The Dance of Floundering: Nurturing Creativity or Wasting Time

Simon writes me a letter. It is in response to the letter I sent him in the mail from my manual typewriter. He writes back on paper, scanning it in and emailing it to me.

It's his little revolt against the inefficiency. I'm aware. I'm amused.

This is how we play.

In his letter, he compliments me on my prolific tendencies. How I have manage to create so many things and send them out there in the world to live their glorious little lives.

Yet the thought made me want to go lay in bed with a wet washcloth on my forehead.

Because lately I have been floundering. It is unpleasant. Uncomfortable. Irritating.

In the pursuit of creative endeavours, it is easy to glorify productivity and efficiency, leaving little room for accepting the messiness and murkiness of floundering and wasting time. Even by the artist herself!

Yet, within the tapestry of the creative process, these seemingly unproductive moments are often irritatingly necessary. My floundering has been akin to a blank page. Writer's block. Whatever you want to call it. I am not sure how to snap out of it, or even if I should. Am I just waiting for a wave to come my way?

This has been a long spell.

Now that our minds are mush from scrolling through social media, the world wide web has given us AI so we can be spoon fed thoughts we used to make for ourselves. I asked AI about creativity and floundering in the tone of Janice MacLeod.

AI told me this and I was all, "Aw shucks, thanks robot."

"Janice MacLeod, a dream-chaser and masterful artist of life's everyday adventures, invites us to embrace the magic found in wandering aimlessly through the corridors of our imagination. She reminds us that creativity thrives in the uncharted territories of our minds, where time is an elastic concept, and rules are mere suggestions. Like a carefree wanderer, we must grant ourselves permission to flounder, trusting that within the maze of uncertainty lies the spark of inspiration."

The AI robot sure is wordy. Makes me seem like an overall wearing paint splatter smiley faced lady who skips off to the farmers market and sits in cozy nooks of bookstores in the rain.

Not entirely inaccurate, but the actual me LATELY has been spending months trying and flailing and working full days and coming up with nothing to show for it. It's all rather unpleasant.

This is what floundering looked like today:

1. The plan is to make a video for my new course coming out (at some point, based on degree of aforementioned floundering).

2. Record a video to check lighting and sound. Unacceptable.

3. Take shower, do hair, put on full makeup, find very filtery filter even though nothing is wrong with my face... and yet... could be better.

4. Discover the audio could better as well. Scrounge around in basement to look for microphone. Find random cords that might be useful. Bring them upstairs. Also find a ring I lost. It's tarnished.

5. Spend 20 minutes polishing ring.

6. Can't find original microphone. Use another microphone I found while looking for first microphone.

7. Record second video to check lighting and sound again. Good.

8. Look out window. Rain is coming.

9. Take dog out for a walk... dog sitting today.

10. Get caught in rain. Now have wet dog.

11. Rather than fix rainy hair and makeup, take off all nice "video" clothes and put on loungewear. The magic is over.

12. Watch garden show.

13. Decide I can't just make a video off the cuff. When I do that my eyes dart all over the place and I look like a clown. Will need to write a script.

14. Turn on computer to make script.

15. Check stats on blog instead. Decide it's time to write a blog post, but on what?

16. Write blog post.

Not entirely wasted. I did this blog post.

And this is coming from me. ME!?! Miss Fancy Pants Author and Artist of bladiddi bla bla all the things.

I'm sitting here in my house afraid that this floundering is really aging, fearful that this is the new me. Blaming health issues of the past. Blaming time going by. Did I have a Best Before date? Am I no longer my best?!?!? Is my brain getting soft? What does that even mean?

This is the panic behind the loafing.

They say all this idle time is about allowing ideas to germinate and blossom so we can pluck them like wildflowers from the meadows of our thoughts and transform into art. These phases are actually nurturing respites that replenish our creative well. We are to embrace the gentle chaos.

I dunno. Sounds like something AI would say.

I'm not really looking for an answer here. I'm just throwing this out there, that if you are dancing the floundering dance, you're not alone. Later, when we shake it off, maybe we will look back and know what it was all about.

While we are here, know that we are in it together.