One realization I’ve made this year is how interconnected my creativity is to my physicality. My daily morning raw dog walks are where ideas formulate, when lines of poems drop in, when insights come, and connections are made. Hiking in nature is where I’m most open to metaphors in life, remembering stories and creating bigger connections to life lessons.
Five months of this year have been dedicated to two huge surgeries. I’ve had to relearn how to walk twice. Two rounds of being on a walker, then a crutch, then a cane. Daily mobility and weekly physical therapy. Working through niggles and pain and adjusting my activity to meet my recovery needs.
Needless to say, it’s been rough.
And my creativity has taken a huge hit.
Monthly meetings with my fellow creatives left me feeling like I was stuck in a rut. I’d listen to them share about their fun 100 Days of Making, workshops they had led, and when my turn came to share, I felt sheepish because, to be honest? Inspiration was gone. Motivation to create had vanished.
I wanted to shift things. So I had to start with something really, really simple. Make a newspaper blackout poem every day. A simple creative act that took <10 minutes, looking at the newspaper to make a simple poem.
The first newspaper blackout poem I made. Sometimes the exact message you need to hear is the one that emerges…
Sometimes you just have to start small. But I know and trust that this momentum will build. I can already feel myself (and my creativity) slowly coming back to life.