Today's confession: I long for an office to which I can escape. Not a job or a career, mind you. My day-to-day work is the job I waited for many years to be able to do. But what I really, really wish for is an office where I could go to do the work of creating.
In the creative family, amanda blake soule writes, "The most important, and perhaps most obvious, factor in nurturing your children's creative lives is to model a creative life yourself . . . The challenge for you, especially as a parent, is finding the time, energy, and space to continue your creative passions and ways to share your love of creating with your children."
Time. Energy. Space.
I'm sorely lacking all three.
The time Gabe and Marla spent in our home was so brief but so inspiring. Talking with them about everything from publishing to photography was a rush of desperately needed oxygen over the nearly extinguished flames of creativity within. And yet, with this rediscovered desire to create is the resurgence of the oldest, most tattered of excuses - I have no time. And even if I had the time, I have no energy. And even if I had the energy, I have no space. And so my frustrations retreat to the mind-massaging daydreams of having a room of one's own - as Ms. Woolf asserted, a space devoted to creating.
If I were truly creative, surely I could create a space right in our home for the work of creation, right? But creating in our home is so hard - whether the material to be worked on is writing or photo editing or handwork. Every space feels crowded enough as it is, and even when I figure out a space solution, I can't escape the gravitational pull of that which surrounds me, plaintively reminding me of what I am leaving undone to indulge the selfish-seeming pursuits of my creative spirit.
Laundry looms, ironing beckons, dust blankets, clutter piles, crumblies crumble.
During the day, the activity of two little ones at home distracts. In the evening, if I haven't crashed out on the couch, I am making time to connect with my husband. In the early, pre-dawn hours? Is it horrible that I am not at my most creative then? I get up, I work out, I read my Bible. And just about then "maaaaaaaamaaaaaaaaaa!" I'm needed.
How much sleep can one sacrifice to nurture the creative spirit?
I don't know why this feels like a confession today. I suppose on some level I feel I should just make do with the realities of this season of life. Make do. Do what I can. Let the rest go. It can wait for the day when the girls are in school all day and I'll have hours to pursue whatever my heart desires. Right?
To long after an office, a studio, even a hut for heaven's sake - it feels impossibly selfish. More than that, to acknowledge that at times I want to flee from the mundane and run to the arms of Art . . . it feels like an adultery of the soul, a betrayal of all that I say is important to me. And I guess that is the burden of this confession.
Thanks for being a small corner of a big room, a teeny-tiny little space of my own.
photo courtesy of emdot
