Engaged Creativity in Real Life: How to Feel Connected When Life is Happening

This topic has been on my mind to distraction lately; not least because I’ll be struggling with this idea of staying engaged with my creativity as a new mom heading back to full time work in the next few weeks. It’s all well and good for creative people, coaches, and devotees to talk about creativity as a necessity, a right, a wonder we all get to delight in, preferably daily. It is another thing entirely to feel that engagement and commitment to personal creativity when our families, work, and life requires so much of our time, focus, and planning. Where do we fit it all in? It can start to feel like creative time is just another thing on the never ending checklist, right up there with working out and eating healthy; who has the time?, all while being super mom or dad, a top notch employee or boss, and managing the plethora of external relationships, the fridge contents, and bathroom supplies.

Today I want to tour through where I am and the thoughts that can come up when we are in transitional and busy periods of our lives, how we can combat these less than helpful dialogues, what I want my creative life to look like integrated into my reality, and how I plan to do that in the hopes that my roadmap may be helpful to you too!

The Struggle of NOT Creating

We all know it can be a struggle to do something, but not getting the space or time to do something can also be a struggle. This is so common, and I want you to take that judgmental inner critic, self deprecating voice, diabolical goblin off your shoulder and stop the guilt trips, negotiations, anxious reasoning, and all other negative self talk right now. I’m doing the same! The reality for most of us is work and family. Those two things fill our day. The world dictates what should be our priority, and it isn’t always wrong. We love our families, hopefully we love our work. We always want to do well. The problem is we sacrifice all other aspects of ourselves that fall outside of the role of parent and employee, which leads to, among other things we think are more important, creativity completely getting thrown out of our lives. That is, until our traitorous minds are ready to berate us. 

In terms of creativity, when we don’t engage with it it leads us to feel two things: imposter syndrome and failure; the latter, especially when we’ve decided to commit to it this time, to prioritize it, to make schedules and routines, and take that step to protect our creative time and brought others in to help us, is really painful. Imposter syndrome tells us that when we don’t create it’s because we’re not real creatives, we’re not committed, we’re not what we say we are. This is untrue. We are who we are, regardless of what we are actively doing. I am a writer even when I don’t blog for several months, even though I don’t have a published novel, even though I haven’t actually written anything for my novel in months, nor have I opened it to edit. Stepping away from or being “unable” to engage with our creativity for a period of time is normal and does not mean we have failed. It means we need to change how we do it, where we do it, when we do it. But it does not mean we are failures. 

We have finite time. We have rich full lives, of which creativity is a part, even when we don’t touch it for a while, it is there, it is within us, and we will act on it again. We are evolving and learning and growing. Those things are painful. It hurts, we struggle. It is proof we value that thing, that creativity. We yearn for it, we want it, but we don’t see a way. There are a whole host of reasons for this, many of which are societal and personal narratives we have learned or inherited that we must face and choose to change. We want to live an aligned life. Whether we recognize it or not, creativity may be part of that alignment, and so the struggle that arises when we intentionally or unintentionally starve that facet is real and painful, but we can move through it, and we can integrate it back into our lives, as full as they already are.        

Combat components

How do we fight through the struggle of not creating? How do we bring ourselves back into alignment amidst our daily reality, our responsibilities, our myriad of loves? I have a few tips that I plan to implement in my own life as I transition into being a full time working mom. I am finding the idea of this transition painful - painful to be away from my baby, to “miss” moments I currently have the privilege to be part of and witness every single day from the day he was born. I am also filled with excitement at the prospect of stretching that working muscle again. There is also trepidation in what I will lose from my creative practice, my journaling, my little self care habits in exchange for the full time paycheck and getting to be a present parent when I am home. 

Really we are talking about combating the guilt and shame of not only not creating, but also choosing to create despite our pull to mother, to work, to serve, to be available at all times. I talk a lot about these three tools. They require extensive tailoring to your own self and situation, but they are the most practical components required to combat the guilt and the shame of not creating and choosing to create. It’s important to remember that living in alignment, living with integrity, and being generous to yourself and filling your cup teaches your family, your children how to care for themselves, respect other’s time, and to take their own interests seriously. By allowing yourself to create you are essentially giving those around you permission to do the same in their own way; maybe that’s something you never had, or don’t think you deserve. 

• Grace: Give yourself space to breathe. To accept pauses in your creative journey. To step away from responsibilities for a moment to be generous to yourself and create. Grace is so beautiful because it is all encompassing. There is no right way. Grace says you are not a failure, you are not an imposter, you are not stuck, you are not selfish. You are human, you are deserving, you are tenacious. You get to try again tomorrow. 

