Before we get started, you should know that I have a pathological fear of being boring. Flaccid is another word I also never want anywhere near my name (even just writing it makes me screw my nose up). And alongside them, I’m going to throw in apathetic, that chronic Feeling of Blah Blah Blah.
It’s not that I’ve never dealt with the Blah Blahs. Of course I have. It’s part of being human. But working with so many people navigating very grown-up things like “regulated nervous systems” (or the quest for one), I see more fabulous souls than I’d like struck down with cases of the Creative Blah-Blahs when they need not be.
And being so resistant to the condition myself, if you identify with The Blahs in any way (or, in fact, feel that way right now), I feel it’s my duty to perkily—and possibly somewhat irritatingly—see if we can’t navigate our way out of it together. I can also use everything that follows as a note to self.
I mean, who cares? Why does it even matter?
So, we’re here are we? Nursing those old chestnuts. I didn’t want to use the example I’m about to for the simple reason that I personally never get sick of drawing birds but seeing it’s the first thing that popped into my head, we’re going to run with it. A cosmic joke, if you will.
Let’s say you’re on a quest to draw more birds (but it could just as easily be writing a book, making more art—insert your thing here). You’re sitting down at the table. There’s a million things you should, could, and don’t want to be doing. Work to be done. Messes to be tidied. All the many things clawing at your attention.
And even though you don’t actually want to be doing those things—you do, weirdly, want to be here drawing birds—you still find yourself wondering what the hell you’re actually doing.
You look down at your paper and convince yourself it’s crap. I mean, it’s actually kind of embarrassing that you’re doing this at all. In what universe did this seem like a good idea? It’s not like you’re ever going to sell them, and even if you wanted to, you’d probably make no money.
You’re pretty sure you’re not good at it—I mean, look at it—and anyone who tells you differently is probably just being kind. God, what’s actually the point?
Well, I’m so glad that you asked. This is the perfect question to pick up on:
What really IS the point?
I can’t assume to know what the point is for you (although I have an inkling), but I want you to sit with this question for a moment. Just watch your tone—the emphasis you use will change how you answer it completely.
What I can tell you is what the point is for me: without art-making, I am bonkers. Without art-making, I am sad. Without art-making, I am irritable and grumpy and feel like I have things (I don’t know what things exactly—things) wanting to escape out through my skin.
And while we’re on the subject, I also believe that art-making is not an indulgence or a luxury or even something you squeeze in. It’s a function of wellbeing. We are wired to make things. It’s one of the essential considerations of health that needs to be nailed back on the chart alongside your five-a-day and ten thousand steps.
If you consider yourself a creative human (and I’ll assume you do, because, well, here you are), you’ll know that creative energy needs to be metabolised. It has its own urgency and persistence; it doesn’t just disappear.
It has to go somewhere. It wants to turn into something. It needs to move through you.
And if it’s ignored, dishonoured, or disrespected, it doesn’t just evaporate—it comes at you sideways. As resentment. As irritation. As anger.
The long and the short of it? Best sit down and draw that bird.
So, what’s the way in?
Ok, we’ve arrived at a good point. We’ve decided that creating is important and the Blahs are boring and we’d quite like to feel something different.
There are two roads we can take. We can start in the Human Head Area and consider how our thinking might be a co-conspirator in the Blah Blahs, or we can look to this feisty animal body of ours and work out how to twiddle the gears a bit.
Let’s start in the human head area and work our way down.
Human Head Business & The Blahs
All thoughts are a conversation with gravity.
That might sound weird, but if you’re curious, stick with me.
I don’t know if thoughts can exist separate from a body, but if they can, I imagine they’re very hard to catch. We know what someone is thinking not because we can read their mind, but because we can read their body.
We understand that what we’re thinking about—and how we’re thinking about it—shows up as a physical imprint.
Thoughts come to life through a specific arrangement of our insides, and that arrangement means we feel specific things. It’s a co-dependency we’ll never escape from (well, not without the breathing bit at least).
