Creative Over-Indulgence

By Shelley Klammer

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My typical mode of creativity in the past would be to carry a pen and a sketchbook everywhere I went. I would keep my hand moving and draw several drawings a day while hanging out and talking with friends and family. I typically would do a spontaneous collage each day while on my lunch hour break from my full-time job. I would get up to write and do a small collage religiously at 4 or 5 am every morning. My weekends would always be about carving out as much time to myself as possible to get the maximum amount of creative work done even if this meant letting go of social time with friends and family.

Because I can overfill my life with vigorous creative practices and projects I have recently "cut back" on my creativity to see what that would feel like. I did this with the certainty that my heightened creativity is now assured. I am no longer blocked. I already know and trust that when I set my mind to it I can get an enormous amount of creative work "done." My question to myself is, "What would my life be like without so many imposed creative mandates and intense creativity practices?" Initially when I stopped such intense creating, I experienced a nervous energy that I did not know what to do with, which quickly turned to tears. I was flooded with all the simple, obvious and ordinary realities of life that I had been avoiding in my life and myself.

In many ways I see that I had been avoiding a great deal of anxiety within the intensity of my creative projects. It is easy to avoid the areas of life that feel more difficult with heroic creative triumphs. When I am feeling blue it is easy to amp up my energy and glorify my creative efforts to drown out my feelings of uneasiness in the present moment. When I first stopped creating so intensely many feelings came up but instead of turning to creativity I decided to try something different. Instead of writing pages and pages in my journals, I experimented with sharing and crying openly with friends. I realized that my familial clan does not really enjoy it when I am drawing and collaging constantly as they connect with me so I stopped to listen more deeply. I might just breathe deeply and rest instead of draw. My written journal has also become spare. I record simple connections and intuitions about my day in my collage journal and mostly I just experience my life and let it live through me.

Because I go through phases of intense creativity, I have been experimenting with very minimal but committed creative practices recently. I am committed to keeping it light and easy for a while as I have just finished a deeply reflective writing phase that had me writing late into the night and early in the mornings. I have been creating only one art journal page a week. I also write a very brief jotting in my intuition/collage journal everyday. The rest of the time I am attending to my life, working full-time, relaxing and nurturing my relationships. These days I am cleaning my basement and my cupboards. I am seeing the city with my partner and daughter. Recently they surprised me with a trip to the Vancouver Gallery. It felt so good to walk through the gift shop with a sense of peace and let life move through me creatively. I did not need to add anything to myself and had no need to buy a big art book to study and inspire me. My purse was light without all the sketchbooks and felt pens. I just took in the day. No expectations, no practices, no requirements. Unadorned, without the self-protection of a busy creative mind, I enjoyed being in life simply and quietly. I was having fun in the creative company of others. Life and creativity are meant to be easy. •

© Shelley Klammer, 2009. All rights reserved.

About the Author | More by Shelley Klammer
Shelley Klammer is a Registered Professional Counselor and an Expressive Art Facilitator. She offers an array of online expressive art courses that explore the melding of art, psychology and spirituality. You can learn more about her work and take a variety of courses at www.expressiveartworkshops.com.

2/6/09