Boredom Breeds Creativity

During a recent conversation with my husband, I was complaining about being bored.

“But that’s good,” he said.

The nerve of some people.

“How is that possibly good? Only boring people get bored! Besides, it’s not like I don’t have lots of stuff to do, but it’s all just filler and busywork and day to day mundane tasks… I need a THING!”

“No, you really don’t. Not right now. Right now you have other priorities, like getting healthy.”

Heal yourself, first. The rest will come later.

NOT what I wanted to hear.

I’ve filled my whole life with busy, with stuff (both literal and figurative), and noise. I had no more space for creativity.

The kids were out of town for most of the summer and I wasn’t working so things got… quiet. My existence pared down to the most basic level: sleep, feed myself, exercise, take my supplements, get outside, repeat. This took everything I had.

After a bit, it got easier. While I was still dealing with fun things like brain zaps every time I turned my head, I started to find space for more. I pulled out old art supplies that had spent years being shuffled from corner cupboard to garage to dusty shelf, and I started painting.

Oh, was I rusty! I’d spent years in art classes, drawing and painting and observing light and shadow, and mixing colors, but it felt like I’d lost it all.

Starting over was a moment of healing.

You could look at me wrong and I’d still burst into tears for no apparent reason and no ability to control it, but this was a thing I could consciously make a choice about. I could let go of all the “shoulds” and expectations around what my art was supposed to be, and simply create. Get lost in the process, and breathe.

Art is prayer. 

The act of creating something from nothing, of taking blank, empty space and filling it with something beautiful is an act of meditation.

It doesn’t matter how technically perfect it is, or if the proportions are exact, or the colors are true to life- it just matters that you DO it, that you are present in the moments of creation. It doesn’t matter if you use paint, or a pencil, or a stick in the sand. Your creation can be a picture to go on a wall. It can be words to fill a page. It can be a loaf of bread.

All that matters is that you show up.

Healing happens in layers, bit by little bit. It takes time. It is excruciating, and true progress is slow. But when you can tell your story and it doesn’t make you cry? That’s when you know you’ve healed.