Five Reasons Being a Creative is FREAKING HARD When You Also Happened to be a Mom

#5

They always wanna share your creative stuff. 

This shouldn’t surprise us since the selfish little bastards by nature always think everything is about them. That Walgreens bag you’re holding with tampons in it: “Something’s in there for me! Right!?” The phone conversation you’re having with your business partner: “It’s really about setting up a playdate for me with her son! Right!?”

Similarly, they can sniff out your coveted supplies, even when you use sly camouflage – packaging it in inconspicuously-adult-looking satchels, tucking it under the bag of brussel sprouts in the freezer, layering your expensive artistic instruction books and training materials within the skin of a serious-looking parenting manual. 

They draw on your stuff. They gnaw on our stuff. They claim your stuff. They catch a glimpse of your paint brushes, your calligraphy pens, your pages of multicolored notes for your next piece of writing, your French horn, your camera’s expensive film, your clay, your needlepoint – and they assign it to themselves. If you are having fun, being playful with your time and your mind and your hands… then it is the stuff of kids: “It’s OURS!” they exclaim.

They are actually right: It ischild’s play. Except this time it’s for the grown up. And we get to be selfish little bastards, too.

#4

There are places to be. Like, at times. 

Most creatives I know are not particularly interested in the time. For those of us who believe that life is one big masterpiece and we are discovering along the way where our colors and contributions get serendipitously dispensed, being told when and where to dispense ourselves makes us begrudging and bitchy. To others the clock may be all reliable and unfailing; to us it’s more steely cuffs. Getting your six year old to a soccer game at 8:50 am on Saturday with socks and shoes on BOTH feet? Way too absolute.

But golly darn your kid likes soccer. And wants to be in an organized sport. And nothing organized in the history of the world happens unless a TIME is assigned to it. 

You’ll just have to splash your colors within the constructs of 30-minute halves on the field’s sidelines. 

And let the chunks of white space between all those Things That Happen At Specific Times be purposefully outside of clock-time, ungoverned and unbridled and unstilted. Your right brain needs this of you and the masterpiece of life needs this of you, too.

#3

Our hygiene and self-care can survive prolonged neglect; theirs can’t.

As a creative, you know how inspiration works: you gotta strike while the iron is hot. When you follow a lightning bolt of creative flow into a several-day vacuum - when you give it everything – you’re so alive with electricity that you hardly notice your actual body (the matted hair, the dirty underwear you keep recycling because who has time for laundry?, the fact that you’ve survived on handfuls of frosted mini wheats and scantily spaced cat naps). You’re unkempt. And that’s a price worth paying for what you live for.

While we can abandon our bodies’ needs, we simply cannot abandon that of little people’s. Sparse food, sparse rest, sparce routine, and sparce attention will make them devils, not to mention the subject of a Child’s Services Investigation. And even though we all know dealing with devil children is worse than jail, I’d prefer neither one. And no one else – including the exorcist you hired - will sympathize with, “But, I was in THE ZONE, people!” 

Your zone has to work around your children. Which means, you often have to strike for aggravatingly short periods of time when the iron is lukewarm and be ok with what that gets ya.

#2 

Life as a mom can basically be summed up like this: Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Stat, stop.

I keep picturing here the creative you, a vibrant and healthy green vine that is bursting with forward motion at all times. And a chop block a certain distance in front of it with a butcher knife suspended above. Vine grows. Chop. Vine emerges out of stump. Chop. Vine, relentless, inches forward again. Chop. Again. Chop. Again. Chop. Again. Chop. 

At a certain point, you just decide to stand in the house equidistant to where all your children are… completely still… awaiting their next query without it interrupting anything, because you’ve intentionally decided to commit to NOTHING when they’re around. Your vine stays still to avoid a chop. 

But when they are all snoring logs, may your juicy jungle abound.

#1

Speaking of sleep, that’s all you ever want to do. 

That’s #1.

All you ever want to do is sleep. 

But don’t let anyone tell you that tired artists cannot make art. 

So don’t wait for uninterrupted nine hour nights. Or a bounce in your step. Or a reservoir of energy. String together as many hours of sleep and rest as is possible in your world, grab a bold cup of joe, and get to it.