Space To Create

I wrote the beginning of this sometime in July in a 15-minute flurry of words while samples were in a thermal cycler... I had a break from this but life is back to feeling intense as I focus on grad school applications, and I am sure it will be relevant at other stages as well. 

Some days I feel like my creativity is going to shrivel up and die... that I will no longer be able to create beautiful things with words, notes, or colors. I fear that one day, creating beautiful things will no longer feel right to me.

It certainly doesn't feel like I am cultivating a love or skill for creating. I haven't blogged in months. I haven't read a new book in weeks. I don't remember the last time I sat down at the piano. I spend all day with numbers... from miRNA protocols and data analysis in the morning to lists of graduate programs in the afternoon and finally GRE math review at night. Every day is scheduled tightly, more numbers telling me what I should be accomplishing at any given hour.

Mostly, I am loving the challenge. I have so many things to accomplish, so many tasks to cross off the list. I have a goal that feels much more tangible than it has for the last year. I have sub-goals categorized neatly in my google calendar. I need to follow the schedule exactly and give 100% because there is so much going on that a slight derailment of the plan leads to breakdown and tears over quantitative comparison questions (although, to be fair, the quant comp questions make a concerted effort to induce tears on their own). Essentially, I am feeling very purpose-driven, which is a familiar and generally preferred state of being for me. This is what much of college was like.

And yet, I miss the peace and quiet to simply observe the world around me. I miss reflecting on what I see through creating... creating anything other than scientific papers, that is. There is much drive in my life at the moment but not a lot of passionate creativity.

How do I create space to... create?

Several months later and I still don't have an answer. I am knitting when I have the chance, and I am enjoying sunrises on my way to work. Sometimes I just let myself talk about clinical psych (and the gospel) without trying to answer essay questions or write personal statements.

I'm mostly relying on the ebb and flow of busyness, knowing that this season will end if I just work hard and finish it. But I would love if I could learn to be busy without shutting down this aspect of my personality... since to the best of my knowledge, there will be busy seasons forever :)

Hopefully I will work this out eventually, and in the meantime, advice would be appreciated if you have any. Lady M and Elizabeth have no sympathy of course, since they maintain busy schedules of sleeping, eating, and intimidating any humans who visit their house and still manage to stare out the windows and contemplate life at length.