November 28, 2012

A Real Day Off

Heavily Laden by Hannah Shepheard

A while back I went hiking in the mountains with my family. Just some quiet family time, enjoying nature. After I stopped for the umpteenth time to photograph some random thing, my husband said, very casually, “If I had realized you would be working I probably wouldn’t have come.”  Oops.

I am sure everyone realizes that when you are running your own business from home it is so easy to be always working. That goes double if you are doing something artistic. Even when you designate family time or “me” time, work seems to creep in. I am not very good at shutting it all off.

I thought I was saving time by multitasking family time as creative time.

But then I discovered how great a real day off can be. Oddly enough it wasn’t even intentional. My sons had been begging me to plant a vegetable garden with them. I did some research and decided to build a “Square Foot Garden.”

So we bought supplies, built the boxes, filled them, and then planted the seeds. All in one day, without me spending any time thinking about my business.

It was one of the best days ever.

Since then I have been actively seeking real down time, and I have discovered that I need to actively prepare for it. Here is what I need to do:

Work First 
It is never ever all done, but I try to make sure there is nothing urgent even if I have to get up early to finish up some tasks before having fun.

Plan Something
Because my work is often sedentary, I like to do something active, but anything that engages your mind and/or body will work. For me, unstructured down time becomes work time.

Don’t Just Observe
It is an easy role for many artistic types, but the mind will wander. If I sit on the sand and watch my kids splash in the water, pretty soon I start sketching ideas, but if I get in there and start building sand castles, too, I can really switch over to family time.

Disconnect
It is not a real day off if you check your email 16 times. I need to turn off the internet on my phone, leave my sketch book at home, and hand the camera over to my husband.

What strategies do you have for making your day off a real day off?

Filed Under: Buy You, For You, The Setting Tagged With: , , 5 Comments
November 10, 2011

Creative Call to Action: Expand and Contract

Creative call copy

Last spring I took a series of yoga classes that were both amazing and deeply challenging. Usually about twenty minutes in, I would be ready to fall on my mat in a teary, muscle-trembling heap. But my pride would never let me collapse, or leave. I kept going to classes, and I’m glad I did. My downward dog got better, and my creative life got one of its biggest boosts ever.

Each yoga class had a theme. One week the instructor told us we would spend the hour expanding and contracting. One pose would open us, the next would pull us closed like a flower at night.

“There are times to expand, and times to contract,” she told us. “In life you can’t do one or the other all the time, you need both.”

Expand and contract? I almost fell off my mat!

Expansion has never been my problem. My go-to state in life is, well, go. But in that moment on the mat something clicked in me. A willingness, an attraction to this idea. Expand and contract. Open and close. Okay, I’m game.

I started looking for small ways to expand and contract in my life, started noticing when I felt the need to move one way or another. At one point I even took a hiatus from my creative work entirely, and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. I rested, played, explored other facets of my life, and returned utterly focused and inspired.

I’m not suggesting you drop everything in an instant. I think the notion of expansion and contraction is just as relevant to our day-to-day creative work. We get down on ourselves when we are not brimming with ideas, we feel stuck. But maybe we just need a little down time, a little contracting. Maybe our blocks are just a self-imposed break.

Breaks are vital to our creativity.

In yoga, at the end of every class, we do something called ‘corpse pose’. We lay on our backs on our mats and just let our bodies sink into the floor. We relax, we contract, we expand internally. If you looked in on a class during corpse pose, it would probably look like nap time for grown-ups. But it’s actually the most important moment of the whole hour. According to yoga, the rest in corpse pose is what allows our bodies to assimilate all the benefits of the hard physical work we have just done.

All that work is lost without rest.

Creative rest resets us, allows us to fill the deep well that we draw from whenever we make something. Engagement with our daily lives keeps us fresh, gives us space for new ideas.

Expansion and contraction. Our lungs do it. The tides do it. The seasons come and go.

Expansion and contraction. I’ve even heard the universe does it. So why wouldn’t we?

So here’s my Creative Call to Action for you: expand and contract.

Maybe one of these states is more comfortable for you. So try the other. Remember to take action, or remember to rest.

Maybe you are trying to create perfect balance in every moment.

