Your creative practice is a garden
About loosening productivity's grip and sprouting ideas
With spring almost in full swing here in the Bay Area an analogy stood out to me this month:
Your creative practice is a garden, not a factory
What I love about this reframe:
Prompts slowing down
Encourages puttering
Is growth-focused
Enables surrender
Treats creativity as its own natural force
Plus in a more literal sense, I enjoy the concept that every creative action is planting a seed for an artistic bloom, that growth will naturally happen as a result of nurturing.
I’ve taken this idea to heart this past month to see what might happen.
If ideas are seeds, then your body’s the soil
I’ve planted a bunch of different ideas to see what ends up blossoming, without putting pressure on them — allowing myself to see what happens when I let go a bit. My focus shifted from producing to building a beneficial environment for incubating ideas.
I noticed myself freely taking on more healthy activities. Nothing major, but something definitely shifted.
Without overthinking things as I usually do, I upped my workouts to six days a week, gathered more with friends and family, and started to get rid of some excess clutter.
Unexpected gains
Like in any garden ecosystem there were volunteers, ideas of unknown origin from somewhere outside of me. Perhaps they took root in my mind because the conditions were ripe for planting.
Another unexpected improvement, my imagination has grown. It feels unhindered and I can more easily envision what I want to create.
Now that I’m full of sprouting ideas it’s time to thin them out and choose my favorites. March will be a month for clarity, time to dig through this nursery in my mind.
Email: tina@tinavn.com or reply to this email
You have so many amazing nuggets of wisdom and reflection in this! I really needed this beautiful seed today. Thank you!