Choosing Creativity over Anxiety

Deadlines.

I need them.  I cherish them.  I celebrate them.

When I was an undergraduate, I could work relentlessly and unstoppably.  I loved to write.  I had awakened myself to my abilities as a writer.

As a child, there was much I was restricted to.  I couldn't take dance classes even though I loved to dance.  I was told by a teacher that the figures I drew looked like comic book characters (which they were).  I was told I needed to do something "responsible" with my life and writing didn't seem responsible.  It felt indulgent.

That's the struggle I've had with my creativity my whole life.  How much of it is for my own ego?  My celebration of myself.

I had a professor in college, Carolyn, who told me that I didn't have to make a choice.  It wasn't an either/or situation between creativity and serving others.  I was having that conversation at 22 and I still struggle with it.  I think it has kept me from much in my life.  Getting stuck in the "to do" and not doing.

What to do.
When to do.
Why to do.
How to do.
Where to do.

Just do.  That is the answer.

I had been set free in college, so I ran free.  I didn't date.  I had few sexual experiences, even though I had been set free in my sexuality and I had come out of the closet the moment my feet hit the ground on that university campus.  This was my moment and I knew it.  I lived it with vitality.

I never missed a deadline.  I never had an excuse why I couldn't do an assignment on time.  I didn't understand people who did.  What else did we have to do but create?

Maybe that was the first moment I became conscious of people's anxiety.  They weren't performing due to their own anxiety.  Maybe you could call that laziness.  But inactivity's source is often worry, fear, and anxiety.  And that's why it's easier to drink or go out with friends or watch a movie.  Those things are safe and easy and distracting.  They were living in their Resistance.  I had none.

That would come later in life.  And my Resistance would take over me.  For years.

But for now I want to focus on this freedom I had.  It's the freedom I have come back to.  I now know what lurks in the shadows, waiting to grab me and I am prepared.

When I am creative, I am unstoppable.  I am fearless.  I am full of energy and vitality.  It is everything.  Therefore, it is enough.  I see a lot of my friends in this space.  For short bursts of time.

The space they occupy the rest of the time--most of the time--is anxiety.  Judgment.  Fear.  Worry.

An ex-boyfriend of mine used to share a quote with me all of the time: Worry is just praying for something you don't want.  It is one of the great lessons he taught me that I still hold onto.

Fortunately, for Resistance, it has found the perfect soil, temperature, climate and conditions for that worry, fear and judgment to prosper: Hollywood.  At least Hollywood as a state of mind.  It's also any type of material success that we find ourself chasing.  That fear is reinforced and ricocheted back to us constantly with greater force in our own mind, but also through our agents, managers, and producers.

These people are called power players.

I prefer to refer to them as people we give our power to.

Does that mean that the pursuit of Hollywood dreams is the antithesis of Creativity?

Does this mean that wanting to excel in this environment will kill our souls?

No.  No way.  Hollywood is only a microcosm of the world at large.  The messages it sends might be magnified or gathered in one specific location with a specific purpose, but saying that it will kill our Creativity is like saying that being in the world will kill our Creativity.  And it can.  But only if we give our power to it.  Only if we let it.  Only if we believe our successes and our failures.  Only if Hollywood becomes our religion.  Nothing should be our religion.  No one person, place, thing, idea, concept.

It is all in how we move through the chaos.  Hollywood.  The World.  Our Family.  Our Neighborhood.  We are told misinformation all of the time and it's just how we move through it.

So how do we choose Creativity over Anxiety?  I'm still working that out for myself.  But I do know what has been working:

Taking credit for my work.

I go to work every day. I get to my office and I put my headphones on.  I don't always turn on my music, but I have my headphones on.  It says to me and to anyone who walks by my office--or to Tim, my office mate--I am working.  I am in my work space.  Everything is work to me.  When I am Facebooking, I am only doing it to let my unconscious work.  I am not taking my eye off the prize.  But sometimes you need to let the unconscious do the work and not continuously hit your head against the wall when you get stuck.  You can't force yourself unstuck. I view everything as writing.  That is my consciousness when I work.  When I am in my work space.  The space I have created for my work.  Again, that reinforces the idea to the Universe that I am here to work.

And it's a beautiful place.  I have my books I like.  I have my snacks I like.  I have my notepads and my notecards and my note files.

I spent hours crying the other day, watching You Tube videos of songs and performances that moved me so I could get into a space to write character descriptions.  Tim was on his way out and just waved, knowing that I had gone somewhere.  And because of my headphones, my expression and maybe my tears, he knew to leave me to it.

