Serious Play
geminica | February 25th, 2010 - 9:44 amI haven’t been interested in any of my self-assigned creative projects lately. Each morning I bang my head against them – why can’t I get this done? I want to be serious about art, and by serious I mean just get myself to the drawing table no matter what. But lately I get there and find *none* of my projects are engaging. I get nowhere with them.
The problem is, I’m psyching myself out. In deciding to be serious about art, I’m turning it into work, but also continuing to pressure myself to do it in *all* my free time. It should be fun, but I’ve made it a burden, and sapped all the joy out of it.
I came up with this way of looking at my current situation, as compared to the ideal balance that brings both productivity and joy:
Later, Mike and I came up with this view, based on Mike’s idea of “serious play”:
In conclusion, I’m letting go of my projects. It’s hard to do, because of that sense of pressing mortality – what if I lose all momentum, and suddenly am 80 years old and didn’t do anything? I must continue to *make*.
It’s just, for the next few months, I’m going to take the burden out of it, and do it because it’s fun and I want to draw.
Crazy, right?
I used to worry about that all the time, too– my days are mostly filled with work, so my free time needs to be filled with music. I can’t sustain that either. So I made a deal with myself– that 3 days out of the week (any 3), I can practice. If I want to do more, then I can do more, but I don’t have to. If I don’t do 3 days (like this week), I let it go, and vow to do 3 days next week. That way, I can free myself to do other enjoyable things, and in actuality, the down time often helps me focus better for the next practice session.
I’ve gone back and forth with this my entire life. One mistake I’ve made in the past is that when I stop drawing, I really stop drawing, and a break stretches on for years. This time I’m just dropping projects, not art – I built up good structure this last year, and I’m going to it. Tomorrow I’ll participate in Worldwide SketchCrawl Day as usual, and then Sunday is my regular drawing data with Nina. That’s what’s going to make it work this time!!!
How long have you been doing the 3 out of 7 guideline? Do you feel it’s working? I find that when I forgive myself for skpping a day, then I end up skipping every day – so I hammer myself EVERY night and thus this stupid problem where it stops being fun. Ha… art is hard.
I think I’ve been doing the 3 out of 7 routine for the past 5 years or so, and more recently after I felt my breathing was more or less back to normal after I got my tonsils out, about a year ago. I’ve started to treat practicing music like athletic practice– my muscles tire out if I push it too much, but if I go too long without practicing, then they atrophy. But if I hit the right amount of rest and practice (3 days out of 7 so far), I find I progress more quickly than if I force myself to practice every day. I don’t know if that would be the case with art.
I’ve stopped beating myself up about how much I do/don’t practice. I keep a log so I know how many days I have practiced, for how long, and what pieces I’ve worked on.
It definitely helps to be doing creative stuff with people. One thing that definitely keeps me going is to be playing with my woodwind trio. It definitely motivates me to be on my game, and to stay sharp. It makes me sad that I’m not able to rehearse more with them, now that I live farther away. I really like those guys. I suppose if it ever becomes too difficult, I’ll have to find another outlet somehow.
It’s good that you have a structure– I’m glad to hear you’ll keep doing art, even if you’re not motivated to do those particular projects.