I was recently laid off from my day job. I knew I was tired, but I don’t think I realized how tired I was while in the midst of it. (And Dolly Parton passed away yesterday. Heartbroken!)

For the last year, I’ve been trying to maintain a creative practice around my day job. Around being the operative word there. With a full time job and two daughters, there’s little energy left to summon at the end of each day for artistic expression. You know there’s something wrong when making art feels like a chore.

Anyway, I’ve now found myself in this liminal space. I’m job hunting of course, but also resting, putting time into my home (outer order, inner calm, thank you Gretchen Rubin), taking care of my family in a way that I simply could never working full time. I don’t know how long this will last, but for the first time in a while I’ve felt the breath of possibility; I plan to spend some of this time finding my way back to myself creatively.

Our lives are built around a system that convinces us our value is measured by our productivity, and I’ll gladly depart from that for a little while. A print doesn’t need to solve anything, a painting doesn’t need to perform. Creativity doesn’t need to be justified, and neither does rest. I give you, dear reader, permission to rest.

During this time, (however long it is,) I will absolutely not be:

Circling back.
Touching base.
Sending out a new promotion.
Tracking KPIs.
Asking what the ROI is.
Making yet another spreadsheet.

But I will be…

Baking Sourdough.
Colouring with my girls.
Soaking up late summer.
Sleeping in (even a little bit!)
Making space in my home.
Visiting the mountains.
Celebrating my birthday!
Doing nothing at all.

Of course a full-time job waits for me – that’s just reality. I’ll go back to days filled with meetings and emails, and probably, I’ll say, “I’m glad to be back into a routine”, and that will probably be true. My hope for this time is to create without judgement, to reconnect to what it looks like to live a creative life, and to transform my practice into one that feels more like an outward breath than it does another thing on my to do list.

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The principal horror of any system which defines the good in terms of profit rather than in terms of human need, or which defines human need to the exclusion of the psychic and emotional components of that need — the principal horror of such a system is that it robs our work of its erotic value, its erotic power and life appeal and fulfillment. Such a system reduces work to a travesty of necessities, a duty by which we earn bread or oblivion for ourselves and those we love. But this is tantamount to blinding a painter and then telling her to improve her work, and to enjoy the act of painting. It is not only next to impossible, it is also profoundly cruel.

-Audra Lorde

“The very word erotic comes from the Greek word eros, the personification of love in all its aspects…”

Or, as the dearly departed Dolly Parton said:

“Workin’ 9 to 5, what a way to make a livin’
Barely gettin’ by, it’s all takin’ and no givin’”