Creative Separation Anxiety.

A few weeks ago, I was in the middle of what I can only say was a creative windfall.

I had SO many ideas— blogs I wanted to write, topics to tweet on… tons of notes for a longer form deep dive into creative generalism that I’ve been wanting to write for a while.

The timing could not have been better. I was heading into a few weeks off before starting a new job, and I just knew that I would spend it working on a ton of these new ideas.

As you can probably guess, things didn’t go quite as planned. It’s now the day before I start my new job, and I didn’t write a single blog post. I don’t even think I tweeted a single thing.

I had no idea what happened, but all that creative energy had just evaporated.

Every time I sat down at my computer (or even my usually trusty notebook), it felt like I was pulling teeth to get words on the page. Every time I couldn’t, I felt this little pang of anxiety starting to build.

What was something wrong with me? Would that kind of energy EVER come back? Would I ever have a good idea again? Or was I doomed to a future devoid of creative ideas?

Dramatic? Absolutely. Nonsensical? Of course. But it is exactly where my thoughts went.

Creative Separation Anxiety

I was writing about my struggle with this one day while doing my morning pages, and scribbled down a note comparing how I was feeling with something my friends’ dogs do.

One of my best friends has two adorable  mini Australian Shepherds. They’re adorable little pups that always want to be right by your side, which is great— until you want to leave the house.

If you even look at your jacket, they start getting upset. They get so anxious whenever someone leaves the house, no matter what. They think we are never coming back— that we’ve left them forever.

Of course it’s ridiculous— we always come back! It’s never more than a few hours that we’re gone. But still every time they freak out like we’ve abandoned them.

I realized that’s how I had been feeling over the last two weeks.

I was anxious that that creative energy would never come back. It’s not like I hadn’t been in this exact place before— and of course it always did come back. Ideas always started flowing again eventually, and I’d think how silly I was for freaking out.

And yet.

Every time it happened again, the same creative separation anxiety started to creep back in.

Keeping busy

So I decided to give myself a break and focus on other things instead of pacing around the house trying to conjure up a brilliant blog post idea.

I focused on some projects around the house I’ve been wanting to get done (nothing says vacation like organizing your pantry).

I doodled on my iPad— something I hadn’t done in a while. I read articles and watched a few shows I hadn’t made time for, and definitely caught up on some sleep.

Keeping my productivity guilt at bay felt like a full time job—but it was worth it. I gave myself a break and just let myself be without expecting some grand idea to pop into my head and onto the page.

And when I least expected it, the idea for this blog post actually did pop up, but not entirely out of the blue.

Homecoming

I’ve been helping my friend Andrew with the marketing and content strategy around a thinking tool he’s building called Thunk (side note, we have a podcast!). 

We’re both members of the Ness Labs community, and he’d connected a few times with Yina, an awesome woman who was giving us incredibly helpful feedback.

Her and I made plans to chat, and it ended up being an incredibly energizing conversation.

We’re both people who have come to pursue creativity later in life, and we were commiserating about the various issues we’d had along the way— including my current frustration.

I made an offhand comment about my week feeling like dogs with separation anxiety— at this point just something I had scribbled in my morning pages— and it resonated with her as something she’d felt in the past too.

We started talking a bit more about the analogy, and I felt that familiar sense of excitement starting to creep back in, slowly but surely.

As soon as we got off our call, I quickly jotted down a few thoughts and sent them over to her to get her thoughts. She responded with super helpful feedback, and it gave me even more energy to write— no teeth pulling required.

I felt relieved— finally that creative energy had come back. Like my friends’ dogs, I felt much calmer, ready to relax again.

But when this cycle inevitably starts all over, here’s what I’m going to keep in mind:

Give yourself a break. Seriously.

Obviously you can’t ignore deadlines or all the things you need to do in life. But you can give yourself a personal break to get comfortable with idleness as part of the creative process.

While you’re at it, give yourself permission to play.

Try new things you’ve been curious about, or go back to old things you haven’t done in a while. For me, this was doodling on my iPad. Since I didn’t have expectations, it helped me loosen up and just enjoy playing.

I wasn’t criticizing every brush stroke as part of some larger picture, but being curious: what would happen if I did this? Or this?

I actually ended up learning AND relaxing at the same time.

Rest on the page.

The one thing I stayed committed to every day were morning pages— a key practice from one of my favorite books on creativity, The Artist’s Way. The author, Julia Cameron, advocates doing your pages every day, no matter what.

If you’re exhausted, rest on the page. If you’re angry, write it out on the page. Hungry? Grab a snack and rest on the page.

Morning pages have no expectations— you can literally write ‘today I feel like shit’ over and over and you’re not doing them wrong (and yes, I have done this).

It’s just getting it out what you can— not forcing yourself to create, but still practicing the act.

Some days you’ll feel like all you’re doing is whining. But sometimes an offhand note, like mine, can turn into something else, like a whole blog post.

While I did not end up using my time off to write the next great American novel,  I did write this post and I am feeling more relaxed than ever.

It’s what my creativity needed. A break from expectations and output and time to just be.