Art for An Anxious World is the Name of the Game

Like most engaged citizens, I’ve been spending a lot of time and energy following the national elections. I wish I was less anxious about it. While it seems that the national fever for performative, rage politics has started to break, I don’t like the aftertaste. We are a nation unreconciled in many ways. That eats me when I let it.

Yes, I voted in my local election. I did what I could, but that feels like it isn’t enough. A lot of political platforms are based on that premise: you’re not enough. The world is rigged against me. It’s hard to constantly push back against that without submitting to its ultimate premise: I don’t matter.

Elections come and go, but light remains.

Making art in an anxious world is just part of the deal. It has ever been thus. Cave paintings were about recording survival in an uncertain, cruel world. The peace I crave is the peace I make, because it can’t come from a place of fear. It is, by design, an uphill battle. I don’t think any artist gets to see the completion of their work, their ideas are just picked up the next line. Big ideas take more than a single lifetime to articulate.

I want to feel comfortable now! Oh well. There is comfort in knowing whatever contribution I make is going to help the ones just entering the world. This is the idea of the eternal. My work and practice is to help the next generation plot the map a little better. Landscapes change, but light remains. That counts.

Sleeping My Way To Creative Happiness

If you want to have a solid creative practice, get your sleep. My dad was right about this. He was right about a lot of things I don’t like admitted. The younger me, who didn’t want to miss out on anything, thought sleep was the enemy. Turns out, I was wrong. Sleep is your friend.

Here’s what happens if I don’t get enough sleep:

• I’m not focused

• I’m a little depressed all the time.

• My productivity is severely limited.

• I eat too much, which increases brain fog.

• I’m irritable in every sense of the word.

• I’m tired (duh)

Sleep is one of those things we have to do, but wish we didn’t. My creative practice is severely limited by my lack of sleep. The image of the weary artist, toiling away, fueled only by black coffee and a passion for “the work” has to be dispelled. It didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now.

Mental illness, or neuro-divergency  gets romanticized a lot in the art world. Addiction, depression, anxiety bi-polar, ADHD, etc are not these magic bullets to an inner realm of creative thought.  These maladies often are the things standing in the way of great work, when left untreated. My struggles with some of these conditions prove this. When I’m not taking care of myself physically and mentally, I’m not productive. Those gifts lay dormant.

I’m not saying a good night’s sleep is a cure-all, but it’s a big part of the solution. During sleep, my brain is cleaning out the cache from a days worth of functioning. I need that space to be clean to be able to focus on the work I want to do. I want to take on big ideas.

When I can’t work, I get anxious. When I get anxious, I can’t sleep. When I can’t sleep, I can’t work. When I can’t work, I get anxious.

Let’s not forget the power of dreaming. When the sleep cycle is interrupted, dreaming gets messed up too. That’s not good for a creative person.

A lot of solid scientific studies support good sleep hygiene. All I need to know is when I’m well rested, I feel like working and when I’m tired, I peck away at things. Being tired is not a badge of honor and being well rested is not a sign of laziness or lack of work.

I never used to take naps or “meditate”, but now I do. During the day, I set the timer for 30 minutes, put on a weighted blanket, listen to some space music on noise cancelling headphones, and wake up refreshed. Making time for doing nothing is a great way to get something done. Life is full of contradictions. To be more active, rest.

My friend Qarie told me a story about two lumberjacks in a contest to chop down a tree. The first lumberjack just whacked away at the trunk while the other would chop for a little bit, walk away, and come back to the task. Both lumberjacks finished at the same time. The first one asked what the other one was doing when they walked away. “While you were chopping away, I went to sharpen my axe.”

Making Art with A.D.D. isn't Impossible

I don’t know where I got this idea that all my work had to be in tiny little packages and completed before I went on to something else. It isn’t how my brain works and it stood in the way of me making work at all. It isn’t that I don’t believe in finishing what I start, but often that requires a lot of exploration of other paths and ideas before I can bring something to a close.

It wasn’t until I was an adult that I learned the term “Attention Deficit Disorder” and realized it fit me perfectly. I was a “rambunctious” kid growing up and had a hard time sitting still. This made it difficult to achieve any kind of solid academic record and was the source of many tense conversations during my teenage years. We didn’t know what we didn’t know back then.

However, I realize that the struggle to try to get my brain to focus the way I “think” it should takes more energy than letting do its thing. The fact is, I’m interested in a lot of things all at once and time and again, the connections between them make themselves known in time. It can be scary, but if I just factor in a little “soft focus” I get more done. This doesn’t mean I don’t respond well to organization, it’s just that it looks different than other people’s versions.

What helps is writing things down, using my calendar app, getting plenty of sleep, and, factoring in time goof off. Also, practicing some form of meditation helps. Sometimes a little pause gives my brain space to make connections it wouldn’t otherwise make. I’ve come to rely on it.

I still struggle with motivation, everyone does. Usually lack of motivation comes from feeling like nothing I do will be good enough because somehow the focus isn’t there. What helps is realizing that how I think I should function and how I do function are two different things. As soon as I stop comparing those two things, more gets done. It takes a daily leap of faith but usually works out