How to make room for making

An Impulses subscriber wrote to me with the question:

“My creative life has been on the back burner due to day job and health work, family stuff. In addition to the day job stuff, I have 3 personal areas to keep going…yet I know that my artist work is the soul work (music and performance writing). How to manage my creative side when the “work” side takes so much time?”

This is a great question and is one we all face – how to manage our time and energy and attention?

We all have our valuable and precious resources – our time and energy. We are extremely privileged to be able to make decisions about how we spend these resources.

Yes, a certain amount is allocated to survival, i.e. making money to pay our bills. And if for some reason you do not have to work to pay your bills, my guess is there are plenty of other things that take up your time and energy.

But beyond our working hours, we do have time and energy and we are responsible for making the kind of choices that foster our happiness.

My question is this: What are you choosing over your Soul work? How can you afford to not do your Soul work?
If we set our Soul aside, what’s left? What is the lived and felt experience on a daily basis of not devoting at least some of your time to Soul work?
Sometimes we have other obligations that will  end. Caring for aging parents. Decluttering projects. Finishing up a degree.

During those times it gets harder to devote time to our Soul work. During those times, it may be just a 15-minute/week practice. Sometimes our creative agenda needs to be deferred or reduced.

But if you don’t have a massive commitment like that, and you are putting your Soul work out in the garage with the other unwanted ‘stuff’, I think you can do better.

I completely believe that making things – writing, making art, building a business – is our Soul work. We show up on the planet with this deep, deep desire to create, and it’s our human work to bring those creative urges into form.
We are called to align our energy, our attention and our time so that we can be makers and not just doers and consumers.

I am right alongside you in this challenge to juggle all the things I have to, get to and want to do. I’m not perfect. There are weeks when my seat at the art table is cold. On those weeks, I am cranky and ‘off’.

But when I can get in even a bit of play time, unfocused, non-agenda time in the art studio noodling around, I feel complete.

In all the years I have been coaching, I always work with clients and students on this issue. One of the biggest mistakes we make is thinking we need a big chunk of time to work. But dang it, sometimes life doesn’t hand us the uninterrupted weekend to blissfuly be in the making zone.

That is why I advise you to find small bits of time, even 15 minutes a week, to devote to your Soul work of creating. That time will nourish you and will grow. It will also inform all the other things you do, and will be well worth it.

If you cannot devote 15 minutes a week to your Soul work, you are robbing yourself and it’s likely deeper issues preventing you from taking time to play. These deeper issues are also ones many of us share: fear of not being good enough. Fear of being too good. Fear of being authentic. I get it! Our tender egos HATE looking like a fool or amateur.

You are the only one who can know if you are doing everything you can to get to your creative work or if you are avoiding it because of fear or distraction.

That’s okay! It’s okay to be afraid and distracted. But get clear on what this is costing you and how long you plan to let your creative drive remain in idle.

Take one small step this week. Just let your Soul lead your by the hand to the guitar, to the easel, to the blank page and start with one note, one mark, one doodle. Your Soul will pick things up from there.