Courting your creativity
Courtship is the slow, purposeful process of pursuit. The approach is one of open curiosity and commitment.
And this, folks, is what your creativity is waiting for from you. Do you feel that tapping on your heart?
When you shift out of the acute burnout that comes from overing, you start to yearn for something more. But not more in the usual overing way. More in the sense of deeper, more regenerative, more whole, more YOU.
That feeling of yearning is a calling to discover your innate creativity.
It’s a desire to get unblocked and unstuck and into flow.
A wish for joy.
That innate creativity helps you break out of your routines, mindsets, and patterns of overworking and over-functioning.
Pre-pandemic, my creativity would inspire me through my research projects, home improvement ideas, watercolors, courses I created, how I taught, gardening, and those sorts of things. I felt it everywhere when I was in the habit of making space and courting my own creativity.
I was teaching creativity in doctoral and writing seminars as the heart of research. The goals then were to help students learn their creative process, address issues of fear and perfectionism early on in their program, and develop writing habits based on individual strengths. I still believe deeply in the power of teaching creativity to adults as a powerful way to face our learned fears and beliefs around perfectionism, judgment and criticism, and toxic comparison.
During the first year of the pandemic when I was still department chair, I went into a deep rabbit hole of burnout, depression, and anxiety. Higher Ed leaders ramped up expectations and workload to save themselves (under the guise of ‘for the students’) at the cost of staff/faculty wellbeing.
At that time, I decided to do some reworking with The Artist’s Way with a couple of friends. I had done a round of the book before. We would complete the work on our own (as it is designed) and then we’d meet up to discuss during a (socially distanced) hike.
My creativity kept me afloat in that darkness and guided me back into the light – like the moth who pollinates at night and spreads in the day.
Out of all this came the Creativity Lab – a space to foster reconnection to creativity and to do so in a container of community support and growth.
What I’ve learned in courting creativity is that the busy, busy, busy - the constant overworking, overscheduling, over-functioning - keeps creativity small and stagnant.
Courting creativity is a burnout salve or protector.
Creativity soothes anxiety and stress and is an all-around mental health booster. In Creativity Lab, we pair creativity with other key beneficial practices – writing and reflection, movement and embodiment, nature and play – so we can build intentional, slowed-down lives filled with connection and wholeness.
Are you ready for an invitation to SLOW DOWN, breathe into your body and senses, re-examine your days and workflow, create spaciousness and time for play, and court your creativity so that you can reenvision your relationship to work and living?
We start Friday, September 29, 2023.