The Easiest Way to Create Again.

+ It's Not Just Those Damn Phones

I had no idea what I wanted this week’s post to be about. I haven’t had a moment to sit with my emotions.

I wrote one song this week, and it’s unfinished. I didn’t journal a single time.

Why?

At first, I told myself it was because I have family in town and business has picked up.

I feel like I’m being tested when I have to choose between drowning in a million to-do list items or finding time to sit with myself and my feelings. To let my family stay home while I sneak away to yoga. To say I’m going to bed early, but actually stay up late writing.

I have options, but my body feels like it doesn’t.

I have to make extra effort to choose myself.

Today I heard a message between the chaotic thoughts bouncing around in my brain while I looked for salmon in the grocery store:

“Make time for silence. Make time for you.”

“You aren’t a bad person for needing time alone.”

And it freaking clicked. Again.

Because somehow, I keep forgetting this.

Time alone is necessary for integrating the lessons of the day.

Silence is necessary for writing.

Silence is necessary for creating music.

Silence is necessary for my sanity, honestly.

I have so many realizations while I go about mundane things like grocery shopping or laundry.

Like how I feel really rushed in the morning when someone else is staying with me—even if they aren’t rushing me.

I realize I’m constantly monitoring other people’s moods and anticipating their thoughts and needs. More on this in my other post, Worrying About What People Think Is Ass.

Today I thought, “Why am I not over this already?”

Then another realization hit me: I keep making the same choice. I keep running over the same neural pathways carved out in childhood.

But today, I am SO proud to say I made a new choice. I went off the beaten path.

Now, I didn’t take some huge, grand step.

I just told my mom I needed to get some things done and locked myself in a room.

Yeah… it doesn’t sound like a big accomplishment on the surface, but that day and the one before were spent following behind her, making sure she was OK. She didn’t ask me to, but some old pattern came up that I followed without question. Until I locked myself in that room.

And I felt… bad. At first.

I shut the door and kept reminding myself: I am not a bad person for needing time alone. I am not a bad person for needing breaks from other people. Nothing is wrong with me because I like to be alone.

I sat with the discomfort until I started to feel myself recharging (introverts, please drop a 🤚🏽 emoji in a comment, haha). I finally broke through the exhausting guilt of needing time alone.

I prioritized the alone time I needed to create again. To exist again. To interact again.

So, back to not knowing what to write this week. I swear I wouldn’t have come up with anything if I hadn’t taken this time for myself. It’s actually a few hours later, and I’m back in that same room writing this very post. So I did the thing again. I stepped away and prioritized myself.

So, what does any of this have to do with creating?

I spent a few years creating without feeling. Yes, it’s possible—but it feels like poop.

I had a million opinions yelling at me inside my head about what my music should and shouldn’t sound like. Things got way too serious in there. Every sound that came out of my mouth felt heavy with the weight of past and potential future opinions. (More on this in a future post I’m working on about my childhood songbook.)

Most of all, I stopped making time for silence. It’s in silence that I get to feel and explore the world inside my mind. I owe a lot of my return to silence to yoga. I missed another booking window for a workout class on ClassPass, so I decided to take a random hot yoga class down the street—and got absolutely addicted. Addicted to showing up for myself and for the incredible ideas that come to me at the end of a sweaty, melty class. I remembered how DELICIOUS silence can be.

And magically, I started creating from this new, juicy place where I was allowed to be myself in my music again. I even stopped using “type-beats” and focused on building my own beats.

Here is one of the songs I made during that time:

Before this shift, I had forgotten the point of it all. I got way too addicted to my phone, filling in the silence and numbing my feelings. It affected my ability to create and shortened my already ADHD-hindered attention span. It poisoned my creative process because my phone didn’t allow for the quiet time I needed to create. It filled every gap between thoughts with random information.

I think our creations come from the space between the end of one thought and the start of another.

Anyway, enough of my yapping. I’m going to dive deeper into phone addiction and my experience with it in next week’s post.

Cue me dusting off my old college psychology textbooks.

I’ll also share how I made my phone the ugliest and most boring tool on Earth to reinspire creative action.

Until then, I hope you can find moments of silence—even if everything feels chaotic.

What I’m Feeling ~~

Grateful, nervous.

What I’m Listening To~~

What Is Real (Deep in the Playa Mix) - Rodriguez Jr., Liset Alea, RJLA

“This kind of easy fun
I feel like it's just hiding something
And when I say I'm done
Everybody thinks I′m joking
I don′t know where to go
I'll climb up to the top of this mess alone and just look around”

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Listen to my music if you’re feeling generous 🥹