At the end of January I gave a talk at a local women’s empowerment conference about the importance of creativity in our lives, regardless of whether it is our career or not. In fact, I’d argue that it needn’t be our careers. Creating for creating’s sake is a beautiful endeavor. I hate that our capitalist society implies that everything we do must make money to be valuable. Sometimes the most valuable part of my day is working on something that will never sell. And I am okay with that.
I truly believe that our creative pursuits are paramount to our self-care and self-expression. Honoring our creativity allows us to show up in our relationships, work, and communities as our full selves. Creativity allows us to make meaning of our world (macro) and our lives (micro). Creativity benefits our mental health, brain health, and more.
The group of women attending my presentation were predisposed to buy into that message — that’s why they were there. We dug in together on how to find our creative purpose, set a creative intention for 2024, and started making a plan to honor that creative goal. When I asked this group of women what their primarily obstacle was to creating, the majority said…time.
Ah, time. The one thing we have yet to figure out how to make more of.
Between day jobs and parenting and caring for older parents and spouses and relationships and volunteering and errands and cooking and exercising and commuting and whatever other nonnegotiables exist on our calendars, it can be really easy to determine that we just don’t have enough time for creating.
There are times in life when that is undeniably true. I have experienced them. When there are literally not enough hours in the day to appease the demands on my time because of grief or illness or moving or sick kids or other things take priority. I get it. Sometimes we do not, physically, have the time.
But when it’s just our normal day-to-day demands and drudgery? Do we honestly not have time?
First, let’s let go of the notion that time means hours or days or entire weekends to spend in cabins in the woods like Thoreau living deliberately (while his mother brought him lunch and clean clothes, by the way). I wish.
For the sake of this conversation, I mean 30 minutes in the morning before the kids have to be up or 10 minutes after dinner or those wasted minutes waiting for the carpool line to start moving.
In other words, can you identify a few cracks in your day?
An exercise that helped me identify not only my cracks but bigger swaths of time I could take advantage of was using a time tracker (I like Toggl, but there are lots of them out there. You could also simply write down what you’re doing on a notepad or in your notes app on your phone).
I logged every minute of my day from when I woke up until I went to bed for a week. And let me tell you, anytime I wrote down “Checking Instagram” or playing Wordle, I was chagrined. While I still check Instagram and play Wordle every day (family bragging rights are on the line), I am now more intentional about it because creating is a priority for me.
Tracking my time gave me insight into what I am doing when and how often. So instead of checking Instagram during lunch AND during carpool AND during commercials or whatever at night when supposedly watching something “with” my husband, I make choices. I check Insta in 5 minute increments. I bring a book to carpool or listen to a podcast instead of picking up my phone. I put the phone away in the evening knowing there is nothing there that can’t wait until tomorrow and fill that time with either creating or refilling my creative well.
You may decide to now only check Instagram in the carpool line so you can spend the 20 minutes you normally scrolled in bed at night now sketching something beautiful you saw during the day or journaling or writing or whatever. You could force cracks of time into your day by doing a challenge — taking a photo of a flower/tree/sunset/whatever every day for a year on your iPhone, knitting a row in a scarf (I’ve seen folks knit a row based on the daily temperature to make a temperature scarf or a local woman knit a black row for a loss, red for a win, and white for a tie depending on the outcome of the Carolina Hurricanes game), journal every day or start a Morning Pages practice…or Google til you find the challenge that’s right for you.
I find, too, that when I allow other distractions to take priority over my creative time, it’s less about the available time and more about something else. Something deeper. Something more uncomfortable. Maybe it’s fear or doubt or a story I’m telling myself (see what I spend my time on must make money to be worthwhile above). If you find your constantly giving away your creative time for something else that you’d really rather not be doing but find easier in some respect to do, sit with that. Investigate it. Figure out what’s holding you back from doing this thing that you truly value.
Some days, the answer may be a sick kid. Fair. But sometimes the laundry or the dishes or the out of the way errand could wait until another day. If you’re choosing to fold towels instead of spending 10. minutes creating, ask yourself does folding the towels bring you more joy than your creative task? If it doesn’t, then ask yourself why you chose the towels over joy?
We’re all susceptible to the Instagram rabbit hole or wanting to clean the bathroom instead of write because at least then we (and others) can see the results of our labor. But if creating is important to you, you need to give it some time. Whatever time you have to give it.
My point is, be intentional about your creativity.
Take yourself seriously.
Honor that creative impulse inside of you.
If you want to honor your creativity and be a creative person, you need to be creative. And that might start with getting creative with your time.
Featured photo by Malvestida on Unsplash