Moving the Furniture and Creative Processes
I dislike New Year resolutions. They don’t stick for me. I dislike the self-directed nitpicking that’s often embedded in them, sometimes to the point of shaming. I especially dislike discussion New Year resolutions with others. I’m always game for asking what can be different, but I resist the idea we have to ask all at once. In any case, reflection, always—but not under the influence of weight-loss blitzes and peer pressure.
A few years ago, I developed a class called “Creative Processes.” It’s about time and creativity, and using the life you’re in to encourage living the one you want to live, especially by paying attention to the rhythms and forms of your days.
In it, I describe the premise of the “Creative Season.” Very few people are able to stick to a regimen for long. Life drops in: a change in employment, in health, in commitment to caring for others, falling in and out of love. As life changes, I have asked hundreds of people: What do you need to stay connected to your craft just for a little while—whether that’s six days or six weeks or six months?
A Creative Season is however long you can try something, within reason, before the iterative conditions of life prompt you to make adjustments and try something else. I strongly believe that in its highest forms, creativity must include self-compassion.
Last December, I turned my bedroom into an office and started sleeping in the main room of my 432 square foot apartment. It’s been helpful to have a room for work and a room for living, however porous those designations have become in my life. I left my childhood desk (two file cabinets and a 60-inch butcher block) in the nook where it’s been the 10 years I’ve been here. I imagined I’d do creative work at the desk from my youth in the room for living, and do the work of Culture Forms in the office, but if I’m being honest with myself, I didn’t write so much this year.
Some nights ago, feeling stuck in this space, I moved the childhood desk to the office. My hope is that the proximity of the creative desk and the computer desk will encourage all the writing I do to come more easily.
As I wondered what could fit in the beloved green nook, I considered a place to read. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t had the attention span for the kind of reading I used to do. I’m often reading a few books at a time, but during the pandemic I’ve had a harder time finishing any single volume.
Back in November, I committed to a practice of spending the bulk of my Mondays reading—there were six or seven left in the year, it seemed like a manageable trial. I wasn’t successful every week, but I kept those days as meeting-free as I could, with an emphasis on reflection and time without machines.
Nonetheless, I now have a reading nook. It’s not a resolution, but it’s an attempt to change the scenery and a new form that may very well reinforce how I hope to spend time, at least until I’m ready to move things around, again.
