#maybe the medium doesn't suck just because you exhausted yourself on it

[shallow-wordsalad]

capital-G Gamers really do play a game for 200+ hours until they've done everything in the game with every possible combination of gear and abilities, and then claim the entire franchise "really fell off".

[v-as-in-victor]

I work a full-time job that is pretty brain intensive and I also maintain a creative practice. But in addition, I have chronic migraine and fatigue. Oh, and ADHD it turns out. So in honour of those who may be drawing on less energy, here are some strategies that I find useful:

Better than zero: What it says. Any activity is better than none. You should be exercising three times a week? Dancing to a song you like is better than looking at the insurmountable goal and doing nothing. You want to make art and grow your skills but it'll take years to get good at drawing? Okay, but grabbing a sketch pad and drawing the thing right in front of you right now is better than just never doing anything to pursue the dream. A shirt takes hours and hours to make so half an hour on the weekend won't help? Guess what happens if you spend zero hours working on it? Half hour? Better than zero.

No task bundling: You want to paint something but that means setting up the easel, getting out your paints, gessoing the canvas, doing a sketch or putting down some light reference lines, multiple layers to build dimension on the image. Well, what if you set up the easel when you have a minute? Maybe you also have time to sort out your paints but you don't have to. It could just be step one. When you have time next you could gesso the canvas (these are purely example steps.) Maybe you get in a flow state once you get started and it all happens. Or maybe you just did some prep that means the next time you have energy it'll be easier to get on to the fun part.

Flip mediums: I spent a year doing almost nothing but digital art because I didn't have the energy to get set up to paint or draw physically. It was not as creatively satisfying, but it was still a creative outlet. Maybe you can't get to the glass blowing studio, but what if you played with copper foiled stained glass at home? Maybe your hands are cranky about working delicate lace knitting but a drop spindle doesn't stress them in the same way. Maybe you really want to be painting sweeping landscapes but between your job and commute that just doesn't fit, but you can dream up a knitting project for the train that hits some of the same creative points in a different way.

The World's Smallest Goal: You didn't get anything creative done last week. This week has been exhausting too. You are stalled in the middle of a creative project or stalled about starting one. Your task is to think up a TINY goal and tell yourself firmly that it is the ONLY goal you are allowed to accomplish. Chances are you roll right through that goal and do more, but knowing that your goal for the weekend is Sew On One Button, for example, gives you a criterion for success that you can meet. You can acknowledge how goofy the World's Smallest Goal is, but it gets you to Better than Zero and halts an accumulation of weekends where you feel like you got NOTHING creative done. It's also a little promise to yourself that there will be better weekends.

I will also give you permission to feel grief and bitterness at being stuck in a world where we have to carve out time to do the sustaining human things. Because it's worth acknowledging that it often SUCKS to try to fit creative work around paid work. And it sucks even more when other things eat your spare time (housework, kids, aging parents, horrible little dogs, I don't know....) so you're really clawing back creative time. But it's worth having a cry and finding your own strategies because the world needs your art and your voice in it.

How do you stay creative while working full time? :)

I don't know, I just do stuff. Not art stuff, really! I think sometimes that I have to maintain a base minimum of Stuff Going On to stay above the gravity well of Comfy Bed All the Time No Need To Get Up And Do Things. There's an inertia to stuff, you know? Sometimes when you're busy it's easier to just maintain the momentum of getting things done. I don't always get stuff done as quickly as I'd like--the fact that I'm doing stuff all the time doesn't mean that the stuff I'm doing is necessarily productive. That's a good thing, though, because creativity has to be fueled from somewhere. There's got to be non-creative time for that part of the brain to recharge and rest, so it's not bad to have a job that doesn't demand that kind of thinking.

I did a lot this weekend and almost none of it was creatively productive in a normal sense. I got some pottery done on saturday morning, and then met a friend for sushi, went to my dad's to sandblast and powdercoat car parts and got a milkshake, went for a walk in the woods to pick tiny flowers, met my brother for dinner, and played DnD until midnight before driving back home. Today I planted hydrangea, hauled flagstone into place, dug up grass and tilled it over, and put mulch down. I made a roast for lunch and played DnD in my other campaign for a few hours, then started mixing down the clay slurry into slip for casting, which has to rest for the next 24 hours. In a little while, a friend and I are going to do an online movie marathon, and tomorrow--monday--I've got a board game night after work. Then the next week is pottery tues/thurs/saturday, dinner with my other brother and his wife on wednesday, DnD friday and sunday again.

You know what all of those little appointments with friends do? Force me to manage my time well. Force me to stay on and not just let the day get away from me. I rest when I need to but I also put really concerted effort in to spending time doing stuff that I enjoy.

People often say that they create art from a specific emotion, but to me, in order to make art, to make art sustainably, you have to be happy enough to want to put new things in the world. They don't have to be happy things. But you have to be in the world to reflect it out. Sometimes that's work. Sometimes that's friends.

Work on joy; the art will follow. That's just what's true for me.