Creative avoidance

I realized I’ve written a lot about procrastination, creative freezing, writers block, and their ilk. I’m all warm and fuzzy when I write about these things. Because this is when you need safety and warmth and a soft place to land.

But sometimes you’re just avoiding creative work. That’s when my creativity-teacher gloves come off.

When I was working for The Guardian on a project (sponsored by SquareSpace, even!), I had to draft a script. We were filming a set of ‘side hustle’ videos, and the producer needed some guidance.

Sound familiar?

I stalled. I hemmed. I hawed. I tried to come up with every excuse in the book in order to avoid doing this work. I wasn’t marinating. I wasn’t freezing. I wasn’t even procrastinating. I was avoiding.

I’m all about creative openness, exploration, freedom. Don’t fence my creativity in, man.

Writing a script? Might as well stab the entrails out of my soul. So I thought. And so I stalled.

Finally, some very smart person finally forced me to write the damn script. And having that container changed everything. We instantaneously moved forward on the videos, the project, the over-arching theme, everything.

If marination, procrastination and even freezing elongate time, avoiding hides it. When you freeze, you put your head in the sand. When you avoid, you put the project in the sand.

There are all sorts of good reasons to do so, I’m sure. Don’t care. Now we get to say to ourselves and others: Just do it. If your head is in the sand, you can’t see straight. If you’re the one who shoved your project, idea, or creativity down where it couldn’t see the light of day, you’re the only one who can reach back in there and pull it out. Quit your whining, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and get to work. Harrumph.

How do you tell the difference?

The big question of course is, how do you know when you’re avoiding, freezing, marinating or procrastinating? (Ooh! I could create an exercise about this!)

But in the meantime, avoiding is usually connected to the lighter negative emotions. Instead of shame or trauma — which require a softer touch — avoiding might be about a lack of clarity, some nervousness, or a little bit of fear. Those are still valid emotions — especially when it comes to creativity — but you don’t get to use them as an excuse to stop.

In fact, you should use them to start. Quite often for my students, within fear or nervousness lies excitement or curiosity. You’re pushing yourself out of your comfort zone! Avoiding that corresponding pain is your body’s natural response, so follow that thread to find where the excitement or curiosity lies.

Tap into your interoceptive awareness: where is the excitement vs the fear in your body? Where is the avoidance? Find that, and you’ll get one more piece to solve your puzzle.