How I'm Learning to Balance Full Time Work and Creative Projects
Lately, I've been trying to find balance in my life. A perfectly weighted balance between work, household chores, time with loved ones, and time to myself. That also includes balance in my creative and writing life.
In the past, I would go overboard. I would dedicate a large chunk of my life outside of work to writing and being creative. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it meant that because of day-to-day work, I didn't make the time to do other essential chores like cleaning my kitchen or exercising.
I didn't really understand why balance was so important. Until of course the burnout hit me and started to affect the relationships with my loved ones and friends.
Balance and how it affects creativity
Within myself, I noticed that balance within my own inner world was actually essential to creativity. Through all the burnouts and to-do lists, I was missing a key element of equilibrium that properly facilitates creative growth.
When artists sit down to create, their art to some degree reflects the world outside of them. In one sense, it's the psyche trying to make sense of itself within the realm of society. Creativity can be seen as a balancing force between the unconscious and the conscious; between what we experience and what we think.
So as a writer, this made me think. What if my ability to create is solely driven by maintaining a balance within my daily life, so that I can accurately make sense of and "digest" my experiences of the outside world?
That would mean that balance, something that can seem out of reach in our hectic lives, is actually essential to the proper functioning of the creative.
Beneath the surface it's about finding harmony in daily life, not taking on too much, and redirecting energy to what's important in the moment.
How creativity thrives
I've noticed that the times where my life feels chaotic and "up in the air" completely throws off my creative cycle.
The creative process can look to the outside chaotic (ideas floating all around, a mess of papers on the desk, projects strewn around) and so you might assume that chaos in daily life actually helps creativity. But in my experience, it's the opposite. When life is calm, safe, and peaceful, that's when the mind can explore and experiment with creative ideas.
It reminds me of this quote by Flaubert, who was writing in the 19th century.
“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
Having a fast-paced, busy life flittering from one city to the next, or bar hopping every other night, sounds like it would stimulate all your senses and reward you with creativity, yet when I'm traveling or on a trip, it doesn't spur me to write or feel extra creative. I just get overwhelmed.
When my life is ordinary and predictable, with manageable challenges, I feel creative. Everything just flows because my mind is in a state of equilibrium.
The science of balance
On Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, psychological or esteem needs can only flourish when physical and safety needs have been met.
In other words: calmness is essential to creativity.
When we feel comfortable in our space when we have food in the fridge and work time goes according to a smooth schedule, then our minds are suddenly freed from the strain of life to explore and be curious. We become creative.
According to recent studies, there is evidence to say that creativity doesn't happen when we are stressed. It only happens when we are calm and relaxed.
Innovative solutions and seeing things clearly can only happen when the mind is in a calm state.
Relaxation and calm help our brain to look at problems from different angles, without being thrown into a fight-flight-freeze state that aims to make any threat simply go away. Dopamine released from exercise can also boost the amount of creative thinking the mind is capable of.
In Vedic texts, some of the oldest texts known to humankind, creativity is seen as "integral excellence" and emphasizes "(a) unitive view of consciousness and creative coexistence."
So actually, creativity is the realization that we are one within the realm of the universe, and that through harmonious coexistence with everything outside and inside of us, our minds can expand to creative opportunities.
To the Vedas, creativity takes on an otherworldly quality. The texts tell us that creativity is a kind of meditation, where within it truth, transcendence, intuition, and imagination can all be found.
Divergent thinking (something that I haven't seen praised in schools or universities) means a way of thinking that proposes several answers to one problem. It's the opposite to convergent thinking, which requires only one solution.
I feel that's how a lot of creatives are. They often see multiple answers to a prescribed problem, allowing the mind to be flexible and hold many possibilities at once, rather than confining themselves to finding the one, right, true answer.
The creative process, defined
The part of the creative process that is often glorified, the creative breakthrough, is actually only one step on the creative ladder.
Before the breakthrough point, a creative must examine the problem from many angles, form many different theories to varying degrees of success, then allow those ideas to incubate inside them for a period of time.
It's kind of like how a butterfly bursting from the cocoon is the last step in the creative chain of life.
Right before the breakthrough, there is an "intimation" process. The creative person feels the idea is on the way but doesn't know what it is yet.
This part of the process intrigues me the most because it's so like the intuition that is talked about in psychology. There is a part of us that is aware and knowing of what problem needs to be solved, but first it must be digested in the unconscious first, before it can burst forth as a creative idea.
Being creative in our busy society
Creativity, in some way, brings a sense of order to the psyche.
We can take events that have happened in our lives, and deconstruct them, make sense of them, before reassembling them to fit our new and changed worldview.
As Virginia Woolf once wrote about how creativity seems to bring order to our lives.
“Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order.”
In short, creativity can help us make sense of ourselves and the world around us. It can help us bring balance and order, but can only be born from a state of calm.
Over time, our creative works don't become something that balances us but a product of what our balanced life has created.
We need predictability, comfort, safety, and security in order to channel all our bravery into our projects.
Our minds, totally unencumbered by the stresses of the everyday world, can relax and breathe. We can start to think of new ideas and concern ourselves with totally imagined problems, all for the sake of art.