Creative Constipation
Backed up and in desperate need of creative fiber
I, Flo, am currently stuck in an ebb.
This is not my first rodeo (creatively constipated ebb) but it always feels like it.
Have you ever had so many ideas pile up inside you, you can’t get them out?
Have you ever been so full of creativity that your output is empty?
It makes me feel like I’m going insane, which is as frustrating as it is annoying. And definitely further delays my process. I’m in my own way between the work I want to do. I look over my shoulder it’s me holding myself back.
What if I’ve permanently run dry and lost the creative juice because I didn’t honor The Muses in time, ultimately proving my unworthiness of being a vessel any longer? No more gifts, no more messages, no more ideas. Not Enough.
Ebbs have many origins and their own forms. Sometimes it’s just Time, like ding-a-ling t’is the season. Sometimes it’s conditional to an individual, other times in relation to the collective. In a world violently and painfully changing, we need conscious and thoughtful creativity more than ever. Through upheavals and instability, we need somewhere to land amongst beauty, love, truthfulness, and connection.
Art and Artists are integral in our invisible web of humanity. Every artwork has its own degree of effect with its own audience, collectors, resonant witnesses. Sometimes it’s only seen by its creator and that still counts.
I am so guilty of forgetting this.
All. The. Damn. Time. I just wrote that every creation is needed in our universe while contradictingly thinking, ‘Not mine though.’ Yikes, Flory. I knooowwwuh. I’m working on it in my own time and pace, I swear. I share this not to be publicly deprecating but to honestly shed light on it for myself and maybe or maybe not you— ultimately recognizing how it is incompatible with my values that I am committed to embodying.
Ebbs cause damage when the heart hardens instead of softening further, when I don’t fight the illusion that it’s all futile… when I assume my perspectives aren’t significant. I am so wrong. The real reality is that possibilities are endless. It’s also OK to have forgotten. This happens when I have my eyes closed and turned away from myself. This is both an instance of human experience in our spiritual being on the earthly plane and admittance I am so hard on myself.
How do I get creative fiber back in the system ASAP?
It’d be so wonderful if I had a recipe to concoct every time I’m in an ebb, but alas the creative process and life deserve much more dimensionality. In the parallelism of constipation and fiber, sitting down for a 5-course meal is not the first nor wisest reaction when your tummy hurts. What does often help is understanding the cause of the symptom, followed typically by going back to the basics of what is nutritious and supportive. Tummy trouble shows us we may need to add/subtract/modify to get things going/flowing again.
Traditional Chinese Medicine has always understood and honored digestion occurring beyond the physical plane. Ingestion and digestion include the unseen and immeasurable: cognition, emotion, sensory stimuli, lived experience. I notice with flinching clarity how much my internal attention for Me, Myself, & I impacts my wellbeing and translates into levels of physical health all the way through to what I do, especially how I show up for my art and making. I become more and more attuned. Once in a while on travels, it’s only natural we might cramp in adjusting to new cuisine or environments… tummy trouble is not only physical, is it?
Several decades’ variety worth of ebbs later, I recognize each ebb might be an initially undesired gift waiting to be received. After all, some of the most magical parts of my life have been unexpected. It is a signal about my (re)connection and lack of. When I have capacity, I create. When I can’t create it’s always because I do not have capacity. So instead I can pause. Inquire. Tend. Rest. Live.
Clarity is powerful and power requires energy.
Energy is directed by attention.
When awareness and accountability are missing in attention, it is easily drained away. Discerning between these two is paramount to the differences between surviving and thriving.
I take a deep inhale. I sigh out the insidious, heavy conditioning that pressures me to just produce quick, quicker, quickly. The ebb is not a negative opposite to flow after all.
It is a container for reorienting. It is an essential transfer of energy that precedes momentum. There would be no ocean wave without friction. Oh.
It turns out ebbs feel like creative constipation a lot because of the same inertia before the motion. This is an opportunity. An opportunity to choose. Digestion may not be a consciously-dictated function but ingestion is.
If I can be creatively constipated there will eventually be a time and place where I have creative diarrhea too, right?
(We can stick to ‘Creative Ebbs and Flow’.)