creating

It’s been awhile. I have missed this quiet space. I remember when I first secured this domain in 2014 and it felt like I had bought real estate — a place to build something beautiful and meaningful. It still has that feel to me. This is a sacred space for my heart.

It’s been busy with the launch of the magazine. The best kind of busy, I suppose. Once it went live, I let out an exhale that laid me horizontally exhausted. It takes energy to create. Lots of it. Yet it’s also invigorating. I am most alive in the midst of something coming to life.

The creative current has an undercurrent though, and mostly subconscious. I think of it as the unseen and unarticulated motivations. For me, much of it is channeled by a stream of ache and longing. The ache to reach the surface waters where it all finally becomes conscience, and the longing to break through the current that would pull me out to an endless sea. It really is sink or swim for the creative. Getting above the undercurrent can feel like you’re swimming for your life.

In the month since my last post I’ve experienced a myriad of emotions. I’ve had the searing pain of tears like daggers in my jaw. You know the kind that you can’t swallow because the hurt is wider than your throat? Yeah. That has visited me. I’ve also had joy so rich that my heart-buds have nearly burst. To think there’s only an inch of space between bitter and sweet on the tongue… It’s no wonder that we can experience so many things within a moment of each other.

I think my compulsion to create is helpful. It serves as a way out of the murky and jumbled. I need mediums for vehicles; they get me somewhere. I can hitch a ride out of and into. Then I can look back and see more clearly and objectively from that distance, what that wheel-spinning place really was. Curiosity and creativity move me from stuck-in-muck to fast-and-free. I’m thankful. Thankful that my brain is opening up to new processes and pathways and isn’t still in the rut it was not long ago. Trauma brain takes you to the dead-end ditch that is rumination. That first grip of gravel from a higher thought is pure relief. Something takes under the wheel and you can begin to maneuver again. I absolutely despise being stuck.

When you consider how most creatives tend to be tortured souls, it makes sense, this need to create. The torture is the undercurrent, but expressing the pain and connecting to those who “get it” is a lifeline. It is transformed this way; it’s turned inside out by a practice that does no harm but rather heals. This is why I feel creating is holy and redemptive work: it uses everything for good if you allow it to. There are few instances in life where you can dump all the crap into one place and reap something meaningful. Creating is one of those instances and I appreciate the resourcefulness of that method.