I have been going through it this year. Crying more than ever before. Having big realizations. It’s a lot.
This is what has been getting me through this year.
Creative Play.
What kind of creative play?
WRITING
I’ve gotten to 3M words this year. And a streak of 950 days and counting. I’m ridiculously proud of this. Is it any coincidence that this practice, along with 4 years of therapy has made me have better boundaries and better self awareness and ability to feel my feelings than ever before?
Making Art
I’m also playing in my journal.
- Sometimes I’ll just catalogue what I did that day,
- Other times I’ll make completely loopy abstract art
- And sometimes I’ll just draw the flower shapes that are pleasing to me.
I’ve been making the garden my creative practice too.
So that’s where I’ve been- instead of podcasting or trying to make new stuff to sell, I’ve been letting writing, gardening and doodling be my practice.
It doesn’t have to be serious, just for me.
And it has been helping.
Why does writing and doodling help?
Because doing any creative activity activates the part of your brain that stores trauma, and REWRITES IT.
Don’t believe me?
Research suggests that trauma damages brain tissue, but that when people translate their emotional experience into words, they may be changing the way it is organized in the brain.
Pre-Covid, I was more interested in hosting art parties, having art shows, putting my art out in the world to get worldly approval
Now, I’m listening to myself and considering myself.
It’s not safe to go out there, to have art parties or go back to the office, no matter what your boss or capitalism tries to sell you.
It’s hard to go against the grain, make art, dedicate yourself to a writing practice, wear a mask, stay safe, but you can do it.
I was taught to seek approval from random strangers over my own approval. Why? Well see John Taylor Gatto’s A Different Kind of Teacher book and the 6 Lessons of School essay.
John Taylor Gatto quotes:
Growth and mastery come only to those who vigorously self-direct.
Initiating, creating, doing, reflecting, freely associating, enjoying privacy—these are precisely what the structures of schooling are set up to prevent, on one pretext or another.
School is the first impression children get of organized society. Like most first impressions it is the lasting one. Life is dull and stupid, only Coke provides relief. And other products, too, of course.
The shocking possibility that dumb people don’t exist in sufficient numbers to warrant the millions of careers devoted to tending them will seem incredible to you.
Yet that is my central proposition: the mass dumbness which justifies official schooling first had to be dreamed of; it isn’t real.
Who besides a degraded rabble would voluntarily present itself to be graded and classified like meat?
No wonder school is compulsory.
And that makes you easier to control.
When you let other people dictate how you should feel or what you should do-
That comes from trauma, because your feelings were invalidated so often, you ask other people, “How should I be feeling about this?”
I’ve been learning to trust how I feel, without outside input.
I’ve been learning to just play, without worrying who is going to like it.
It’s a revelation.
Maybe dancing, writing, singing, making music, tending a garden will help you too.
We all have trauma from the last 5 years of COVID- and the ongoing genocide in Palestine, the war in Ukraine, I could go on. Why not lean into play?
Why not?