A special plug before this week’s post:
If you are feeling despair about the state of the world and searching for a way of responding that connects to your creative soul, I encourage you to join me and Melissa West for our 90-minute online workshop Creativity, Despair, and the Life Force on Saturday, Feb 8th. This will not be a time for unpacking or “fixing” our despair, but instead a time to consider what we can learn from artists and writers of the past about using creativity as a way to both honor and metabolize our despair. It has been immensely helpful to us to put this together and I believe it will be helpful to you, too!
Learn more and register to attend.
Welcome to a New Week!
Here in my little corner of the world, the focus this week is on restarting my art-making practice. It has been NINE WEEKS since I’ve had any significant play time and I can feel the crabbiness, restlessness, and general malaise mounting.
(Are these symptoms of Menopause, National Crisis, or Lack of Creative Play? How’s that for a gameshow concept?)
There are - as there always are - all kinds of reasons for these months away from arting: My energies for art-making always dip after a show (selling work and making work are VERY different animals) and I pushed quite hard to be ready for a show I participated in just after Thanksgiving. Then there was Christmas, which is a project of its own, and then it was time to prepare the new pieces for the gallery: taking their pictures, writing up their stories, and packing them up for delivery.
Then was the pre-inauguration dread and the inauguration itself and…well, you know.
And somewhere in there was a very exciting conversation which led to a decision to offer an online assemblage art class this Spring (you heard it here first!), which made it suddenly seem essential to relocate my main craft table to a new spot where I now have two all-important things that were missing from my prior space: natural light and a door to close. This re-design required me to wait until last weekend when I could finally enlist the aid of Mr. Goodness and our darling Goodlet to move many many pieces of very heavy furniture (note to self: next lifetime, all furniture is to be light and on wheels!).
(Sometimes Living My Life Like It’s Golden takes some elbow grease!)
And Now Here We Are
As I restart my creative practice for the zillionth time, I arrive with one piece already in progress (a sweet little ode to gentleness as strength), another that is vaguely conceptualized, and a whole stack of absolutely filthy but promising boxes (scavenged for me from a local golf course by my part-vulture friend Carrie) that are just begging to get cleaned up so they can house a series of small collages.
I lost sleep the other night picturing those new collages - besides my irritability and malaise, this is another sure sign that my creative energies are rising and restive and the time has come to begin again!
The New Rhythm
My restart plan is to spend a minimum of 20 minutes at the work table each weekday. (I know from experience that most sessions will actually last an hour to 90 minutes, but setting a minimum helps me make sure I’m making at least a little progress every day and such a small, doable chunk of time it makes it nearly impossible to justify weaseling out of my commitment.)
Art time will start around 4:00 pm on weekdays and I’ll throw in a weekend morning with a more open-ended vibe whenever I can.
That’s it, that’s the whole restart plan. In my 23 years of regular creative practice, I have learned to keep my restarts simple and clear.
Here’s the pep-talk I’m giving myself this week as I restart yet again:
Never erode the power of a new beginning by being pissy with yourself for not having done it sooner. Creating is a cyclical process that includes lulls and fallow times. Your creative spirit is a sensitive living being, not a machine. It needs time to gather fresh energy, to absorb life and beauty, to refill the well, to step away and gain new perspective. There’s nothing to beat yourself up about; no judgement required or warranted. Restarts are a necessary, normal, and healthy part of the creating process - a lovely time to feel joyful about the fact that a new cycle is beginning!
Take time to reintroduce yourself. If you were meeting up with a friend you hadn’t seen in a long time, you wouldn’t skip the part where you say hello and hug and generally soak up their presence, would you? Soon enough, I’ll be back to skipping the pleasantries and picking up conversations mid-sentence, but the first encounters in a new cycle, particularly in a new space, are a beautiful opportunity to re-establish a relationship with the whole milieu of creative practice. I’m going to try to remember to slow down a bit this week, savoring the sensory joys and comforts of my tools and materials, and adapting to the different energies of this new space.
Let go of how it used to be. Every time you restart your practice or return to a project you are a different person. Whether it has been a week, a month, or five years since you were in a regular relationship with your creating, whatever it felt like before is not going to be exactly how it feels now. You cannot recreate past experiences, you can only show up curious to discover what the present you is going to get up to. Creativity only happens in the present, so there’s no use trying to recapture a glory days feeling. You can only return to glory by following the impulses that arise in you today.
The Invitation:
This week, I invite you to be aware of where you are in your own cycle of creating. Are you ready for a restart? What will that look like for you?
If the time isn’t yet right (and there’s no sense forcing a restart before you are ready) I invite you to “pre-start” your creative practice or project by letting yourself feel the pull of your desire, however faint it might be. Even if you aren’t ready to take action on a restart, you can take a moment to explore in your imagination what it will look like and feel like when the East wind blows again and carries you into your restart energy. What would you LIKE to restart?
Getting started, keeping going, getting started again
— in art and in life,
it seems to me this is the essential rhythm not only of achievement but of survival, the ground of convinced action,
the basis of self-esteem
and the guarantee of credibility in your lives,
credibility to yourselves as well as to others.
- Seamus Heany
Sara Saltee is an artist, writer, and creativity coach living on Whidbey Island, Washington. Through her writing, coaching, and workshops, she provisions creative humans for the adventure of a lifetime. In the studio, she conjures enchanting little worlds in shrines and shadow boxes.
Upcoming Events and Resources:
ONLINE WORKSHOPS
Saturday, February 8th: Creativity, Despair, and the Life Force. Melissa West and I will be exploring the difference between despair as a messenger and despair as a swamp and sharing tools and strategies for transmuting despair through creative practice.
February 21 - June 27: Keeping Our Lights On - A five-month program for nurturing our creative aliveness in dark times. There are still two spots left in this amazing program! Early-bird registration rates have been extended through Feb 8th so if you are looking for a juicy creative community to shelter and grow with, please check it out!
EBOOK
Sara’s new Ebook Welcome to the Round World: What to Expect When You’re Creating is now available for immediate download.
COACHING
Sara is now accepting new creativity coaching clients. Visit salteeacademy.com/coaching or contact Sara at sara@salteeacademy.com to explore how we might work together to nurture your creative life in 2025.
Thank you for this beautiful reminder to begin again!
I have a book to publish which I always start in January, and then drop out of before spring.
Your article came with good pointers of how to start in a graceful way.