Category: Blog

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.

I mean, let’s say hypothetically it’s Friday morning. Your head is feeling like scrambled eggs because you were up tending to global affairs with only two hours sleep, or because you were partying like it’s 1969, or in fact your teenage-something had a mini meltdown, combined with perimenopause fog detritus means that you have only a vague idea what your name is (I’ve purposely left this open ended so you have no idea which is me). You are aware that there are a mountain of things to be done, and you’d quite like to be placed in a sensory deprivation tank, possibly only drawing birds, but the world keeps prodding your pre-frontal cortex saying there are things that definitely need to get done.

At times like this, my friends, it’s important to hand over your executive function to other beings. And the being in my life right now is a great long list. And for an extra shot of dopamine, I recommend adding check boxes beside them so you can tick things off.

There’s nothing that will make a hormonal, feeling-like-the-bottom-of-a-pond-creature more accomplished than being able to add a big fat tick next to a thing that just got done.

 

Writing stuff down is, indeed, a magical thing. Those in the writing business know that we frequently understand ourselves better after, not before, the pen hits the page. That the purpose is not to arrive with the answers, but with all the many questions, and to hope, in some way, that we will scribe our way to the answers.

 

Lists are, perhaps, the most unromantic of all forms of writing, but they can still be a bloody good time. If you can’t be trusted to be left to your own devices for that day (week, month) then let a list take that gelatinous matter that used to be your brain and help you direct it usefully.

 

It helps you prioritise, reduce the overwhelm of all that bigness into tiny pockets of doable smallness, and stops you wondering about all the things you’ve forgotten while you sit around doing nothing.

 

It’s an exercise in simplification. In recognising the reality of where you are today, and turning the fuzz into action things. And the brain does love a bit of purpose. It’s entirely functional in its design. It hates it when you or I just stay up there, caught in overthinking.

 

So if that’s you (saving the world / hungover / caught in a hormonal rampage), may I suggest you make yourself a list. Take away the decision fatigue of your day and just tick off what needs to be done.

 

Sometimes, the things that are the most mundane will bring the most relief.

 

Last night’s beginning “Birds that visited my feeder” drawing, to keep me focused and less irritable at the kitchen table.

When I was very young, I had a best friend named Carly, and she had a budgie named Roger, a little parakeet of yellow and gold, who lived in a very small cage. Roger was, as they say, born in captivity, so his sense of the world was equally small. And because it was the 80s, our understanding of what a bird (or any animal, really) might need was apparently quite small also.

Both being young, we thought loving Roger meant giving him his seed on time, cleaning out his cage, and pressing our probably-grubby-still-growing noses between the bars to tell him all about our day.

And perhaps, at that moment, Roger thought that was what freedom was too.

That all air was tinged with the faint smell of disinfectant, that wings only flapped for two seconds at a time, and that preening yourself was the most interesting part of a 24 hour cycle.

One fateful afternoon, Roger’s cage was sitting on the back deck when the weather turned windy. You can probably guess what happened next—we both watched it unfold in slow motion. The cage tipped over, the small door popped open on its way down, and Roger just sat there, stunned, staring at this opening with no hands to hold him back.

After what felt like forever, Roger moved toward the door and flew away.

Out into that wild, vast world.

Carly and I were devastated (I felt he was my bird as much as hers), but at the same time, we understood (or at least hoped) that maybe Roger was happier. Our tiny selves did have some understanding, after all, that birds were meant for bigger things than cages.

Can you imagine what that must have felt like? For Roger I mean?

Holy crap, I imagine him saying. This is wild! One can only hope he didn’t go completely off the rails.

I really hope he found his happy ending.

I wonder if he thought about a different form of freedom, or if he really thought there was none.

We do this all the time, us humans- convince ourselves of only one type of freedom.

This morning as I sat down to write. I was tired, grumpy even, and my brain felt completely devoid of inspiration. And when you get to that point, your mind can convince you that you’re in a little cage, where you play the same patterns, where you keep placing your attention on things which are upsetting and disturbing that keep you spinning around in the same old cycles of thought.

