Opposites Attract

When the answer won't come

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Beyond Ideas of Right and Wrong Cold wax mixed media by Crystal Marie

Trigger warning: This post has a bit of adult language.

You might not have noticed, but there’s been quite a gap between my last blog post and this one. I last wrote to the membership tier about an incredible opportunity I had to submit my book proposal as part of a gift of an online conference for artists and writers I’d just attended, which guaranteed one attendee would be awarded a contract to publish.

Also Elizabeth Gilbert was a keynote speaker, so I was basically fangirling through the entire weekend, but I digress.

The entire event was filled with Aha moments, including some insight on how I’d like to shift my teaching practice. So high with inspiration, my head heavy with ideas and the turning of the wheels of creativity outbursts.

So good. I kept repeating. So darned good.

I wrote that last post letting my paid subscribers know I’d be focusing on the writing requirements of the book proposal submission, and that I’d be sharing some of the writing from that proposal as my October excerpt.

I’d already committed to caring for my toddler granddaughter the first week of October, naively planning to tend to my other work obligations, and now to write as much as I could while she napped. After 30 years since my youngest child was the same age, it is easy to forget how utterly exhausting it is to care for a not quite two-year old round the clock. How singing Wheels on the Bus over and over on demand can rob you of your very last functioning brain cell.

Not to worry, I convinced myself. I still had all the rest of the month to make that deadline for the submission on November 1st, so I let go of the concern and determined to just enjoy the special week with my granddaughter.

And then on the third day she sneezed on me.

We’d both contracted the plague. Some sort of respiratory flu virus making the rounds, not covid, but it utterly slayed me. (It is also easy to forget how utterly exhausting it is to care for a sick toddler whilst also sick.)

It took a solid two weeks for the plague to run its course and in the midst of it all, I’ve built a blog for a new online workshop, created the necessary web pages and did all the behind the scenes things needed to launch the campaign and open registration.

I’ve photographed and edited images of my recent work and listed everything in the shop and have sent a months worth of marketing emails for my annual month long October birthday celebration sales.

And now seeing all these words I’m writing, it hits me that what I’m saying is that I have a full time job and like most authors, writing isn’t profitable enough to replace it yet. So the actual writing of the book and the extra writing for the book proposal have to be worked into the crevices of time.

All the while a chorus of Fuck, Fuck, Fuck, Fuck playing in my head.

The weight of impending deadlines, the ongoing need to keep pushing to generate an income, and the knowing that the ideas that came to me from that conference will make it all more sustainable, but not having the luxury of time to implement those things, have left me scrambling all month with those words, translated to mean What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?

After a week of trying all the same things, the familiar things, the obvious things, the necessary things, that I used to be able to count on to get myself over the hump, I finally threw in the towel and decided to take a break. A friend treated me to lunch for my birthday and we spontaneously stopped at a new gallery together on the way home.

This morning I read an email newsletter from another artist I follow, sharing her advice on what to do when you feel stuck in your painting. Later I listened to the current episode of a Martha Beck podcast I subscribe to, where she shared the science behind how our brains work out solutions when we are stuck in a problem without a solution. Though the former was specifically talking about art and the latter was dealing with places we fell stuck in life, both conclusions were surprisingly the same.

Do the opposite thing.

With painting the opposite thing is a contrast in color, scale, or direction of the next mark. In life, it is to let go of the pushing to find a solution when one is needed but you’ve tried all the things you’ve always done. It is taking a break to go have lunch with a friend while the clock is still ticking and all the things are coming due. It is deciding to focus on dusting and vacuuming instead of monitoring the inbox and the feed. Moving all those things on the schedule to the next day.

I almost wrote that it is counterintuitive, but really it only feels that way to the nervous system. It is actually that intuitive nudge saying Okay, you’ve gathered all the data, you’ve tried all the normal things, now step back and give me room to process it all. Go keep yourself busy and let me think!

When our backs are against the wall, we’ve come to an impasse and we don’t know what to do, it is the best possible place for the creative idea wheels to start churning, but we have to be willing to take our hands off the wheel.

For me, the opposite thing is removing myself from this computer and doing something the feels like a luxury - go to lunch. Or even tending to the neglected essentials when the going gets really rough, like catching up on the dusting and vacuuming, or basically anything that isn’t going to potentially bring in some much needed income.

In the moments of doing the opposite thing, not trying to solve the problem, the right side of the brain is actually hard at work piecing together all the data and coming up with creative solutions. It is the science of the aha moments of life. They wake us up in the middle of the night. Come to us under the steady rhythmic stream of the shower. Float to the surface during a conversation with a friend and somehow land right there on the newly polished shelf after you rid it of a month’s worth of dust bunnies.

I can feel it working right now, the next aha moment building steam, solutions and new ideas coming to me in the letting go of the pushing to figure it all out.

I guess the old saying is true; Opposites do attract.