Like I said, I take credit for my work.  I claim it.  By claiming my space, claiming my time, claiming my moment.  I don't really talk to my boyfriend when I'm working.  He has stopped calling me during business hours so much.  We have our own time together that we claim for our relationship.

What I don't claim is the reward.  The fruits of my labor.

When I finish the day, I have created something.  It's the result of spending 6-8 hours in that space.  It ultimately will lead to a finished script.  And that is enough.  I may receive more than just the accomplishment, but that is only a by product.  Not the goal.  If I can stay in that consciousness, I have the greatest sense of accomplishment and I keep going.

If I worry about what the world will provide me because of this great work I have just completed, I get into trouble.  I put a price tag on it.  I put an expectation on it.  I say to the Universe that it owes me something.  I am greater than everyone else, so it owes me something.  It's up to everyone else to tell me how important I am.

I have a friend who was working on a pilot script.  This friend's manager needed new material.  Apparently my friend hadn't produced enough new material lately to satisfy the manager. Maybe the manger needed to know that my friend was serious.  Maybe he wanted new stuff to sell.  Maybe he wanted new, great material so he could get my friend a job.  But regardless of the reasons, my friend had intense anxiety about it and it was giving my friend reasons to doubt the work.  The pressure put on this new script was enormous and the script would never live up to my friend's expectations.  I offered some thoughts.

I should say that I used to work in this world.  I used to be on "the other side" of things.  I worked for a manager and a producer, so I had some insight on what they might be wanting and why.

But I told my friend that maybe it was just about productivity.  Again, this ties into the idea that you can only be responsible for the work, not the results.  If you're only producing one piece of work a year, which for some people is a lot.  But for someone who is trying to move product, it's nothing.  Even two new pilots a year might not be a lot for some folks.  So when you are only giving the person you have chosen to give your power to only one or two opportunities a year to make you (and themselves) money, the pressure is on.  For you and for them, those scripts really matter.

But when you are doing the work for yourself and you're just invested in the work itself, there tends to be more creativity going on.  And creativity is an aphrodisiac for self-love.  So you make more of the work.  You pursue the work.  You know the work is making you better.  You know the work is making you more excited, so it's turning you on more and therefore comes more work.  That's the creativity process.

Maybe you have three or four scripts that you write a year.  Or maybe you're just talking about ideas more.  Maybe you give off a productive vibe…because you are being productive.  Then you're seen as a worker.  And the byproduct of that is respect.  You don't need it from them.  You're not asking for it.  But they smell it on you.  It's your spiritual scent.  You enter the room with it and it lingers behind you in their memory.

And when there's more work.  It's less precious.  You know there's another one coming down the pike soon.  No one has to wait very long.  And if this one isn't it, everyone knows they won't have to wait long.

Now, I'm not saying to rush work.  I'm not saying to just thoughtlessly send out your first drafts to your agents and mangers.  I'm not saying to do it for them.  Because there's always two ways to do the same thing.  The action is productivity.  But if you're purpose is to show them how productive you are, then that is also a scent that will linger in their memory.  It's desperation.  It's carelessness.  But sometimes when we're too precious, we are so focused on what others will think of it, that it stops us in our tracks.

Our anxiety takes over.  And our creativity stops.

I just try to show up at my office.  Before that, it was the library.  The house when my boyfriend wasn't home.  My Mom's house when I would go to visit and lock myself in a bedroom.  The Korean Spa I would go to and work for hours and hours on end.  I showed up in my space and I just sat there.  I trusted that the work would come.  It didn't always come.  But I kept coming back.  And now it comes.

I can't say how long it will take.  I can't even say that this will work for everyone in the exact way it worked for me.  But I started putting my anxiety aside.  I started kicking it out of my house.  And eventually, it got the idea it was unwelcome.  Now of course it will come back, after it thinks I have gotten it out out my system.  And maybe it thinks that I will miss it.  And maybe I have forgotten how annoying and destructive it was and give it a second chance.  That happens.  But then it reminds me of what a horrible houseguest it is.  And it gets kicked out again.  Eventually, it will permanently get shut out.

I just know that it feels better to feel good about myself.  And the work makes me feel alive and it makes me feel like I am working.  Productivity that isn't just results oriented feels great.  It keeps me going.

It's why I go to the office.
It's why I read books.
It's why I sit in silence.
It's why I write this blog.

I am grateful that the words came so easily to me today.
I am grateful that I have a thought to share.
I am grateful that I have a quiet morning this morning.
I am grateful that I can smile.