I’m taking the rest of the year off to write. Here's why.
If creativity is an energy that we must release, what happens if you have an unresolved build-up? An impending implosion that's what. Here's how I'm averting that.
“When I get back from this trip, I’m taking a creative pause”
“What does that exactly involve?”
“It means that I’m winding down my corporate work for the rest of the year. I’ve hit my target. Fuck it. I’m taking the rest of the year off. I am pausing to be creative.”
“Well done. But, honey, must you give everything a name? <laughs> Just say you’re taking some time off!”
“Because I’m not. Well I am. Sort of. Not really I guess. I want to spend the time on my creative projects and if I don’t give it a name, I’ll just feel guilty and stupid and say yes to work and then get annoyed with myself. So it’s not a holiday, it’s not a career break, it’s a creative pause. I just really want to write this thing I’ve been badgering on about for 2 years. I want to grow my substack. I want to do some art. I want to make a photo book of our summer trip. I want to hoover under the bed. But mostly I just want to write. This is the moment, there will never be a good time, this is as good as it gets”
“Then go for it”
“My creative pause starts after half term, just so you know”
“And when do you think it might end? Just so I know?”
“Ideally?"….
It won’t”
I suffer from what I call ‘creative frustration’. Yes, another name I’ve assigned. I say ‘suffer’ because it really is a suffering. I am not alone in this ailment. The planet is riddled with people feeling symptoms of creative frustration. But not all of them are aware of it. Through a commitment to playing and deep self-awareness I know how to recognise a bought of creative frustration and what to do to ‘cure’ and ‘prevent’ it. It manifests in interiors projects, outfit curation, photography, writing and taking short courses. I also have a creative job so am lucky that I benefit from taking regular shots at work to keep it under control. Others I am aware are not quite so lucky.
But then there are times when I just can’t fight it. It takes over me, lowering my patience and dampening my soul. In my previous post I wrote about the ongoing return to the feeling rudderless. I believe I am locked in cycle where I put a plaster of my creative frustration, but it just keeps oozing out. It wants to be healed. It’s wanted it for years and I think it’s starting to get infected.
Perhaps you have suffered from creative frustration in the past? Maybe you have it now? You have my sympathies if so.
Let’s try and define it to see if you do.
//Creative frustration
Discovered and defined by Emma Worrollo of Bournemouth, Dorset at some point in lockdown 1.0
When an excess of imagination, dreams, possibilities, inspiration and ideas meets a lack of space to direct them toward resulting in an internal creative implosion where the energy has no where to go. Can cause lack of focus, inability to concentrate, dampened mood and sometimes rage.
Unfortunately, I get it badly if I’m with my family for extended periods of time with no breaks. My family are highly inspirational to me. My children are like little dream magnets, who spark all kinds of thoughts and ideas in my mind. They are my motivation and inspiration to keep dreaming and they stimulate me. I’m also always at my most creative when I’m travelling or on the move. Walking, nature and just getting out into the world charges me up and I’m fortunate to get some good doses of this. But with no space to express any of the creative inputs, instead of setting my creative energies free they get trapped. Then they ‘turn’ like a souring off milk, zapping my energy and leaving a bad taste in my mouth.
Not all ideas and dreams need to be pursued, by I strongly believe they do need to be expelled and respected. I recently listened to a conversation with Rick Rubin discussing at what creativity and how it’s processed. He talked about the creativity release in a way that deeply resonated with me, describing the process of creating, not as an act of frivolous fun or necessary problem-solving task, but as something that simply has to be done to regulate as a human, just like drinking water and moving.
I believe our creativity is a unique blend of biological spirituality (that might be another new term I made up, I’m kind of into it). Just like a breath, we need to release it, it is part of what keeps us alive, and whilst our unique personalities might mean we have different creative needs, it’s my belief this applies to every single one of us. Unfortunately, only some of us get to unlock and understand its value, only some of us learn how to tap into our creative pool or most significantly have the space to set it free (there are many barriers which make imagination and creativity harder to access in adulthood including time, stress and trauma).
For every person who labels themselves as ‘not creative’ or misinterprets creative expression for ‘drawing and art’ and therefore not for them, in my opinion is saying the equivalent of, I’m just not someone who needs to breath.
My own creative frustration comes and goes in cycles. One of the times I get highly creative is after having babies. It’s happened with all three of them. I receive an overwhelming sense that I have just done the hardest thing I can conceive of – growing and bringing life into the world and coping with all the wobbles that brings. In the postnatal months, things outside of motherhood, which feels hard, appear less intimidating to me and in a comforting way, some less important. Enter creative confidence which takes over me like a huge comes in huge wave.
