Creation

I, as the metaphorical chef here, have metaphorically been binge-watching a lot of metaphorical Beat Bobby Flay.

I’m a sucker for those click-bait pieces, “What successful people do that the rest of you dipshits don’t.” And in one, I found this little gem:

Successful People create; they don’t consume.

It went on to highlight how CEOs and Dalai Lamas and so forth* spend their time in generative activities, not passive ones. The subtext being: passive activities are lesser. Reading, watching TV, completing a puzzle, snacking – plebeian trash! But creating the articles to be read, the TV to be watched, the music to be listened to – that’s meaning!

After a nearly six-month hiatus from just about anything creative, I can definitively say: I don’t buy it. The chef’s gotta eat. And the chef’s probably also gotta binge-watch Beat Bobby Flay.

And I, as the metaphorical chef here, have metaphorically been binge-watching a lot of metaphorical Beat Bobby Flay.

Are there reasons? Sure! And there are also not reasons. And there also don’t need to be reasons.

It’s the same reason/not reason that gardens need to lie fallow for a season, that early pregnancy = sleepdeath, that our kids jump straight from world-building to Big City Greens.

You can’t create on fumes. 

There is so little uninterrupted time as a working parent. So few moments during which a small body is not crawling on your own, poking at your computer keys**, scribbling in your journal beside your own heartfelt words. So we have to choose, in those early morning or late night snatches of time: will I create? Or will I consume? 

For months, the latter has felt right. And it’s been awesome. I’d love to say I was reading high-brow books, staring at smart-person art and such—but I wasn’t. I was watching Only Murders in the Building with my husband. I was reading other people’s blogs and doomscrolling Apple News feed and reading clickbait like “What Successful People Do…” and giggling to myself about how those successful people were going right to sleep instead of reading in a phone’s blue-light glow like me, in my non-successful-person pajamas.

I didn’t garden. I didn’t sketch with the kids. I didn’t volunteer. And I felt pretty good about all of it. My muses were out in the world, musing for other people. Now it feels like they’re dropping by again with more frequency to say, “Hey, this moment with your arms full of child—this feels like something.” 

I feel like I’m emerging again. 

And just in time, too.***

*It’s always CEOs. What about just like, happy, well-adjusted people? Maybe even… decently ok moms??

**This is happening to me right now, at this very moment.

***You know, because America is about to go through some stuff.