Creative Uturns

Creative Uturns ...

Don’t you HATE it when those happen?
My driving u-turns usually happen when I realize I’ve been going the wrong way and have to do the u-turn with the resultant “oh crap” tumbling out of my mouth.

The creative u-turn is different from my driving u-turns in that in the creative u-turn I’m usually heading in the right creative path when the internal “screeeeechhh” put-on-the-brakes-voice/action blares out and I zoom off in the opposite wrong direction like a bat out of hell (more like a bat out of “my” heaven but oh well, you get the picture).

“That’s just crazy talk,” you may say to yourself.
Why would I do that?
I mean, if this is what I want AND it’s starting to come true, why wouldn’t I move toward it and not away from it?

All excellent questions. The answer? My answer?
I want it and at the same time I’m not sure what it’ll be like if I get it.

The thoughts can range the gambit of … "I want it so much and I’m scared to go after it in case I can’t get it.” To ... “Things are fiiiiinne the way they are. I don’t really need to change. No, really! (who exactly am I trying to convince?)”

As Julia talks about in The Artists Way, creative u-turns can manifest in a thousand different ways but the general outline goes like this:

The universe (or whatever force you call it) sends something your way and you find any number of ways to reject that offering. Sometimes we even justify that we are rejecting it in the first place. We say things like “it’s not that I don’t WANT to do it, it is just that my schedule got really busy so I don’t have time now to … (fill in the dream).”

I know this well.
I’ve used “my schedule” as the problem 4 times in conversations in just the past week to excuse my own creative u-turn.
Maybe I’ll even draw a picture of “the schedule” as a schoolyard bully (you remember … that one from grade school) but instead of telling me to put my dukes up, it’s holding me creative hostage in the cloakroom …

Don’t have time to write a blog posting?
“Ahhhh, it’s my schedule!”
Don’t have time to practice my ukulele?
“You know, my schedule is sooo busy.”
Not able to revise that curriculum folks want to see?
“I’m SO busy working full time … you know my schedule.”

SOMEBODY call the schoolyard recess monitor and put “the schedule” in detention already!!

My intuition to call out for help is in line with Julia’s suggestion to think about what is making us skittish and to ask for assistance with the U-turn. She goes onto say:

“Think of your talent as a young and skittish horse that you are bringing along. This horse is very talented but it is also young, nervous and inexperienced. It will make mistakes, be frightened by obstacles it hasn’t seen before. It may even bolt, try to throw you off, feign lameness. Your job, as the creative jockey, is to keep your horse moving forward and to coax it into finishing the course.”

I particularly like the “feign lameness”.
Cracks me up.
I have this image of a horse on his side with one eye closed, moaning about not being able to get up, but with one eye open to see if you’re buyin’ it.
It can be so literal, right? How many times when we start some creative process have we not heard that voice (maybe internal or actual) that says “oh that’s SO LAME!”

So here’s what my mantras for the week are going to be …
When “the schedule” bully resurfaces, I’m going to ask for help from somebody, anybody (could be a website designer, another arts person, could be just to the universe to send me a sign) to help me move along down my right creative path – whatever that is at that moment.

And when I see myself “feigning lameness”, I’m going to bend down over my pretend sorry for itself lame horse-!&@-self and say in a sweet, laughing way “I totally see YOU …. you are soooo faking it … you can ABSOLUTELY get up and do the next small thing … just put one hoof in front of the other!”
Or to quote the carefree line from Freehold faculty member, Amy Thone would say when students would get up to do their monologues for the first time …
“This one’s TOTALLY free”.

Wishing this week that your u-turns are short, that your bully has a 3-strikes-you’re-out-rule and that your creative horse has fun prancing down the open road.

Best,
Kate

photos: not lame horse pictured above from Kate's trip to Puerto Vallarta in Mexico in February 2010