Creative Blah energy, if we were to consider it through a nervous system lens, is a very collapse-ey energy. It doesn’t want to fight. It doesn’t want to run away from anyone. It just wants to sit around like a human puddle and think about how hard done by it feels right now and how it wishes things were different.
I mean, I don’t love saying it but it can be a bit victim-ey. A bit martyr-ey, if I’m honest.
Try it on for size. If you let yourself languish in “who even cares” energy for too long, you will find that gravity starts to tear you down. Your bones start collapsing under the weight of their own despair. Your skin acts like it’s melting off you. Your footsteps are heavy, clunking like a chamber maid in the 1800’s.
I can describe this because I know this feeling, too. We’ve all been there.
What I feel like when I get into these types of moods is there is an undercurrent of disappointment. Is it entitlement? I think it probably is. My mind is tricking me into thinking that on some level, I want something that is not available to me right now and that makes me feel a little cross.
I guess, embarrassingly, I might even think I’m owed something by an unknown someone- recognition perhaps- in return for all this work I’m putting in.
That life is supposed to work to the equation of hard work = work worth doing, work that is validated.
That if I care about it enough, then you should care about it too. That kind of thing.
Christ on a bike. Just writing it down is making me depressed.
The antidote? In the words of every 80’s pop star worth their leotard sponsorship, you’ve got to take the power back.
It’s true what you’re thinking (sorry): people might not care. You might not ever make the money you want (sorry again). The world is not always fair. It does, occasionally, suck balls.
(I feel the urge to write an alternate ending where everyone cares and you’re so stinking rich it’s nauseating—which is just as possible as the former. Well, perhaps not everyone).
But entertaining all possibilities, the Blah Blahs need you to figure why you do it for you.
What do you want from your art?
And they want you to recognise the importance of your art-making, even if the motivating factor is as simple as helping you keep your shit together and feel slightly less annoyed. Which, by the way, is quite a big deal in my book.
Although, I’d love to think it makes you feel more joyful.
Your Body & The Blahs
Let’s think now about the physicality of apathy. It has bottom-of-the-pond energy. You know the feeling—when you step into slightly murky water, hit that soft, squidgy layer of silt, and recoil immediately because, ugh. That’s what this is. You’re stuck at the bottom of the pond.
Fortunately, movement is magical—and it doesn’t need to be much. But let’s not reduce ourselves to silt. You, my friend, are not bottom-of-the-pond—you’re a bottle full of liquid glitter. You just need to shake that glitter around.
But you must be careful— Blah Blah energy is seductive. It’ll tell you not to move, that movement is impossible. I’m afraid you’ll need to give yourself a little shove (or get someone nearby to do it for you). But you need to move. Move in ways that are unexpected. Move differently. Make your body think. Make it wake up.
Do whatever you need to—but move. You need to redistribute that glitter.
A Small Experiment
Let’s tie this up in a neat little package, shall we? Finish the loop, as I often hear mentioned on Important Podcasts.
1. Ask yourself, Why are you doing this? Beyond everything out there. Because you want to is enough. It doesn’t have to be anything bigger than that. Our views around artistic permission are so strange. We convince ourselves if we aren’t making money or receiving rave reviews our art lacks validity and therefore we shouldn’t do it. That’s rubbish. Figure out what it means for you. End of.
2. Move. We are creatures of movement who find ourselves (more often than not) in a sedentary world. Novel movement reactivates your sensory system and helps pull you out of ground hog day patterns. You literally and metaphorically need to shake things up.
3. Commit to something highly practical. The brain loves functional process (it loathes being stranded on The Island of Overthinking) . Anything to far off the practical and functional can cause us to behave in wonky ways. Don’t worry if it’s good or bad, right or wrong. Focus on something technical, something learnable, something doable. And see what’s possible from there.
I’d love to hear your thoughts- what helps you navigate the Blah Blahs?
xx Jane
PS. A side note: If you are really chronically blah, it can legitimately mean that you’re exhausted. This is not the type of blah I’m meaning here- the one I am speaking to is more existential. There’s no cure for exhaustion but good sleep.