So I’ve been quiet here in good ol’ Parentheticals, despite my best of intentions (I should really open up my own metaphorical paving company called Road to Hell, just so I have something to do with all my good intentions). It’s not that I’ve been creatively absent, though, it’s just that I’ve consistently chosen to put my creative energies elsewhere than into blogging. I hate to think that there’s a finite amount of usable creative juice available to me, but that seems to be the case. Personal creativity and artistic output are not all-or-nothing things, but I’m learning (again) that I can only juggle so many active creative projects at one time and that having too many projects going on means that something inevitably gets dropped.
So if I haven’t been blogging, what have I been doing? Thanks for asking. :) Well, for at least the last 4 or 5 months, I’ve been distracted quite a bit by working on my Fly Your Freak Flag High (FYFFH) project. In March and April I put together a Kickstarter campaign to fund taking FYFFH to Maker Faire and Burning Man, and that sucked up a great deal of creative juice. I did manage to get the project successfully funded (yay!)—I wrote about that whole Kickstarter experience over on the FYFFH blog—and then I jumped immediately into prepping all the materials and the booth for the Maker Faire in May (and I wrote about my experience with Maker Faire here). I had a great time at Maker Faire, and learned a lot. (I’ll be applying some of those lessons to the FYFFH projects that I’m bringing with me to Burning Man at the end of August, but more on that later.)
Shortly after Maker Faire, my creative juices took a hit from the advent of summer and its inevitable changes in routine (including family distractions, vacations and other excitement). At the same time I was also hit with an opportunity to publish my novel sooner than I had expected, because another author dropped out of the schedule, so June and July’s creative juices were largely taken up by edits and rewrites and more edits (with a heaping helping of cover design on the side) that eventually resulted in my book becoming a leaner, tighter finished product that I am actually proud of. I’m super excited about the upcoming book launch and I know that any minute now I will have to turn a significant chunk of creative energy over to marketing the book, but I’m ok with that because I think I can be creative and have fun with that process, even though it will probably result in having to temporarily put aside other kinds of creative output. Blogging will likely prosper (stay tuned) but I suspect that work on the novel’s sequel and the next steps for FYFFH will probably founder unless some sort of clever reapportionment of available creative juices or a serious rebalancing of all my daily responsibilities—always desired, rarely attained—can be implemented. I am determined to try both reapportionment and rebalancing, but also to be okay with whatever happens.
That’s the lesson(s) here, I suppose. I’m continually trying to master the process of living an artist’s life, and experimenting with balancing the introverted need to “fill the well” or “let the field lie fallow” by just living my life with the extroverted “shiny squirrel!” desire to do this and that and also this other thing because they all sound awesome! And then also simultaneously nurturing and sustaining the joy of creating, by creating what I want when the spirit moves me, not because I have a deadline (even if that deadline is self-imposed). I am reminded (again) that the attempt at balance is the important part, and that I am better off when I hold my goals lightly enough so that I don’t get bogged down by negatively judging my own output.
Now that I’ve said that, I’m going to raise my metaphorical glass full of tasty, blended creative juice in a toast, and I hope you’ll join me: here’s to a productive, inspiring, active, delicious next few months. May they be sweet, may they be satisfying.
L’chaim!