiring conversations.
Traps:
-Frittering away time online.
-continually checking emails, voicemails, texts, etc…
-Facebook
-reading the blogs of authors I admire and beating myself up because I’m not as successful as they are (yet)
-excessively ordering take out
-drama in relationships
-being so hard on myself
This is great Ruth. Thanks so much for sharing them! Inspiring. Let me know if having them in list form helps with list # 1 and avoiding list #2…. (my latest experiment
)
I kinda liked writing it in list form. Reminded me that I’m overdue for an “artist date”!
p.s Kate – how do I subscribe to the RSS feed from your blog? I don’t see the convenient little orange “RSS” button on this site, like on the old blog. I’m trying to link it to my iGoogle homepage. Thanks!