The Creative Life Podcast: Episode One

I’m very excited to officially launch The Creative Life podcast! I’ve been working behind-the-scenes on this for quite a while. That was my first lesson learned: podcasting is very involved! (At least it is the way I want to do it.) Welcome to this new part of my online journey.

5 Ways to Make Time for Creativity When You’re Tired

We all have responsibilities and tasks to complete as we go through our lives, often leaving us in a state of depletion. I think we would all recognise that feeling as we commute to and from work and study, trying to fit everything in and then arriving home and feeling like you’ve got no energy left to devote to creative projects. As a consequence, they might suffer or even be abandoned until such a time when you feel that you are ready to tackle them again. Before that happens, guilt can creep in, undermining confidence. It can be an easy cycle to get in and a tough one to break.

This is why I began to think about creativity in its wider context. Too often I get hung up on the verb, ‘to create’. If I’m not making something, laying down the words, then that’s a “bad” thing. We’re not being productive.
I think that’s partially a by-product of the content-driven world – at least online – in which we find ourselves. As a blogger, I’ve fallen into the negative mindset of “I haven’t had a chance to think of anything to write today, what does that say about me?” But I don’t do that anymore.

Instead of being fixated on the verb, I think about creativity as a state or mindset. I’ve had 20 years to think about this topic. I was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome when I was 17 years old. It took a few years to get over the worst of it, and I had to make peace with the fact that my friends could study or party or play video games all night and I couldn’t. Later, when I had my children and was in the throes of exclusive breastfeeding it became hard again and in recent years I’ve had to be careful since being diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. I had to be kind to myself, yes, but I had to be smart, too.

Here are 5 ways that I Make Time for Creativity When I’m Tired

1. Read shorter texts
2. Rediscover classic texts from childhood
3. Talk about books with my kids
4. