It’s Okay
If you’re an artist, or simply a creative person, I’m sure you will relate to the term “artist fatigue” in some way. It’s the feeling you get when you’ve just finished that sculpture, that series of paintings, or that DIY coffee table for your living room you spent the last couple of hours, days, weeks, or even months expending all of your creative energy into. You feel good. You feel accomplished. You feel tired, maybe even relieved that it’s finally done. Whatever you are feeling, you don’t have it in you to start another creative project even if you wanted to. And I’m here to tell you that it’s okay.
You are a Creative
For the sake of simplicity, I will call all of us who like to create or participate in creating in some capacity, “creatives”. I could be more specific and use labels like “painter, sculptor, carpenter, seamstress, gardener, or chef”, but I want to address all kinds of ways to be creative.
Creatives Work Hard
The amount of time and energy that any creative puts into their work is going to vary. For me, I typically spend about 1.5 to 3 hours on a small painting and anywhere from 5 to 20 hours on a larger painting. If I’m just drawing in my sketchbook or trying out brushes on Procreate, I might only spend 15 to 30 minutes doing that. Let me lay out what a typical week might look like for me.
- 30-40 hours working at my day job
- 56 hours sleeping (on a really good week, if I’m being honest)
- 5-15 hours being social (church, being with friends)
- 35 hours spent eating, cooking, cleaning
- 25 hours spending downtime with my family
- 5-10 hours driving, running errands, and doing other random tasks
Now, I made my best guess on this and it obviously varies each week. For example, I did a coffee shop popup with my art last weekend which made me a lot busier than normal. If my typical week has any accuracy to it, then there would be about 34 hours left in the week to spend time creating. And in my case, creating AND managing a small business. That means I could complete a couple of small paintings, maybe a larger one, and probably some doodles here and there.
Even though that’s what I could create it doesn’t mean it’s a realistic expectation for me to have. The things that fill my time up each week require energy, attention, motivation, self-discipline, and a sane mind. If you don’t agree that those all take a lot of work, please tell me how you live your life so I can make some changes to mine!
With all that being said, our lives fill up with things to do very easily and very quickly. Busy becomes normal and times of rest become scarce. Making time to be creative can become quite challenging.
Creatives are Allowed to Rest
If you are anything like me, your creative endeavors can only happen after X Y and Z are done first. And sometimes X Y and Z take it out of you and you don’t have anything left to give towards being a creative… but you wish that you did. Or you did manage to devote some time to creating, but now you feel burnt out. Or you have time to be creative, but you don’t want to and now you feel guilty for not taking advantage of that time.
Pause here.
What expectations are you putting on yourself right now? Are they realistic?
I have to check in with myself often. I fall into the trap of feeling guilty that I’m not growing my creative self every chance that is available to me. But to constantly be trying to do that is unrealistic. And honestly, I don’t want to spend time being creative just because I’d feel guilty if I was using that time to do something else!
The point of this blog is to say that it’s okay to take a break from being creative. It’s okay to let your mind and body rest. You don’t have to feel guilty if you’re burnt out or feeling uninspired. This does not make you a bad creative. Take this time to enjoy doing other things, especially if they are life-giving.
Today, I am going to practice being okay with the simple pastel drawings I did and remember that if I am not actively creative for the rest of the day, it’s okay.