But balance really is just a moment, a split second between yoga poses, a brief pause between rest and action in our lives.

So just go for it. Expand deeply, really stretch yourself when it’s time to act. Make that deadline. Burn those candles. Check off that impossible to do list when it really counts. Dig deep. Go mad with new ideas. Turn your life into a short-term creative retreat.

On the flipside, make your rest truly restful. Turn off everything that has an off switch. Take a bath. Read a novel. Put all your work away to be present with yourself and those around you. Do small things that bring you joy.

Expand and contract. Like an inhale and exhale, you can’t have one without the other. Expansion is your opportunity to make the work you love, to turn your dreams into reality. It’s a harvest. Contraction is the space you need for more inspiration to take root.

Now I’d love to hear from you!

What’s your go-to state? What are you craving right now, more expansion or contraction? What’s your next step?

Filed Under: Creative Call to Action, Plot Notes Tagged With: , , , , , , 13 Comments
July 9, 2010

and on the 7th day

handmade chopstick rests

I have long been fascinated by the concept of the “Sabbath” and it’s many derivations. Most of us are familiar with it in a religious context, a part of the biblical story of Creation. The first time I learned about keeping the Sabbath beyond “God rested on the 7th day,” was when my pastor in high school discussed the concept of rest at length. What he said made a lot of sense to my harried, have-to-get-a-scholarship-or-else mind.

Rest is important. It heals, it energizes, it recharges.

The next time I heard about the concept of the Sabbath was at a conference in college. This time it wasn’t the weekly sabbath they were talking about. It was a seven year cycle. Do you know about this? It’s so cool: every seven years, the people of Israel were to take a whole year off from agriculture. Slaves who had worked for 6 years were to go free. Debts were reduced to zero. The civilization was reborn every 7 years.

Rest is important. It teaches us to prepare, to go free, to be generous.

Recently, I heard an interview with Judith Shulevitz, author of The Sabbath World, where she described the general principle behind the rules of traditional Sabbath keeping:

the basic principle uniting all of these rules is about acknowledging that humans do not exert mastery over the world

Hearing this was a real light bulb moment for me. Whether in mowing the grass, cooking a meal, knitting a scarf, drawing a picture, or coding a website, every act of creation is in some small way an act of mastery over our physical world. Our ability to create, to posit new ideas, to carve something out of nothing is what makes us human, separates us from the rest of the natural world.

What happens when we take a day off from creating? from “exerting mastery over the world?”

We melt back into the fabric of the universe. We see things as they really are and not how we want them to be. We reclaim the bonds of family & friendship. We are no longer separate from the world, but a part of it. Of course, the religious tradition of the Sabbath is beautiful but I think the idea has something to teach all of us, regardless of our faith tradition.

Rest is important. It cushions us, reconnects us, rescues us.

Would you consider keeping a creative sabbath? Turning off the creative switch can be just as difficult as trying to turn it on. It can also be terrifying. If you need help to flip the switch, give these ideas a try:

Observe. Observation can be very much the opposite of creativity. Allow the creative output of others to wash over you. Sit still and watch the world. Absorb the broad scope of creation with every breath and movement.

Journal. Okay, journaling is a creative act. But I mean the kind of journaling that is a reaction to the world not an effort to shape it. Stream of consciousness. Recording ideas as they come but not acting on them. Allow yourself to observe your own thoughts as they appear in your journal.

Participate. Be present. Eat, talk, and read with a special mindfulness. Allow yourself the experience of truly participating in the world you’re living in. Don’t worry about control, wallow in submission.

Rest is a big ol’ invitation for the creative spirit to take control of you.

When your rest is complete, you will find yourself more able to handle the tasks ahead of you. You’ll find yourself better able to exert control of your creative process. Deliberate rest gives you the power to be unapologetically inspired the vast majority of the time. I’ve been glad to reclaim this idea since hearing that interview. I don’t mind putting off chores, working til all hours of the night, or wearing myself thin as long as I have a period of deliberate rest, a period of submission.

Do you allow yourself rest? Do you relinquish control of your world? Do you keep a Sabbath?

{above: handmade chopstick rests by sumiko}

Filed Under: creativity, personality Tagged With: , 16 Comments