It’s the first Saturday of the month, and for lack of a better title, I’m going to go with what I’ve got. Let’s talk creativity.

I can’t promise that these posts will always be cohesive thoughts every month (like the post that started it all; I set the bar high there!). I will try my best, but I find my thoughts particularly jumbled today about all the things that I want to share. I’m going to try and focus today on Goals, Grace, and Fun.

First, let’s talk goals. I’m a goal setter. People always ask me “how do you get so much done?” I set goals. That can sometimes sound boring to creative types (writers and artists alike), but bear with me for a minute. 

When I was a teenager I read some boring business article about setting goals (weird, I know) that said the difference between those who succeeded and those who didn’t was (you guessed it) setting goals. It’s all fine and dandy to be a dreamer (and I was a serious head-in-the-clouds-dreamer as a teenager), but if you want those dreams to come to reality you stop saying “I’ll do it someday” and you do it “now.”

This really became a thing for me when I was in college. I had so many deadlines I didn’t know how to get it all done. And my initial reaction was OVERWHELM. Until I sat down with a calendar and mapped out the dates, the time it would take to get “final projects” done, etc. I remember (in the days before there were cell phones y’all) carrying around a piece of paper in my pocket at all times that had every appointment, assignment, and obligation on it and getting teased for it. I had color coded different things with highlighters (assignments were one color, appointments another, etc.) AND I had used shapes to differentiate my work. Yet I got every assignment done for every class. It was my crazy system, but it worked for me.

This would go on to become a thing for me. I have multiple “old school” calendars now and I map out weekly goals, as well as monthly and yearly goals. Though to be honest, some of those are more nebulous now. I say “yearly goals” but it’s in my head, not on paper. And that gets me to my point.

Last year I taught Kindergarten full time for the first time since the pandemic. I was terrified. It’s not my sweet spot for grades I teach (I will always love teaching 1st grade because I love teaching littles to read). BUT I was also exhausted. I’m not young any more and dealing with 18 littles that need to learn every social emotional skill in the book requires patience that is slightly out of my reach (though I did well and was thrilled I could do it). I had NO idea I would be that exhausted and creativity fell by the wayside as a result (because I kept falling asleep on the couch!). It takes copious amounts of energy and I’m already running low at my age!

SO this year I was determined to set a “realistic” creative goal of just sketching daily. If you know me, you know I struggle with daily creativity. A large part of that is because teaching actually takes more creativity to handle than most people realize. You can only create SO much. BUT I was rolling with the creative goals pretty steadily until … October.

Before I get to what happened next, let me back track to tell you about a 12-week book study I did. I’m sure you’ve heard of The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. Almost everyone has at this point (it’s in its 30th Anniversary edition!). I had heard of it for years, and swore I had read it before. It turns out that I had not! I had read a different book of her’s! So when a teaching friend (now retired) suggested we do a book study of it (and it kept cropping up over the summer), I said why not? However, I admit I immediately balked when I saw that she was proposing a TWELVE WEEK book study. Starting it at the end of my summer meant that it would go into the start of my school year (and the start is always one of the busiest times of the year with work and very little else!). BUT I knew my friend was no task master, so I committed to it. And wow!

Y’all, if you haven’t read this book ever, and you’re a creative of any sort, DO IT. Yes, it says it’s supposed to help people who are blocked, and I thought “but I’m not blocked, I’m writing and drawing, etc. regularly” (just like many other people I would bet). I cannot begin to tell you how much it clarified things for me. I had SO many epiphanies about myself as a creative I was blown away. I’ll save some of that discussion for another day. The reason I bring this up is because this is where we get into the Grace side of things. I’ll explain that a bit better in a second.

You see, at the end of October my school was told that it was on the chopping block for closure next year. My husband and I both teach at the same school right now and our district is struggling financially (like schools everywhere). We had 6 weeks to write letters, testify, hold signs outside the school for traffic (to make ourselves visible), etc. Long story short, we stood up for our school and that tanked my creative goals. Nothing creative happened in November and my goals came to a screeching halt. The good news? Our school board heard the testimony of all the teachers at our school and voted to NOT close our school. YAY!

BUT we were exhausted. Besides the normal teaching exhaustion, there was future uncertainty (and even the kiddos felt it and were acting out a bit). It was mentally draining and creativity even after that final verdict was a no-go. We were back to survival mode.

That was when I heard a podcast by Andy J. Pizza that had me chuckling at the irony. 

Now ordinarily I’m not a podcast person at all. I can’t attend to them for some reason. I love audiobooks (fiction primarily), but I cannot listen to people talking. My brain wanders! But his Creative Peptalk podcast came across my radar recently and it felt like a sign. He was doing an episode about Creative Hygiene and I thought “let’s see what he has to say.” I laughed when he mentioned The Artist’s Way, but then he mentioned Maslow’s Hierarchy and I took notice!

Educators talk about Maslow’s Hierarchy ALL the time. See this pyramid picture? We all know that if a students’ most basic needs (hunger, etc. at the bottom level of the pyramid) aren’t met, they will not learn (or climb the pyramid to be able to achieve academic success/learn and grow). Andy talked about it in a creative perspective. If you’re not sleeping and/or taking care of YOUR most basic needs, why would you expect to be creative (i.e., one of those levels at the top of the pyramid). *lightbulb!*

This was a moment of synchronicity for me: The Artist’s Way meets Maslow’s Hierarchy. Julia Cameron talks constantly about how our inner artist is really just a child and we need to appease it. We need to give it art supplies and let it play (i.e., The Artist’s Date), we need to give it time to talk (i.e., Morning Pages), and we need to take care of it. If you don’t do these things you cannot be creative! And in order to nurture our inner child, we need to give ourselves grace, take a break, and “fill the well” (did you know she coined that term?).

This is where I struggle. As a goal setter, I can get caught up in checking things off my increasingly long to-do list. I’ve gotta work on my portfolio, I’ve gotta submit my manuscripts, I’ve gotta, I’ve gotta, I’ve gotta. BUT you cannot dip into an empty well. You’ve got to take time to have fun.

Last weekend, I worked on a fun little art project. I had a wild hair and I wanted to see what I could create. I sat down with some cardboard, POSCA markers, and some glittery acrylic paint. And dear God I loved it! The process AND the result. I can’t share pictures just yet (as Christmas presents haven’t been entirely delivered yet), but suffice it to say that I had fun.

And that brings me to my focus for this entry (sorry if it’s ramble-y and long): set your Goals, but give yourself Grace when they aren’t accomplished, and remember to have FUN (in whatever way that looks for you as a creative). I know a writer that writes a daily haiku as a warm up practice to write his mystery novels. I know an illustrator who loves to pain the patterns of light on her workshop floor every day (on paper) as a creative warm up. These things don’t necessarily have purpose (they won’t be published or printed), but they serve a higher goal: filling the well.

I hope you found something useful in this post and perhaps even something new. Who knows what I will share next month. 🙂