We spontaneously create as children. Then we grow up and get busy being educated, growing a family, growing a career and exploring the world. We are bombarded with so much online content. We are exhausted by multitasking and lengthy task lists. Our creative time falls down the ladder of priorities.
We speak of the need to reduce our time binge-watching and mindless scrolling through social media. We know we need to do it, but in our exhaustion, we remain addicted to these passive pursuits.
Yes it’s hard, but let’s think about the reward of reclaiming that time. This where we can find time to create—to paint, to write, to garden, to spin, to weave, to knit, to cook beautiful and nourishing food. This is also the time we can capture for feeding our creativity with inspiration—walking, hiking, enjoying nature, visiting galleries and museums, people-watching. It is important to our overall health and our success in all our other pursuits in life. In this article Deborah J. Cohan, Ph.D., is a professor of sociology at the University of South Carolina-Beaufort, gives three big reasons that our creativity is important.
Creativity adds meaning, shape, purpose, and richness to our days
Creativity enhances work/life balance
Your creativity is not something you should give up until you retire
I retired 6 years ago and one of my first insights was that a day felt shorter than I thought it would feel. I thought I needed to socialize with other seniors so I joined several creative activities at the local senior citizen’s center. During the lockdown, I realized I was happier using that time to be creative at home, so I never went back to those group activities. Still, I feel like I am not proactive enough about guarding my time to do my creative stuff. It is the first thing I let go of when life gets too busy.
Right now, here are some of the tasks and habits eroding my ability to be creative.
Worries about the state of the world and the problems of my adult children
Household clutter and the time it takes to purge and keep things in their rightful place
My tendency to use my best creative times (mornings) to do necessary household chores and shopping for supplies
My tendency to vegetate after dinner and scroll my tablet or watch tv
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
I will write about how I will reclaim some of this time in future posts. How about you —are you struggling to reclaim some creative time? What one small step will bring more creativity into your days?
Note: post was lightly edited on 10/17/2023 to add alt-text
I think that mindless scrolling became an entrenched habit for me while I recovered from knee replacement surgery two years ago, I need to consciously reduce the time I spend on that.
It’s interesting that creativity is often the first thing to go when life gets busy and I guess mindless scrolling is easier to do in those rare quiet moments.