wiggle while you work

Scraps and wiggles and watercolor remnants (cue: “these are a few of my favorite things...”)

I told those who attended my Wiggle While Your Work Creative Mornings FieldTrip that this wiggle phrase = my whimsical way of referring to take more creative breaks. I further shared by the end of last summer, I felt stuck in a fog of familiarity—-trudging though, creativity blocked, screen fatigued.

I finally let myself sink, sulk, & shift. I picked up a book already on my bookshelf, @austinkleon’s KEEP GOING + got Keri Smith’s THE WANDER SOCIETY. Between strings of sentences I found within those pages + @chaninicholas horoscopic gold +the things I had been scrawling in my own journal, by the end of 2020, the message was apparent: it was/is crucial I fully commit to rituals & creative practices that, as Chani says, “take you on deep detours into yourself.”

Carving time to disconnect & reconnect to a creative practice that’s solely mine has been hard, heart-fueling, and necessary. Making it happen during my weekdays & usually in the middle of my days: harder, but holy wow is so good for my eyeballs & brain & being. making for the sake of making a mess, letting my imagination just cut/paste/amble/ramble & roll = the hardest when we’re conditioned to be working towards productivity and producing a final product even in a pandemic (🙄).

It’s been a chipping away, a slow dig into depths I’ve been before, but haven’t been able to access due to filling up my “empty” time w/ distractions rather than truly just floating in my inner space (“outer” space just sounds more appealing when you’re longing for adventure…). Admittedly, I feel I was in a similar space two years ago, but in reading what I wrote then, I kinda cringe as I said I was “creating a new kind of spaciousness that will keep me wide-eyed, yet efficient, proactive & productive.”

But I also smile because: hey, cheers for growing and now knowing that time for reflection, introspection and creative flow does not need to equate to productivity. In fact, it shouldn’t. turns out, we’re often most creative when we’re least productive.

So go wiggle. Wander. Wonder. Exist. See. Be.