I Cannot Thrive Creatively While Fighting The Clock

The race that goes against time and oneself

I have a confession to make. For 30 years, I’ve been practicing meditation, but for the first time ever this year, I’ve been completely avoiding it. The truth is, I feel like I’m racing against time in my mind, and sitting still has created an illusion of losing the race. There are many possible reasons for my battle with time, likely fueled by the significant loss of family in recent years, the bizarre series of estrangements of close relationships, and the sense that every moment of life counts.

My creative authenticity is impacted by this race with time because I’m fueled by an effort to capture “that which cannot be described” — a “something” in the visual/sensory experience that we all share within in a space-time continuum. This ride we share is driven by the chauffeur of TIME. Time is nature’s way of putting order to the human drama and without it, we have no humanity. Yet, we find magic and eternity when we bypass time. What a paradox!

I have accepted that I cannot thrive creatively while fighting the clock because I can’t be present to the human drama when I’m in the fight. However, the habit to think otherwise is still strong.

To overcome my race against time, I am trying to embrace its elusive nature. I want to gently and elegantly untangle the knots that keep me prisoner to the fight. Yet, slowing down time also easily intensifies a fear of losing myself to the struggle; “This is taking too long”. “I’m getting older, I better hurry up.” “Another day has passed and what have I accomplished?”

For those who don’t know me, I go through periods of intense contemplation that lead me down narrow hallways of revisiting recurring thoughts, such as these. When this happens, it holds promise for liberation. Yet being a thinking/feeling human can sometimes feel too “angsty” to manage, especially when trying to overcome a creative hurdle on my own. Often, I respond by stalling, freezing, and ultimately falling into a crisis of meaning where I do nothing because it feels pointless. Writing here is my attempt to combat pointlessness.

My other attempt to manage this hurdle is through kindness with myself, like a good parent. These last few days, instead of forcing meditation, I’ve found myself just encouraging myself to stop and pay attention to my breathing. I also have been allowing myself to disconnect from the static around me, the web of wireless devices and annoying buzzing and dinging, even if that means just walking down the hall, watching my feet. Instead of rushing out the door to do street photography for an hour in a hurry so I can say I did it, I’m going out earlier in the morning with the slowest camera and lens I own, spending several minutes observing nature before I attempt to photograph it.

This process may seem easy to some. For me it’s not new. I’ve been here before, but with a totally different mindset. I’m trying to acutely listen, lean into, and consume ideas and inspiration, slowly. I’m trying to let the quieter voices exist on their own and listen to them, rather than listening to the part of the mind that wants to label it as “a waste of time.” And by all means, I’m avoiding Instagram - an arsonist of my genuine creativity.

When I begin to worry that this creative hurdle is too daunting to approach and may not matter, my plan is to silence that voice. Or maybe I can just write to you! There is a poster that’s hanging in my studio with this quote will help:

“If you hear a voice within you say, 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.”

– Vincent Van Gogh.

It’s a good thing Van Gogh didn't listen that voice.