Lack of sleep is not my friend. Not even close.
There is a new baby in our home who needs feeding about every three hours, and that has meant lost sleep and lost time and lost clarity of mind.
Just the other day I caught myself writing words in my morning pages and drifting off to sleep. And then I wrote that maybe I should take a break for a while, at least until I’m not so exhausted and this delightful little boy is sleeping for longer hours at a time and I can summon a little bit more sense in my writing.
That would be ideal.
The problem with ideal circumstances is that they don’t really exist. A baby might start sleeping for longer hours but a toddler wakes screaming because his brother took his blanket and now he’s cold. A mind might be clearer from more rest but it’s fogged up with worry about an 8-year-old and his struggle with anxiety. A heart might be lighter for some income opportunities coming in but feel heavier for all the needs still left unmet.
Ideal circumstances are only that: an ideal.
The wide open spaces and time, the perfect creating environment, the right combination of sleep and creative energy and mental reserves—none of it will ever be up to our ideal.
We must create anyway.
Because it doesn’t matter if what we create is grand and beautiful or if it is ugly and awkward. It only matters that we keep creating.
We keep writing or we keep drawing or we keep singing, because even if it isn’t a masterpiece or even close to the best thing we’ve ever created, there are pieces of a masterpiece hidden in it that only practice can uncover.
We have to become comfortable creating in these not-ideal circumstances, because this is life and life is never perfect, and if we’re waiting for it to be perfect and ideal and easy before we make the leap of creating, we will keep waiting forever.
We can get so busy dreaming of the right circumstances—when we don’t have to work this job or when all the kids are in school or when we’re not waking up every three hours—that we forget what really happens in our committing to create even in those hard, not-ideal places: perseverance is born.
To be any kind of creator, we need to have the will to keep creating.
Even if our everyday practice, for a time, doesn’t seem like it gets much better but really, in fact, only gets worse, it is still practice.
And we can believe what “they” say about practice—that it really does make perfect.
So, in these challenging circumstances that don’t lend themselves to much sleep, I put my pen to paper anyway, and I write those pieces that may need twelve rough drafts to make a bit of sense, and maybe they only hold a fraction of usable information and must be taped and glued together, but it is still practice.
I practice, and every time I practice, I perfect.
How do you make yourself practice when you don’t feel like practicing? What kinds of schedules/barriers/safeguards do you put in place to ensure that you practice anyway, in spite of our circumstances? What kinds of circumstances make it hard to practice?
Welcome to The Ink Well Creative Community.
The Ink Well Community is evolving. While this used to be a place where I posted a prompt for writers to share their creative works, I have been receiving several inquiries about my process, how I create and read and manage a household with half a dozen little ones. So I thought we could turn this into a community of people who share about the creative process in all its many facets, from where we find our inspiration to when we find time to create (especially if we work other jobs). I’ll be sharing struggles about my creative life and logistical information about my particular creative process and what I’m learning about creativity, among many other things. I hope you’ll weigh in with your own struggles and observations and lessons. Let’s start a conversation. Let’s encourage one another. Let’s live the creative life together.
And if you have your own questions about creativity or process or inspiration, feel free to visit my contact page and send me a note.