Work

Creativity for me is not a smooth track, a steadily flowing river.

It is torrent and and stillness; raging flood and and draught.

In my heart of hearts, I think the quiet is just as important as the intensity of working.

But the quiet worries me. I feel guilty within it. I wonder if I'm playing hooky. Granted, I've got a lot on my plate at the moment.

And when I have no control over this absence from work, as in being away from home or attending to something that suspends my studio work, I feel no dig at my conscience.

But when I choose to avoid the studio and busy myself with things like, reading or vacuously watching some kind of mind-waste on TV, THEN I worry.

Nose to the Grindstone, Me

Is it because I grew up thinking I should be productive and fill my days with useful, practical, productive work? Certainly no one pressed this ideology on me; it was/is of my own making. In the past, I have thought I needed to be productive every waking moment. Not just art, but in everything. For instance, if I sat down to watch television, I should be doing something with my hands.

I couldn't just sit at the beach, I had to improve my mind. I read instead of relaxing. Lay on a pool float? Nah-swim laps.

Busy hands and busy minds. Definitely not the imperialistic idea that idleness was the right of the privileged class.

A friend of mine who grew up in Europe and knew how to really relax and enjoy it, used to chide me about what she referred to as my "Puritan Tradition" problem.

Maybe she's right.