Dealing with creative blocks

Photo by Morgane Perraud on Unsplash

This week, I’m just including the essay portion of my newsletter because I’ve been spending so much time zoning out that I haven’t done enough reading, writing, or listening to make solid recommendations. I’m working on recovering my energy now, so next week should be back to the regular format.

---

This week has been a real struggle when it comes to writing, so I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about creative blocks and how they affect me. I learned about the concept of creative blocks earlier this year when I worked through The Artist’s Way: A Course In Discovering and Recovering Your Creative Self by Julia Cameron. A creative block refers to any person, feeling, or thing that gets in the way of your creativity and one of the big goals of The Artist’s Way is to remove as many of these blocks as possible.

For some people, creative blocks might be family or friends who don’t seem to support your creative practice. For others, they might come from spending too much time and energy on people who drain your energy instead of focusing on spending time with those who energize you. Many people find that they have habits that keep them from fully exercising their creative muscles, such as drinking too much, getting too little sleep, or spending too much time on their phones.

When I first started working through The Artist’s Way, I was able to remove many of my creative blocks. I had a hard time getting up early enough to do my morning pages and write in the mornings, so I moved my phone across the room in order to force myself to get out of bed to turn off my alarm in the morning. I was struggling to work through some deep emotional trauma that came up during the course, so I made an appointment to get onboarded with a new therapist.

I made quick work of dealing with most of these blocks, but without consistent attention, those blocks can be replaced by new ones or even return. My group finished working through The Artist’s Way a few weeks ago, and since then I’ve been struggling to focus on my creative goals. I’ve barely written over the past couple of weeks, my to-do list at home and at work keeps growing due to my lack of focus, and I’m just tired.

In reflecting on the reasons for this, I’ve identified a few of the biggest creative blocks I’m dealing with right now. I usually like to either write or talk my way into solutions, so I’m going to use the rest of this essay to attempt to write myself into a solution for these blockages and to hold myself accountable by putting myself on blast on Al Gore’s internet for everyone to see.

1: Schedule changes - At the beginning of summer, I was getting up at 6 AM to walk my dogs because it was the only time of day when the sun was out and the temperature was tolerable. During the past few weeks, it has been over 100 degrees during the day, and even in the mornings, it has been too hot for me and my old dogs. Now that I’m getting back into it after a few weeks off, I’ve found that the sun isn’t rising until around 6:30 AM, which means I need to rearrange my morning routine. What I need to do is continue to get up at 6 AM and write my morning pages first instead of walking the dogs first. What I’ve been doing is getting out of bed, hitting snooze on my alarm, and falling back into bed for 20-30 minutes. I think the fix for this is tied to dealing with the second big block I’m dealing with, which is…

2: Lack of sleep - I’m one of those people who is chronically tired. I’m assuming that there is some underlying genetic cause for this because I’ve been this way my entire life, or maybe I’m just a low-energy person. That being said, I feel best when I get 9-10 hours of sleep, which rarely happens anymore. When I don’t get at least 8 hours of sleep, I wake up exhausted, which inevitably leads to a post-work nap, followed by another night of staying up too late. I’m getting in bed around 9:30 PM, but I end up staying up on my phone or reading until 11:30 or midnight, which feeds back into the vicious cycle. What I really need to be doing is putting my phone away by 9:30 PM so I can do some reading before bed and give my medications a while to kick in so I can sleep by 10:30 PM at the latest. This still only puts me at 7.5 hours of sleep, but that’s close enough to 8 hours that the impact on my energy level is negligible.

3: Spending too much energy on crazymakers - In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron frequently writes about crazymakers, those people who require so much attention that it drains your energy for almost anything else. For the past few weeks, my therapy sessions have focused almost solely on these people because addressing their needs takes so much emotional and mental energy. The biggest thing I’m working on here is taking a pause before responding to communication from them so I can breathe and make sure I’m not responding in a way that is going to make the situation worse since I’ve found that my extremely direct manner of communication tends to have that impact, even if it’s not my intent. I’m also trying to remember that not responding to or engaging in a toxic conversation is actually a response and one that will preserve my energy instead of leaving me feeling burned out.

4: Spending too much time on my phone - I, unfortunately, have the exact personality type that game creators were targeting when they created all the weird diner/hospital/store games that exist these days. My brain craves the tiny hit of dopamine that comes from beating a level and it’s even better when you barely beat the clock. I’ll spend hours playing stupid games on my phone while trying to zone out instead of doing what I set out to do. For example, I played the same stupid game for THREE HOURS this morning instead of writing this newsletter, even though I know I’m going to be busy this evening. As a result, I finally chose the nuclear option - the timed phone safe. I would love to pretend that I’m the type of person who can just flip their phone over and avoid looking at it for an hour, so locking it up is the only option for now. So far, it has worked, since I’m currently writing this, but I need to be consistent about locking it up so I can spend my time on what I actually want to be doing.

5: Unhealthy food choices - I don’t drink much these days, but I still make my fair share of unhealthy choices when it comes to eating. I order delivery way too frequently and eat what I’m craving without considering how it makes my body feel, which is usually not great. I’m trying to be mindful of how much and what I eat by tracking my meals on Noom, but it’s too easy to just skip a day (or two or three) and eat whatever I want, especially on the weekends. I’m also trying to add more healthy foods to my diet first instead of focusing on cutting things.

Do any of these creative blocks resonate with you? Or perhaps you have your own unique blocks that you are working through. Either way, I hope this encourages you to think through what’s really holding you back if you’re struggling like I have been.

- Molly