Right Creative Mood, Wrong Time

Afternoon Light on the Living Room Rug - Sept. 14th, 2007

My creativity is out of whack!

Do you ever get these overwhelming moments of inspiration, so overwhelming that you can't seem to concentrate on anything else and you know that this could be a total moment of creative zen where you would push the limits of your imagination and come up with something so totally awesome that you just can't stand it...only you're somewhere that you can't indulge this inspiration, like at work or driving during 5:00 rush hour? Then you get home and think, "Okay, I'm set - I have everything I need...now what was my great idea again?"

Grrrrrrr...I hate that! I've been getting it so much lately! I have all these ideas and I can't seem to translate them once I'm in a place where I can go all creative crazy. I'm at work and I'm itching to put pencil to paper, thread to fabric, but when I get home the brain seems to go into domestic goddess hell - "The dishes need to be done even though it seems you just did them, the floor needs vacuuming, there's dog and cat fur EVERYWHERE, the bathroom needs cleaning and would you just look at that dining room? You can't work in there, you'll never find anything. Maybe you should clean it first? But you should make dinner before you do that, oh and Sadie's going to need to go outside and you really should play with her - she's been alone and bored all day. Call your sister, you haven't talked with her in a week. Didn't you want to ask Mum something, better call her too" - by the time I'm done with dinner, done playing with the dog, done cleaning up what I can't stand to see sitting around, done talking to whomever needs talking to...I'm tired and I still haven't cleaned up the dining room!

Am I an art procrastinator or just excelling at the art of procrastination? I keep saying I want to do something and then come up with every excuse not to. Even when I say, "I'll leave the distraction of the house, go somewhere with a sketch pad and just sit and draw" I don't do it because my practical side (whom I like to call "Evil, Practical Tiffany" or EPT for short, though isn't that the name of a pregnancy test? Yikes!) pipes in with this list of chores that will nag at me the entire time I'm trying to be creative. I have yet to figure out how to shut her up. I think I need to just start making myself take time out. Ignore the laundry. Ignore the dishes. And ignore the dog? No, I can't do that. She has doggy guilt trip down to a science and believe me, it works every time!