It took me a while to figure out the right words, but I think this best describes where I am right now. At least how I feel.
I’ve been writing most days, but it has been mostly little bits of ideas. Nothing fully formed. Nothing particularly deep or worth sharing. But it feels like there’s at least a seed of something there.
It’s been cold and snowy, so I haven’t been able to get out into the garage to make things. All of my tools and my bench have been pushed to the side to make room for the Jeep when we’ve gotten measurable snow, but then when the snow is gone and the driveway is clear, it’s been too cold to get out there and do any work.
Most evenings we have just been sitting in the living room watching the Big Bang Theory, which has been nice and fun, but not doing much to get me out of this creative malaise.
Abbie has been working on Cricut projects. I’ve mostly been sitting there watching TV.
I have tried to be engaged when watching the show. Paying attention to the way the scenes break down. How different stories are told through each episode. Noticing small comedic vignettes which remind me of some of the filler scenes when I’ve gone to performances at The Second City when I’ve been in Chicago for work. Actively thinking about how the show is put together and why it works so well.
But I haven’t had problems to solve.
One of the things I’ve been thinking and writing about is working on becoming better at recognizing problems. We learn in school how to solve problems that are presented to us, but they are presented in clean, clear, concise ways. “Here is the situation, what do you do?”
But what do you do when the situation is not particularly defined? When you are the one defining the situation?
How do we recognize the problems that we need to solve?
I’ve been thinking about this, all the while stuck in this malaise.
I have a problem - for whatever the reason, I am not creating anything.
I know that there is a problem in that there are not enough whisky flight boards and wine caddies in the world. My solution is to make some, but when it is too cold for me to work in the garage, I need to find a different problem to solve.
This is a prime example of using a system versus a goal. My system is to write. It is not necessarily to publish, but to write.
I noticed that it had been over 10 days since I had posted anything to the blog. And I started telling myself that I was failing. I was dropping the ball. I was somehow not doing something right.
But I was following my system. Maybe not perfectly, but I was still directionally right. I was writing at least a little bit on most days. System success. Goal, not applicable.
So, maybe calling it a creative malaise is putting too much pressure on the result and not enough emphasis on the system. I was definitely having a publishing shortage in terms of what I had posted on the blog, but I can look back at well over 10 pages I’ve written in the past week and half or so, getting ideas out of my mind and onto the page. Some of those ideas have made their way into this post.
The way out of a creative malaise is to do the work. If you are having trouble writing something worth publishing, write something that isn’t worth publishing. Then something else. And something else. Until something clicks.
I wasn’t even writing much in my journal this week, until I started writing about how I was having a hard time writing. I deconstructed what was happening, and then I was on a roll, and this post was born in my mind.
I’ve been able to connect some of the dots from things I’ve been working on in the past few weeks and begin to put something together. The work I’ve done is still there. Maybe something else will come from it at some point. Maybe it’ll just be this. Who knows?
It doesn’t even matter. What matters is doing the work.
If you’re feeling stuck, write something terrible today. It might just trigger something in you tomorrow, or the next day, or...you get the point.