It’s pretty exasperating how the human heart is never content, isn’t it? Last fall I was walking around my neighborhood, crying because I had been furloughed and felt so stressed and overwhelmed by unemployment and the job-searching process. Now, a year later, I’m stressed out of my mind by my job and longing for periods of unstructured time to work on personal creative projects. Because despite working in a creative field, I still feel unfulfilled creatively unless I am able to work on self-directed projects as well. Lately, it’s been really difficult to do so. I have so many ideas for art to create, garments to sew, fabrics to weave, sweaters to knit–but very little time to execute those ideas. I’ve been creating in the margins of my day, squeezing creative activities into the cracks and spaces between the main events of my schedule.
For instance, I write poetry in my phone’s notes app as the poems present themselves to me, rather than sitting down intentionally to write a lot of poetry at once. Hopefully I will have time to edit and organize them someday, but for now they all get tossed into notes, where they sit patiently waiting. I also have to write them down in the moment because poems do not come to me in the same way twice. There are recurring themes, but if I forget a specific turn of phrase, I probably won’t remember it later.
My train ride is the most obvious “margin” time in my day. My commute is pretty active and includes a short drive, two train rides with a transfer, and a walk from the train station to the office. Because of this, there is less time for repose or productivity on my commute than one might imagine. I have to squeeze in whatever I want to accomplish in that time on the train, such as knitting or crocheting or listening to books or podcasts.
Even this rambling collection of thoughts was written in the margins: on a Tuesday night when I was tired, typing with my computer on my lap, between washing dishes and going to sleep; on a dark Wednesday morning before work, while chowing down on a bowl of cereal, my computer taking up a quarter of my tiny kitchen table. I’m editing and expanding this piece on a Sunday morning when I have a longer stretch of time to work on it, but the foundational thoughts were put into place during time when I “didn’t have time.”
Sometimes I wonder if I struggle to engage my creativity during the week because of a proximity or access issue. When I’m tired after a long day of commuting and working, the small obstacles of having to clear off table space and power up my clunky (yet dearly beloved) laptop or drag my sewing machine out of its nook in my closet are enough to stop me from writing or sewing. I imagine, “If I had a desk where I could leave my computer out all the time…” or, “If I had a studio where all of my art supplies could live out in the open, then I would live the creative life I want to!” I’m not sure if that’s true, though. I certainly think I would find it easier to write consistently if my laptop were always set up and accessible, but that doesn’t mean that I would write consistently. It’s easy to believe that having more working surfaces would eliminate the frustration of having one many-purpose kitchen table, but adding more stuff to my tiny apartment (or even moving into a larger apartment with space for a desk and a dedicated studio!) isn’t automatically going to change my behavior and habits. A lot of the time, I simply don’t have the energy to work on a time- and space- and energy-intensive creative project after working all day. (See: the quilt I started four years ago that is languishing on the top shelf of my fabric rack, begging for batting and a backing. Quilting is an endeavor that requires several consecutive hours at a time and unfortunately cannot be done on a train or late at night with a groggy brain.)
That being said, I do believe that the spaces we move in shape us. My life and living space could be more intentionally designed around a consistent creative practice. I could reduce the space-related obstacles that seem so prohibitive when I’m tired in order to make my margin time at night more usable. A desk or sewing table might be helpful–but only if it is a thoughtful, intentional addition that is paired with a new rhythm of sitting down at it to write or sew.
Sometimes I think I should accept that during this time when I’m just starting out in my career, I won’t have much time to do and to make all of the things I’m dreaming about. And trying to make things in those in-between times can have a negative impact if it takes away from my precious time for rest. But I’ve been aware of those things for months now, and it hasn’t lessened the creative spark that is begging to be let loose, to be allowed to turn ideas into reality in the world. Even if resting instead of making during “margin” times is the wiser choice given how exhausting work is right now, creating is just as crucial for my well-being as rest. So I don’t think I should try to silence that voice or tell her to wait. Who knows when or if I ever will have more free time than I do now, after all? I think I need to get creative with when and where I get creative! If my use of the margin times comes from a healthy place–if the point is to engage that creative spark and to make things for the joy of making, rather than for the sake of being productive during every possible moment–I can still find rest and rejuvenation throughout my day.
Writing is a miracle. Knitting and crocheting and weaving are miracles. Drawing and painting are miracles, too, and the list could go on forever. Think about it–those tiny words, here-and-there poems, small stitches, and scattered sketchbook pages build up slowly, slowly, one after another, creating something large and powerful and beautiful, something so much greater than the sum of its parts. I’m fascinated by the power of repetition and how patient, steady progress in the same direction enables us to create incredible things and learn massive amounts of information and enact important change. There are many pursuits that require longer periods of focused effort (see: that quilt), but so many of the things I want to do really can be incorporated into the margins of each day. It takes a little extra effort, but I can knit or crochet on the train. I can write for a few minutes before bed.
Maybe all I need is to give myself a little more permission to do what makes me feel the most alive, instead of allowing the reasons why it’s difficult to hold me back. It’s so easy to believe that creativity would be easier if some of my circumstances were different. But isn’t that the power and the beauty and the whole point of creativity, to imagine a new world and create it right from where you are, with what you have? The how is where the magic happens. The why is because we are the most fully human, the most ourselves, when we engage our creativity. The who is you and the who is me. The when is whenever we can.
Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash
