Creativity as the Antidote to Overconsumption

The discipline of creating a place to create may be what recovers our creativity.

Has anyone read The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron? I was gifted it a couple of years ago and have only just begun reading it. It’s a book that outlines a 12 week, self-guided program the author used to teach to groups of people seeking to reignite their creativity and find artistic flow again.

If you think you’re not an artist or that you have no relationship to creativity—keep reading, there will still be some nuggets here for you.

There are two main practices Julia Cameron suggests all people seeking creativity or flow do: Morning Pages and the Artist Date. Morning pages, as the name indicates, are 3 full pages of longhand writing every morning. Every morning is the key, here, because rarely do we get much of anything out of doing something once or twice. Eventually, when we commit to doing something good for us every day, it becomes harder to not do it than to do it. Morning pages has become that for me. The idea is that upon waking, we spill everything out of our brains that is swirling around; in doing so, we deepen our self-awareness of what actually is swirling around up there. For many people, this practice clears the path for new ideas or insights to come forward—stuff that hasn’t had the chance beneath all those anxious thoughts to make a breakthrough to your consciousness.

The second main practice of the program is the Artist Date: one chunk of time each week that you spend alone, doing something you enjoy. Wandering a library, spending time outside, rock climbing or sitting with tea—any little excursion you legitimately want to do, alone. Artist Dates encourage you to think creatively, to ask yourself what you would do with a block of free time, and then make that free time. When is the last time you really did that?

The Artist’s Way is not only for people who consider themselves stuck artists or creatives. The book is for those who desire to reconnect to their innate (yes, innate) creativity and sense of genuine interest in the world. It’s for anyone who wants to remember what it feels like to enjoy doing something; for anyone who has lost their way and found their lives filled with things they don’t like. The Artist’s Way and its practices are for people ready to break the routine of whatever their life has become, for the sake of something better.

What is the role of creativity and art in each of your lives? What does it mean to connect to your innate sense of creativity; what does creativity mean to you?

In the past couple of weeks since I’ve begun The Artist’s Way and committed to writing every morning, I feel different. I feel more connected to myself, what I want, how I feel—I feel more, well, creative. I started doing yoga again, for the first time in years; I turned on music in my car; I thought about what I enjoy doing and actually plan to do some of it.

I’ve also been contemplating the broad role of creativity in our modern lives, and have arrived to this insight: might creativity be the antidote to the overconsumption of content?

The more I think about it, the more glaringly obvious this truth becomes. If we spend hours a day ingesting content but less than thirty minutes creating much of anything—no wonder we’re depressed and anxious and stuck in the social comparison game. No wonder we don’t feel creatively or spiritually fulfilled: We’re out of balance. As Gen Z tells people who seem to be spending too much time online—we ought to go touch some grass, literally and creatively speaking.

What if increasing our creative output allowed us to feel more connected to ourselves and the people around us? What if the exploration of our creative selves led to more fulfillment, engagement with the world instead of with an online grid?

Increasing our creativity does not mean “posting more,” nor does it mean we need to make more stuff: Creativity does not equate to production. We are not limited to cooking meals or writing books or making pottery: Creativity can also be movement, dance, delighting in natural beauty, reading, talking, listening. Each of us will express creativity in different ways, and those ways will probably shift around during the course of our lives.

Finding the sweet spot for connecting with your creativity usually comes from first creating a container. To be creative, you need to build a place to support your creativity—like the structure of the Morning Pages, or an Artist Date, or a standing 7:00 a.m. date at the pool. All the best artists know that creativity requires a little bit of discipline. (Toni Morrison, for example, did all of her writing in the hours before dawn—before her young children woke up and before she had to leave for her 9-5 job.) If you want to be creative, you’ve got to be willing to do the work to allow for creativity, by clearing out negative thoughts and lifestyle limitations, or setting some boundaries around your time (and burying your phone in the other room while you’re at it). Every one of us can choose to make room for creativity, if we want more of it in our lives.

I think most of us have things we’d love to do more of but don’t, or things we’ve never done but really want to. We don’t because we’re scared, or our ego tells us we aren’t good enough, or we think we don’t have enough time, or because it’s just easier to sleep in or scroll on our phones.

Excuses, excuses. What if we set them aside?

What if instead of defaulting to consuming, we tried our hand at creating?

If in fact we decide that we do want more space for creativity, well then, let’s go about making that space. If we don’t even know where our creative self lives…well then, let’s go about looking for it. It’s in there, somewhere between your excuses and self-destructive tendencies. Go find it, it’ll be worth it.

Maggie