After my first son Phoenix was born, I quit my safe, decent-paid job and launched my own insight agency specialising in kids and families. I was completely inexperienced in running a business, but knew I was very good at the good at the job, and powered by my new maternal energy, had a creative vision to claim a unique bit of land in the industry I was already working in and set about getting it. I was 27, living in a dingy flat, newly married, zero business experience, with a new baby and only about 4-5 years of experience in my role.
WILD.
I do so dearly love the Emma of that time, god bless her beautiful chaotic naivety. We all send her so much love and respect. She was nuts, but man, she did great.
Fast forward 3 years we bought Indy, our second child, home to our 3-bedroom house we owned in Wimbledon. I mean I say 3 bedroom, but the third barely fit a kids’ bed in it; it was very much a ‘London third bedroom’ and I called this house ‘the world’s most expensive dolls house’. Ben looked like a giant in it, it was always a strategic temporary buy, but never the less, it was ours! In this creative period, I started a kids’ jewellery brand, called Unicorn Poo (this was prior to many unicorn poo slime’s which would later come onto the kids’ market - ahead of the poo curve always, lol). I kept it going, not as a serious venture or even a side hustle, just for fun; I only really sold them because I didn’t know what to do with them all, but I had a blast making those crazy animal necklaces and looking back, the colours and fun designs feel very symbolic of how my creativity felt back then.
Many years later Scout came along, and from the moment I felt him kick, that creative fire started burning again. It was like he was always tugging on my intuitive gut – ‘you’ve got to move on mum’. I knew this time round the creative plunge was going to be more complex as the first step on this creative would be a bit different. I had to untangle myself from my very first big creative endeavour, my beloved agency. A business which had provided us freedom and a new life, but which now felt like a home grown prison (a common founder feeling I have since learned). But with my anything is possible is always my mindset and my big girl pants on, as smoothly as I could I ‘consciously uncoupled’ from one business, and got myself independent once again to try new things.
At this point in the story, I think most people would have taken a ‘creative pause’. Taken some time off to explore and think, especially having recently had a baby. I had plenty of ideas and a great vision, but although I had attained financial stability, I was (and am), still far away from financial freedom and the salary earner in our family, didn’t feel ready or confident enough to take time out from earning. So I set about making sure I could still command the income we needed to support the lifestyle we designed, with the idea that I would balance paid work alongside personal creative projects. I don’t need to nearly all parents who are trying to balance kids, making an income, a dream, upskilling whilst also staring down the barrel of the realities of adulthood. The paid work took priority and the creative projects shifted to the back seat, a place where they set about a mission to drive me repeatedly down the dead-end of creative frustration. Whilst I have been able to divert through my work itself, travel and the pockets of play I keep ticking over, the itch has just got oh so very itchy. This ball of creative energy has been brewing since Scout was growing inside me, and as I released him into the world, I teased myself that I would also set those energies free too.
I set targets for my consulting business. A business where global brands hire me to basically ‘think-kid’. Yes, I have somehow ended up with a wonderful job where I play some kind of girl-boss version of Tom Hanks in BIG. I am highly qualified to do this job both professionally and because the unique way I think. I am very good at it and love it. And do you know what, dear readers? I’m going to push through my uncomfortableness here, to say to you that in these early days of October, I have already smashed through my annual target. I didn’t take the creative pause when perhaps I should of, because I had to prove a point. Both practically and emotionally.
I have now proved that point.
Hence why I found myself last week explaining to my husband that I’m taking a creative pause. I have three projects closing out this month, culminating in a business trip to the USA. After that I don’t have anything booked in and that’s never happened before and I’m kind of ok about it. Saying no to work is hard and scary, doing that in a cost-of-living crisis with an impending mortgage review lurking round the corner, is even harder. But I glance behind me at my career to date, I can find burn out, I can find late night anxiety, I can find hard work and email addiction and moments of stress (amongst the good stuff I should add), but I can’t find one moment where I’ve allowed myself a proper creative pause. There have been afternoons and holidays but an extended unplugged from the corporate world? Not in over 20 years. Yikes. For two decades I can’t find a moment where I’ve looked at the effects of creative frustration and taken them seriously enough to say, do you know what? Maybe that’s worth investigating properly? Maybe the plasters aren’t working any more. Let’s heal it properly. Maybe there’s something in here that just needs to come out?
I’m about to find out.
Expect a lot more writing from me for the rest of the year folks, and thanks for being here as I tune into my creativity and explore what’s hiding there.
P.S here’s a link to that podcast episode with Rick Rubin I mentioned https://spotify.link/8Ys1RMBwBDb
This is exciting Emma! Can’t wait to see what the rest of your year looks like 🤩