Another unclogging
A recent post by combatdavey has me further reflecting on creativity and what fosters it:
I used to think that no good creative work came from happiness but that's nonsense fed to guys like me between the ages of 16-25 to justify all kinds of self-obsession, self-destruction, and self-aggrandizement.
The view from middle age is different. It is informed by experience and by trying a lot of things and knowing what works and what doesn't. And because I am middle-aged and have failed in every way very experienced I can tell you that for me personally, the best and most rewarding work I've ever done (including whatever work I do here, actually) has been downstream of joy and peace, two things I have experienced in almost indecent abundance over the past few years.
I know every person is different, but so far my experience has been quite opposite. When I've been happy and peaceful and generally satisfied with life, I had little to no interest in creative pursuits. To be fair, that's also happened when I've been the stressed-out flavor of depressed. My sweet spot has always been a philosophic and deeply reflective state, especially one tinged with a bit of despair about self or society. But good grief, I can't remain in that state all the time. So that's why I want to build up a habit, maybe to reduce the friction of expression in different modes? Both as an outlet for clarifying feelings of frustration, hopelessness, and nihilism, and for more properly celebrating and memorializing straight or upward motions, successes, joys, adventures.
While working at this over the last few weeks, it feels like I've dusted off the cobwebs enough to clearly make out that there's a BLOCK. I think I knew it was there all along. I've performed a lot of mental trickery upon myself over time as a means of self-preservation. I learned how to mush down dark thoughts and stop the spinning out, by pushing out or locking up certain thought patterns. But other stuff gets caught up in the shuffle and gets shut out or locked up just the same—like the free flow of artistic energy, a certain courage for experimentation. The compartmentalization is highly imperfect.
But time has passed, and with my own age and experience I'm feeling like I'm better equipped to scrape loose the clogs and more skillfully direct both the bad and good energies to more appropriate places. I actually love myself now and have fully embraced all the weirdness and feelings of being different. So I want to reclaim those parts that got put away, to reform my whole self, and be able to properly create again.