My kitchen table

+ the key to solving creative conundrums

Time to get up, my body says. I lift the sleep mask and take a peek. Dawn is cracking and the birds tell me a new day has begun. I steal a look at the clock because I won’t get out of bed until 6 am and must try to wait if it’s earlier. I feel lucky if I haven’t roused until 7, but most mornings it is 6:20. Why 6:20? I have no idea, but more times than not that is the time when I awaken and check the clock.

I head downstairs to my kitchen table. It’s the one we bought from the previous owners, not the one my husband is making for me for an anniversary present. Or was it for my birthday? I can’t remember because that was two years ago, maybe three. He means well and I’ve learned to be patient. It truly is the thought that counts. After 53 years together I know that he will get it done eventually.

Anyway, I love my kitchen table, not for its roundness, meals shared, projects started or completed. I love it because it is where I start my day. I can sit and look out the French doors and windows at whatever the current season offers: fawns, deer, hummingbirds, birds of all sorts, especially the cardinals and blue jays, and my favorite red-bellied woodpecker. I’ve seen a fox stalk and pounce, squirrels mate, and a mother opossum amble by carrying 6 babies on her back. That one kind of freaked me out, as they were still hairless. Yesterday it was torrential rain from hurricane Debby, soon it will be snow, and likely ice, glistening on the bare gray branches of winter. I fell in love with this house the first time we saw it 9 years ago, because of all the windows, all the light, and the surrounding woodlands. And the privacy, seclusion, and inspiration I never found in the DC suburbs.

I have acquired a morning routine at this table, it never varies, no matter where I am in the world. I like my routine. It sets a pattern, grounds me and provides a calming structure and consistency, which is a nice thing to have in this helter-skelter world.

1. Get ice water

2. Check email

3. Play Wordle & send results to my sister

4. Eat a banana

5. Play Tiles

6. Take vitamins

7. Play Wordscapes

The games wake my brain and sharpen my mind for the day ahead (or so I tell myself). All the while, I’m debating what to do on this fine day. Unless I’m working on a project or deadline, I have to decide what to focus on for the day. My usual pool of options are:

Make art
Write
Read

I love doing all of them and frequently do all three, bouncing from one to the other. I used to reach the end of the day feeling like I’d done nothing worthwhile. This has gone on for years. But recently (just last week), I realized that everything informs all that I do. Everything matters. Reading makes me a better writer. Writing helps me understand what I am thinking and how to convey ideas. Reading and writing provide my art with a deep-seated personal approach and a plethora of ideas. This new awareness has relieved me of the guilt I was feeling each time I switched tasks. Now I can bounce back and forth. Not only that but the shift in processes creates a shift in thinking. A shift in thinking provides a new perspective and often, a solution, answer, or insight.

Is this the gift of experience, the reward of reaching the age of wisdom? When I am at a loss or facing a problem, roadblock, or glitch, I’ve finally learned not to force a result. I know to trust the process and the process takes, you guessed it, time. That’s another thing I tend to forget, especially in the midst of making. I have learned to wait. To walk away. To put my attention elsewhere. It may take a week, or an hour, but the solution, the right words or the needed inspiration always arrives.

26 years ago (thank you for keeping purchase records, Amazon), I purchased a valuable book, Trust the Process by Shaun McNiff. It’s an invaluable book. If you already own it, reread it. If not, I highly recommend buying it.

Since I was recommending it here, I went and grabbed my copy, and reread all my marked and underlined passages, marginalia, and starred wisdom. A couple of chapters had fewer notations so I stopped to read one, Moving Between Worlds. In the first sentence, Shaun verified what I had just discovered. “The best way to quickly expand the scope of creative expression is to actively experiment with different roles…the essential skill of the creative process involves the ability to move between “worlds” or different ways of being.” My “ponder and flit, dabble and drift” is the way it is supposed to work. It is part of the process. It is the process.

“Trying too hard to find the essence tends to keep us on the periphery. The most vital expressions emerge when we are most relaxed, when we simply immerse ourselves in the immediate environment and trust that something significant will appear,” writes Shaun in the Distilling chapter. Taking your mind off of something and having the answer appear out of nowhere is one of the best feelings I’ve ever experienced, creatively speaking, like I’ve won the creative lottery.

This is something a beginner would not know. How many years did I spend working on art projects, trying to force a wonderful outcome in one sitting? How long did it take me to realize that the work tells me what it wants or needs but I was too in a hurry to listen? How long before I was in the know and could let it flow at its own pace? If you are experiencing creative frustration, I hope my realizations will be as much help to you as they have been for me. Maybe you have already learned this the hard way, like I have. Or maybe, you knew it but have forgotten or need a reminder. In any event, I needed to share this with you today, because I wish I had known all this a long time ago. And maybe I did, but didn’t believe it; or didn’t have the wisdom to embrace it. Or maybe it’s something we earn through our commitment to our creative practice.

Quote of the Week

A life making isn’t a series of shows, or projects, or productions, or things; it is an everyday practice. It is a practice of questions more than answers, of waiting to find what you need more often than knowing what you need to do. Waiting, like listening and meandering, is best when it is an active and not a passive state.
Ann Hamilton

PS. You may enjoy reading this post, too, for her excellent explanation of how artists need time alone -

The Importance of Wasting Time