  
  

• Routine: This really is the holy grail of structure. It is not a schedule; there are no date and time stamp checkpoints to meet. There are only ritual routines, for example: I write my blog for an hour at night after my child is in bed before I go to bed for as many days as it takes for the blog to be done. I read for half an hour before I go to bed. Before I read I wash my face and do my skin care routine. These things do not happen at the same time every night, sometimes they don’t happen on an off day. The order, the structure, the ritual is what matters not the time it happens at.

  
  

• Mindset: The determining factor of success - however you define it. You cannot have the previous two tools working for you if you do not have mindset locked down. Negative self talk, the guilt/shame spiral, scheduling separation of your creativity from your daily life, all of these things are a failure mindset. Integrating creativity into your life is messy. Invite your kids to colour while you journal, have family reading before bedtime, do a puzzle at the kitchen table, talk about your practice if it is and needs to be solitary away from the kids and partner, breathe life into it. Believe in what you’re doing, adopt positive self talk - I love to journal my way through it. It takes time, it takes repeating the process over and over, it takes noticing the self deprecation, the negativity in your head and flipping the script. It can be done, and you and your creativity will thrive.       

Looking forward

I can’t speak for your creative practice. I can’t tell you how to move forward and integrate creativity into your life. I can’t dictate a plan of attack. Only you can do that. What I can do is share what I plan to do, and hopefully remember to write an update to see how it’s going to give you an idea of what it could look like. I always start with identifying what I want and work backwards from there to see how to get it. 

First and foremost I want to be and spend the time I have being present with my little one. He is my number one priority; any parent can empathize. I have had the privilege of taking my full year of maternity leave (Canadian!) to spend time with him in this first year of his life and my motherhood. It has been enchanting and difficult and blessed and exhausting. Knowing what I will not be able to be present for going back to work full time, and with a commute on top of that is heartbreaking when I think about it. But here is the mindset needing to be shifted. He will get to spend days with his Nana who loves him and will give him the next best thing in the world to mommy. He will get to spend the evening bonding with his dad in a beautiful way. And then I will be home to kiss him goodnight, maybe do his bath, sing him to sleep and every single morning I will get to see his bright smiling face and give him that first hug of the day. The days I do get to be home with him will be pure joy. I am his momma. And I know that once he goes to bed and no longer needs me and I can step away without that mom guilt, I will be journaling and writing and reading and filling my cup so I can be the best mom for him every single day. 

Next, I want to delight in my full time work again and revel in the creativity my profession offers. I am a Canadian certified pedorthist. I make custom made foot orthotics, fit compression, bracing and orthopedic footwear. I love my work. I love my profession. It gives me the chance to infuse my daily work life with creativity from crafting with my hands to problem solving lower limb pain. I get to go back to an amazing team of individuals and train new faces. My purpose has expanded with motherhood, but I am not only a mother. I am also my profession, this work. I will delight in it once again. This work is all about connection. At its heart, that is the purpose of creativity whether it’s to connect with others or ourselves. Connection is so very human.   

Lastly, I desire to continue my creative practices. Journaling, blogging, writing fiction, movement. These are all critical pieces of who I am and how I process everything in my life. I cannot simply push them aside in favour of these other wonderful parts of who I am. I know that I cannot devote equal time or resources to this final piece as I must to the above. However, I have a strategy to maintain my creative practice amidst the transition and the time constraints that will come with a new schedule. Instead of trying to do it all every day I am going to chunk up my creative practice so I can safely engage with it in a healthy and sustainable way. There is no clocking out in motherhood, there is no getting out of my full time work - and I don’t truly wish to - but there are limited hours in a day. I have limited energy resources. Yet I cannot do either of the above to the best of my ability if I am not taking care of myself. I do that through creativity.  

Chunking up the creative practice

We all feel the pressure of fitting it all in. It’s simply not possible. Acknowledging that fact is freeing in the extreme. This is where we practice grace, this is where we dig into routine, this is the mindset we must employ if we want to find satisfaction, meaning, delight in our daily lives without submitting to overwhelm and burnout. I plan on holding burnout at baby chunking up my creative practice to fit into my life. I will not endeavour to do all of the things every day; that would be self sabotage. I will journal each night before bed. I will read for twenty minutes each night before bed. I will complete one blog post per week between Thursday - Monday. I will edit my novel during nap times on my weekends. I will draft new books on Sunday nights. By chunking these things up, balancing consumption and creation, sectioning time and days to do different things, I will always be able to engage with my creativity, check in with it, have that touchstone moment, but I can step back, put it away and focus on my work and my family without guilt one way or another. There is space in life for all of it. They are not mutually exclusive. They are all pieces to building my authentic, full, beautiful life.