I don’t have a lot for you today, but the one thing I can share is that I do know it’s possible to open the door up of the cage.

That there are always different realities available to us than the one that feels the most present or familiar.

You can start by reminding yourself that there’s no need to be impressive. That you just need to do something, anything, to pull you out of the spin cycle and drop you back into your creative heart, your creative brain.

So I write. Badly and not that interestingly, but nonetheless with good intention.

I draw shapes that make no sense. I draw a lot of bad birds.

I talk to people doing interesting things, let myself ride the winds of their creative energy.

I talk to my mountain parrots who visit me and tell them I’ll fill up the nectar feeder soon.

They aren’t massive things, but they are reminders:

That we aren’t in a cage.

That we don’t belong to the abyss of bad news, no matter how much of it we’re fed.

And that what we make doesn’t have to be good.

That the fact we have mind to make it all it sometimes the only liberation that we need.

A drawing / painting from this week for you xx

Sprinting when you are designed to walk…

I talked yesterday about seeking out more and more activities (art! all the making things!) that see you moving at a human pace, and today I thought I would share something super simple that helps you experience that in real time in a really practical way.

You’ll just need a pen, paper and 30 seconds.

Happy tinkering!

xx Jane

 

Ok, so the first part is about avoiding maths…

But the second part is something I’ve recently become a little bit obsessed with: moving at a human pace.

So much of what we’re asked to do, and where we place our attention, has us moving out of sync with ourselves.

Phones have us absorbing information faster than we can assimilate it.

The culture we’re part of asks for outputs that don’t match our natural rhythms.

A lot of us are feeling a bit scrambled, out of sync, and (frankly) exhausted, all the stuff and all the things leaving us scattered mentally, physically, and emotionally.

Which is why making stuff — making all the lovely things — matters so much. Not just for the obvious reasons (paint all the birbs! Draw all the birbs!), but because it actually allows you to catch up with yourself.

It gathers all your scattered pieces and arranges them into something you recognise.

So if you’re looking for a reason to sit down this weekend and make some art, I can’t think of a better one than that.

Happy mark-making, my friends.

xx Jane

Don’t tell anyone this, but I used to be a massive nerd. I was the biggest, swottiest nerd you ever did see. I would hide away in my bedroom around exam time and study those books until the words were embossed on the back of my eye lids. And even then, it never felt like enough.

I cross trained in the highest form of energy a body can produce without chemical assistance: perfectionism and panic.

The other side of that was there was always, inevitably, a finish line. The exams had a date and would be over. I would have to stop, even if I didn’t want to.

And at that point, I remember being consumed by a lightness. My body lifted of its studious weights, I floated round, time seemingly swilling out before me like gossamer.

This is the joy of finishing energy. Of things being done. For my high school self, it never felt like I was ready for the end point to arrive. It always seemed like there was one more chapter I needed to read, or a quick thing I needed to check before I knew the answer to that question. But at some point, there was a forced surrender.

At some point, I needed to be done.

I think of this a lot in relationship to our creative work. There is a lot of focus on idea generation, on maintaining inspiration, but little emphasis on tying things up. Most people I work with aren’t short on ideas. But what they are short on is finishing energy. On picking that one thing and seeing it through.

Too many things left unfinished eat us alive. There’s a liberation in ending.

We leave things open and undone as a just in case policy. In case we can make it better. In case we think of a different way to end it.

What can you tie off, finish up?

What can you look and decide, yes, this is done?

I’ve been thinking about what to write this morning since yesterday, and perhaps the day before, because the truth of the matter is, I’m feeling a little porous.

Like the spaces in between the edges of my skin have opened just enough for the world to creep in and the parts of me that are meant to be free and spacious are now heavy. A sodden towel needing to be wrung out placed in the full sun. This is my body for today.

What is the approach- to writing, to creating, to doing anything at all- when you want to close the window instead of fling them open, that instead of galloping you wish to crawl?

We accept this is the start point and begin.

We ride shotgun with the sadness or the heaviness or the anxiety or the fear, and we do not make requests of them at any point to disappear. We befriend them. Love on them. Make them hot chocolate. Treat them with care.

