Creativity vs Productivity ~ The Art of Play

This has been on my mind a lot this year. Avoidance. Procrastination. I don't like to think about these words. (Ha! avoidance again!) I often see myself as that ostrich with her head in the sand. Some of that stems from past trauma in my life. I have a period of time from August through October that is the worst cycle of time that I subconsciously and consciously relive, but this year is different. The weight has shifted to being mostly conscious of it, which is both more difficult and easier. More difficult, because the emotions feel raw again. Easier, because I know this means I've reached a major plateau in my healing. Over the last 10 years, I've shifted between blaming and forgiving myself for procrastination and avoidance. It has touched every area of my life. And here is a word for where I'm feeling extremely fortunate: Creativity. It spans the whole of my life.

Dad was a hardworking steel mill worker who worked a lot of swing shifts. My early summer memories of him are of hearing him yell out his bedroom window for all of us to be quiet so he could sleep. He gave death threats, but I have zero recollection of him laying even a finger on any of us for being too loud. (One of my favorite Dad quotes: "Geneva! Come get these kids before I kill them!") In the early days of our childhood, Mom was a stay-at-home parent, so most of mine and my siblings' time was under her watch. She always said that she grew up with us. She married at 14 and had given birth to 4 children before she was legally an adult. Maybe this is why Mom was so much fun, but I really believe she had so much youth in her soul that it came out in her creative parenting. She taught me my early sewing skills of course, but she also taught us to love nature and all of the art and love that we could squeeze out of it. She taught us to love the simple things and to enjoy life in a free way. And when I say free, I mean literally and figuratively. Summer rain meant using tin pots as hats so we could hear the rain hitting our heads from the eave of the front porch. Bubble magic was Dove dish soap mixed with water and empty thread spools were our bubble wands. (She did this for the grands and great grand kids too.) Fall meant collecting dried flowers so that we could paint them any color we wished. Gluing any paper craft in the early days meant Mom got the baking flour out and mixed it with a bit of water to form a paste. (I remember this working really well!) She taught us how to make paper lanterns, thread spinners with thread and buttons, and how to make a whistle with a wide blade of grass. I could go on and ON. Mom was a creative genius in my eyes. She was never too busy to make sure we were having fun. I'm sure I had some boredom in my childhood, but I don't remember a speck of it.

I reminisce about all of this, because it helps me remember how important the art of play is to creativity and production. Sometimes I'm having quite a lot of fun with a creative endeavor that doesn't immediately create production leading to monetary gains. These endeavors can make me feel nonproductive which leads to feelings of guilt. (Oh, that ugly word!) But as my Mom taught me, without even knowing it, the art of play/curiosity/boredom fighting endeavors teach us a multitude of skills that lead to the end result of productivity. It isn't then Creativity vs Productivity, but rather Creativity = Productivity. I can credit all that I learned from my Mom, especially in those early days, for how I'm saving my emotional self as well as my professional self today. I have to make time for the creative outlets. The 10 year old trauma that I'm working with is my own to deal with. It creeps into my productivity as avoidance and procrastination. This particular blog post is my use of words and memories to combat those issues. I have a lifetime of sewing and creative practice that feeds my business. I was training, so long ago, for the job I do now, when I was only looking at it as play and fun and curiosity. I know how fortunate I am to have had a Mother who so instinctually gave me the skills that I could build on for my adult self. I wish for you all to have some of that youth in your soul that my Mom possessed. I wish for you all, the ability to think back to when the creative process was instinctual and without hesitation. Bring it to the present and use it. I promise, it will be fun, as well as productive, if you just let it.