This morning, I participated in one of the free journaling and meditation classes by Creative Dream Incubator, Your Next Steps. I’m always looking for guidance with next steps because as much as I enjoy my life as it is now, I’m still far from my dreams. And honestly, I don’t have a clear vision of my dreams.
I’m not sure what I’m working toward, which is freeing, but leaving my end goals open and undefined also hinders progress. By dabbling in too much, I’m not setting down the grounding I need to grow and flourish.
So as I meditated today, growing and flourishing is what I saw. I saw it as vines, finding their way through openings, creating new space, and creating more space for continued growth. An expansive network of tendrils and lush leaves.
Once a vine finds an opening, it’ll be alright, but to help my vines—my creative dreams actualized—I need to do my part to clear away unnecessary blockage. And as I’ve reflected on many times before, with varying degrees of action, the clutter holding back my creativity is social media.
Several creatives I follow are feeling this way. They’ve been feeling this way, and some are taking action by moving their focused digital presence to Substack (which is interesting to me because I was poking around Substack, too). They’re looking for internet time that is less about metrics and more about growth, support, and community—less doom-scrolling, passive engagement, and echo chambers.
I have my comfortable, productive spaces on social media, mainly those associated with the childfree community and the 2022 Childfree Convention, which I am a volunteer copywriter for. (Plug: Tune in July 30 and July 31 to learn about the childfree lifestyle and engage in conversation about topics important to the childfree community!)
But a lot of time I spend on social media (or thinking about it) is time that I can be using better, for working on myself and the tools that will help me choose my goals and make progress. It’s easy to be a passive consumer, and I need to retrain myself to engage with the world differently.
Learning from sensations of summers past
A few days ago, I worked on a prompt from The Writer: listing 13 sensory details associated with my childhood summers and comparing them to the details in summers I enjoy now. I was surprised to find I’m more tactile than I’d always assumed.
My childhood summer details:
- Running my fingers over the imprints on the back of my legs after lying down on a folding jelly plastic lounge chair
- Moving through the pool after my body is used to the temperature—feeling like I’m being brushed with silk
- The sweet, heavy smell of cigarette smoke trailing into my backyard from the neighbor’s yard through humid air
- Stepping outside early in the morning and feeling the water in the air
- My animal dresses—the fuschia one and the indigo one—with the vinyl print of zoo animals on the front, touching the print and feeling free and cool without the restriction of pants
- The stepping-stones in the backyard, the contrast of the feeling on my feet and toes of the bumps of the pebbles of the stones the stickiness of the grass
- Adjusting to seeing with only moonlight, playing in the sandbox at my best friend’s house past bedtime
- The smell of honeysuckle
- Fireflies, watching them and holding them
- Walking barefoot on sod lawns
- Savoring a cherry tomato right from the garden, the sweet tanginess and the juice
- The unreal brightness before a big storm, an aura and sky color I only see in dreams
- Pool-liner blue
My next steps
I interpret all of this as a call to be more observant of textures and to engage more physically with the world around me. I need to give my vision a break. It’s overloaded. It’s clogged. By engaging my other senses, I’ll open up some space to see what I really need to see.
I also need to feel better. My mood is good, but my energy is low. I’ve gone back to eating less simple carbohydrates, and I am trying out a spin class in town. Wish me luck!
Have you ever felt like something was getting in the way of your creative goals? Are you feeling that now? If so, what did you do or can you do to make space for your creativity?