How Do You Deal with Non-Creative #Stress?

On By stuartakenIn Author, Creative Writer, Progress, question

As artists, craftspeople, creators, we all have interruptions to our creative lives from time to time. How do we deal with such intrusions?

I’ve been battling with bureaucrats over the past few weeks on behalf of a charity I’m involved with. One of those ‘bright ideas’ that suddenly turns into a sort of nightmare with so many unforeseen consequences. I won’t go into details, but it’s been keeping me awake at night and has definitely dampened my creative output.

So, what do I do in the meantime, until this issue is resolved? Well, I’ve been applying myself to those things that require little imagination: sorting out files and deleting old stuff I no longer need, rearranging my collection of over 16,000 digital images, engaging in some small promotional activity, spending too much time on Twitter at this unsettled time in the UK and now that climate change has finally become the issue I expected way back in the 1980s when I first joined Greenpeace.

It’s not ‘creative’ and certainly doesn’t feed the spirit that helps make art, but at least I feel I’ve been using the time constructively. But I’m missing the usual creative buzz; only managing a few short works in the meantime.

So, what do YOU do during these unwelcome times of non-creative tension? I’d love to know how you deal with it; might give me some ideas. Please!

10 thoughts on “How Do You Deal with Non-Creative #Stress?”

  1. I’ve done some ironing! It only distracted me for an hour, but hey, I need the credit for doing the most loathsome task in the universe. It’s definitely a ‘dear diary’ event in our household if I do ironing. However, if I’m super stressed, I simply retreat into a book and refuse to come out.

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    1. I’m like that wish washing the car (which I usually manage maybe twice a year!). My wife, however, likes doing the ironing; says it’s lovely and warm and she can watch TV whilst she’s at it.
      I also love to lose myself in a book, but find I can’t read when too tired these days.

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    1. Unfortunately, Kathy, the situation is a quagmire of bureaucratic minutia designed to bore one to death! Worthy of Kafka, perhaps, but not something I’m inclined to perpetuate. However, it will almost certainly give rise to some form of revenge in the future, in literary form, of course! My biggest beef with the process is the insistence on dealing with a small, underfunded charity as if it were a multinational business with endless funds: the administrator’s mind appears incapable of subtlety in such matters, it seems…..

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      1. Sounds like the Canadian government. It seems as though the Liberals ignore important in-country issues while they hand out money to every country and cause with an open palm. Our deficit is burgeoning.

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        1. It’s local government, which in the UK is underfunded and underresourced. The frustration tends to create jobsworths among the staff and I appear to have fallen foul of one such individual. Eventually, we’ll find a way to defeat the obstructions and get done what we wish to do for the local community, but I really could do without the unnecessary barriers the non-creative mind places in the way.
          The whole world appears to be run for the benefit of Big Business these days, and the smaller orgaisations suffer as a result.

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    1. Thanks, Mick. That’s more or less how I’m coping. The photography also helps; creating pictures. And a walk in the forest can be a real spiritual restorative, too.

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