I’m spinning quite a few plates at the moment — scripts to write, two novels to edit, applications to draft, website content to tweak — so on my unofficial Spectrum of Coping Competency, I’m probably in the yellow-to-orange zone which marks the point where being very whelmed flirts with being overwhelmed.
I’m hot, hay feverish and frequently grumpy. I’m feeling quite despondent about the cultural sector and my work prospects, and the more I talk to people about it, the worse it makes me feel. I’m feeling daunted about the prospect of trying to get a literary agent because I am expecting them to say my books are too long/overwritten/not easy to pin down in any genre/not what anyone is buying now/not what anyone will be buying in two years’ time.
I’m also attempting to lose some weight and do a modicum of exercise, so my default source of lazy comfort — heavy and indiscriminate snacking — is off limits. (I feel like Lloyd Bridges in Airplane with all his “Looks like I picked the wrong week…” moments.)
Joy is currently failing me — my own post from a few weeks ago is still ringing in my ears: “the opposite of play is not work — the opposite of play is depression” — and I’m very aware that this is a dangerous, not to mention costly, headspace for a freelancer to find themselves in.
So, while I try to make myself get on with some work and while I try to clamber out of this puddle of despondency, I’m offering a little post this week which has a big thing for us to grapple with.
I can’t pin down exactly where I saw this provocation, or its exact wording — but I suspect it’s a sentiment that was filtered through lots of platforms and voices before it found its way to me, so one more paraphrasing won’t hurt. It is (in my formulation) this:
If your mind is full, write.
If your mind is empty, read.
The pairing of adjectives might have been different — loud and quiet, perhaps; sharp and unfocused, maybe — but the sentiment remains the same. I’m going to reformulate my own formulation to make it less specific to me or to writers, and more pertinent to anyone with a creative practice:
If your mind is full, it’s output time.
If your mind is empty, it’s input time.
When there’s loads sloshing around in your head, whether it’s ideas or inspirations or just looking out of the window and being filled with horror, then that’s the time for doing, for making, for letting thought and feeling pass out of your brain and down whatever part of you connects with the tools of your practice and letting it manifest itself as your work.
When there’s nothing sloshing around in your head, when even looking out of the window doesn’t strike up a spark, then that’s the time for cutting yourself some slack and stepping off the treadmill so that you can think, read, listen, observe, so that you can restock the pond, confident in the knowledge that this period of not-doing will create the conditions you need for your particular kind of inspiration to fire up again.
So — is your mind full or empty at the moment? If it’s full, what new output is it giving rise to? If it’s empty, where are you going to go in search of some new input?
POSTSCRIPT: I don’t know if videos of Joren Whitley, the giraffe chiropractor, count as good quality new input, or tease me with a career change that it’s far too late and far too niche for me to make at the age of 46, but seeing these proves I’ve still got some capacity for finding joy left…
