Doing what I love seems like a no-brainer, doesn’t it? When you possess a creative brain it is easy to get distracted, even though it is rarely to things I don’t want to be doing. I am so fortunate to continue to be able to do what I love to do–which is also what I am best qualified to do, despite the fact that I seem uniquely unqualified to make money!
Learning to Be a Creative Soul
I’ve always been really clear on what I wanted to do, but I am often trying to do too much and facing the wrong direction. Sound familiar? I have spent the past four or five years working with my therapist to figure out how to be the creative soul I am, do what I want to do both in my personal and business life, and do important work that my creative brain seeks to do. This has been such a fascinating journey. Odd how you can get into late middle age and still need to work on yourself.
I spend a lot of time in my head, thinking about things, talking myself through things, observing what works and what doesn’t, and always being amazed at how resistant I am to ever doing what I should do: how I can sit down at my desk intending to do one thing, and find myself doing another. Even when I walk myself through exactly what I am going to do in my studio/office, that is rarely how my day goes. It is both exasperating and fun. If you don’t have this happen to you, it probably seems undisciplined and counterproductive. All I can say is that it is and it isn’t. It is just the way I am. I am incredibly productive, and disciplined, yet always undisciplined and not always productive where I should be.
Learning to Harness a Creative Brain
Having a creative brain is both a gift and a curse. Trust me, I am never bored. When I discovered the beauty of routine, my world opened in a huge way. If I make my “shoulds” part of my daily routine, they get done without my ever thinking about them. Dishes, meals, laundry, shopping, tidying, all the things that keep a life moving, all get done without my brain. It is when I get too fully engaged in my brain that I am in trouble. Looking at the piles on my floor doesn’t make me want to tidy them up as it does nearly everywhere else in my home, it gives me more things to think about and almost always leads to me finding something I want to delve into.
So I do what I can. Deadlines help, but I can ignore those when needed. Since I’m always observing, I am one of my favorite subjects. Just now, I sat down to send a pdf to a friend, but forgot that task when I saw what I had been doing on my computer, so looked at that, then wondered what I had said here and typed some more words, and I still haven’t sent the pdf. Okay, now I’ve done that, put away some graph pads, and moved the box of documents I shifted from my desk next to my chair for perusal.
I need to actually get to that box, and the stack of other things I should be doing. So I’m going to leave you with a couple of things and sign off for the weekend.
- Link to an excellent article on asking the wrong questions.
- Link to a profile of Bill Frisell. He is my creative hero, or one of them.
- Read this and associated blog posts if you haven’t already.
If you follow me you know I go to a lot of live performances. I love seeing and hearing how productive other creative brains are, and how they manage to produce.
