Creative Discipline
Discipline... Its not a word that really fits with creativity when you think about it.
Or at least not to me. Discipline feels like control and punishment. Nothing makes my inner child want to curl up and die more than the idea of discipline. Truly, an ideal environment to foster joy, wonder, whimsy, and play (sarcasm intended).
And yet it seems to be required to live an artistic life. Especially when I have chosen to make creativity and art how I make my living. Every creative soul I have spoken to has endured the same struggle.
How do we prioritize our creativity? How do we create quality work with enough consistency to be more than a starving artist?
It was as I have been pondering this challenge when the algorithm served me a tempting video thumbnail and title from Creative Pep Talk, the long running podcast hosted by Andy J. Pizza. He's proudly ADHD and in a solid 30 minute episode, gives you 5 great 'hacks' on how to be creative when you have a neurodiverse brain.
It's worth a listen and make sure you have a notebook near by. I guarantee you that at least one of his thoughts will spark a realization about your own creative process and how it is affected by your neurotype.
But unfortunately, even the most helpful of his tips require something like discipline to actually accomplish. There is no way to get around it, it seems.
I can feel my inner child crossing her arms and starting to stomp her little feet. But I don't want to be disciplined. Discipline is for chores and when I do something bad. Don't make me. I don't wanna! Not that I would have ever had that kind of tantrum out loud in my parents house when I was little.
And that, my dear reader, is exactly the reason why discipline is so hard. For me, creativity and art was a nice bonus that maybe I got to enjoy at the end of the day if I had done all my chores and finished my homework and ate dinner and didn't make any other mistakes that day. In my childhood home, art felt like a reward, like a bonus, not the reason for my existence.
But guess what? I don't live there any more. I'm here, half a world away and learning to love myself a little better every day. Protecting and prioritizing my creativity is the greatest act of self-love I can do. I'm not going to be creative if I'm swallowed up by shame. If I'm drowning in hatred for everything that I am and everything I have ever done.
There is a reason Andy leave his best piece of advice for last. Get to know yourself, strengths, weaknesses, temptations, and natural attractions. Understand and allow yourself to do the things that make you light up inside. If you have been marginalized or mistreated in your life, this is going to be near impossible at first. Our natural path is to follow the one laid out for us, which is to take a good honest look at ourselves and only see the bad stuff. The insufficiencies. The diagnoses. The failures. The shame. The internalized hatred and blame.
Real healing, the real pathway towards discipline, is found by taking a look at the mirror and loving all of the parts of yourself. The ones rejected over and over again by the world. By your friends, lovers, parents, guardians. The parts of you that someone said was too much, or too small, or to big. The parts of you that you blame for your biggest failures.
Love that part of yourself. Radically. Holistically. That is what healing actually is.
It's me, getting on my knees in front of my inner child and reminding her that discipline isn't what my mother taught me it was (which was really control). And furthermore, creative discipline isn't about being responsible and doing all the life things before we do our creative things. Its about placing our work exactly where it belongs - at the center of our lives.
If you consider yourself a creative soul, then you have known since you were young that there was something you were put here to create, do, be, or make. There is no greater gift you can give yourself, no greater love you can show yourself, than to go after it and make it happen.
You are worth it. I promise.
With love,
Cayla