They are surprised at this approach and begin to soften their hard edges. We discover that they are searching for friendship as much as the next person (if we can be so audacious to presume an emotion is a person), and it’s only when we treat them kindly that we can really understand what they wanted in the first place.

We make it our mission to point out all the beauty, because beauty is a necessary thing. After all, if we are heavy with anything it is because we do not understand how others are missing all the beauty, so we best be making sure we are not missing it ourselves.

Speaking of which:

This weekend, I saw a Pīpipi, a brown creeper, for the very first time. Can you imagine? These adult eyes, in all their years of seeing, having never seen such a thing before. I was walking with a bird expert, and they pointed them out in amongst the trees, and I was wondrous like a child, enthusiastic and asking all the questions.

This is the way I think, through all the heaviness:

We take our soggy towel bodies, bundling everything they are holding and we tell them simply:

Just pay attention and keep looking in the trees.

This is the way to keep on going.

My drawing of the Pīpipi.

In an alarming set of circumstances, the two baby Pūkeko who had been tended to by their huddle of mamas over many weeks appeared missing — only to be discovered just next door.

Their neighbour from up the hill, Jane Pike, said:

“I was tiptoeing past them every day, trying not to seem over the top in my enthusiasm and giving them adequate space. Then Thursday I noticed they had gone. We’d had a massive amount of rain over the weekend, and I’d thought of their little bodies under that deluge, so when I couldn’t see them anymore I feared the worst.

Then, just yesterday, walking up the hill, I noticed the mamas had built a new nest on top of the flax plants, and there they were: two little fluffy babies!

‘YOU ARE SO CLEVER!’ I whistled over the fence, at which one mama looked distinctly unimpressed, did a tiny stomp with her bird trotter, and flapped her wing forcefully, which I took to mean I should move on.”

Jane admitted that she did hide in the bushes for some time after but asked that be kept off the record.

A few fun Pūkeko facts to close:

Pūkeko are communal nesters. Several birds will share the same nest and take turns incubating eggs and feeding chicks as part of the mama clan.

They can swim and dive surprisingly well (those feet are made for paddling as much as stomping). I’ve seen the paddling in the inlet and wondered if I need to call Surf Lifesavers but apparently not.

You’ll often see them lifting food delicately to their mouths with those long red toes. Very dignified dining for a wetland bird.

And this, lovely people, is why I am wholly unemployable.

Because I try to follow along with the inktober challenge, but end up drawing a pink parrot instead, progressing to painting on handmade paper I just bought that I was told was completely unsuitable for paint.

Some things I think of when it comes to making time for this fantastic business that is art.

Make it easy to get started. Remove the friction. Have your sketchbook or your pencils or your notebook everywhere, so when that five minutes arises, you can grab whatever is around and just do it.

You can ride the feeling, the momentum, as soon as it presents. Line the space between you and your art making with Teflon. You want to be able to slide on in there with your socks on and make your art.

See creating not as needing big blocks of time but micro moments. My birds often get drawn over the series of many days; before the call, while the boys are occupied for a few minutes, when I’m doing other work and need a break.

Writing also. And if writing and drawing are your bag like they are mine, leave skeletons of the previous sessions all around you to make them easy to continue on with. Bullet points as paragraphs or chapter ideas you want to write. Lightly lined birds, ready for your fine point pen to jump in. Leave your last creating session at a point the future you can easily pick up from.

Find communities that normalize the habit that you most want to do. We aren’t supposed to be doing this alone, but if you’re the only one you know in your life trying to cultivate this habit, then it can very much feel that way.

I have Creating Wild, my community membership, for this reason. We need each other to create the habit of art. To say, you can do this. This is important.

If you find the time for your creating getting squeezed out, create first. Before the phone. Before the emails. Before the other things make demands on your time. I’ve had times of life (co-sleeping or child related) that have made this not possible. But if it is possible for you, then do it.

You’ll prove something to yourself that is life-changing: that this whole creating thing has benefits that far exceed everything you might have originally thought.