Storm Times

How do we find the pathway back to the Artist's River and our Creative Soul when Life decides to kick our backsides?

This is something I’ve asked myself a lot over the years. Because - it would seem - Life takes great pleasure in testing my resolve.

Maybe you have had this experience too?

One minute we are carefree little artists,

pootling about in a phase of goodness. The days are sun dappled, luck is flowing and life is on our side. We have bountiful time and space to make, create, draw inspiration and travel to places that trigger ideas and new things. We are connected to our Artistic Self and if not, we are full of inclination to be so ... but then things shift.

Stormy weather blows in. The skies go from blue to opaque grey. The winds pick up and the crows caw, battered and ragged black against the clouds.

Things change.

Tides turn.

Life gets hard.

You break up with your partner. Your parents get sick. The cost of everything soars upwards and you need to take a second job, which leaves you no time or energy to do anything but fall into bed at the end of each day. Someone close to you dies. Exhaustion takes hold. Your focus becomes calcified. You stop making art and start surviving the storm (and scrolling on social media and listening to the doom of the news and eating too much crap and drinking too much caffeine).

When all of this is stormy weather blows in, the idea of staying connected to our wild artist Self can feel ridiculous, impossible, futile even.

Instead, many of us will plug into the Over-Culture's advise to push harder, work harder, work longer, get stronger to hold the strain ... BE A WARRIOR ... and yes, that can work for a while.

But over time, if the storm doesn’t stop raging, even warriors start to erode.

They begin to dream of more artistic times, gentler times, peace times. Times when there was time to make things. And that's when the question arises ... Just How Do We Get Back?

Here are three ways:

SIMPLIFY: Reduce, cut away, strip back until you return to the essential facets of your life. When life is storming, you don’t need to add extra pressure onto yourself. There’s no need to do more, be more, have more, further exacerbating the crazy winds that are battering you. Instead, give yourself permission to put everything down and focus on just what needs to be done today.

Just today.

REST: In the gaps between the work and the necessity, rest. By rest, I mean do leisurely things that require no dead lines, pressure or internal angst. Knit. Read. Doodle. Colour in. Value yourself enough to sink into simple being - not doing. Gradually, your depleted energy will begin to generate again. Once you start to feel the energy back in your bones and mind, have the self discipline to store this energy in your body and resist the urge to spurge it, squander it or give it away. Let it build. Let it grow.

MAKE SMALL ACTS OF ART: Small art is not big art. Small art is a game that you play between you and yourself, with tiny acts of creativity as the art form. Make a cup of tea like it’s healing medicine. Compose a text to a friend and choose some words that sound like poetry. Listen to birdsong and absorb the notes like instruments in a natural orchestra. Thread tiny acts of art into your day, for no purpose other than the joy of it.

These small acts will act as bread crumb trails. They will begin to rebuild your playful relationship with the artistic self. They’ll remind you that YOU’RE in this storm with YOU. That you’re not alone. Your power to create comes with you wherever you go and as you gradually inch your way forward in a micro-artistic-direction, your life is simplified and your energy increases, you’ll find that you’ll soon be back on track to your Wild Artist River and your vital Creative Soul.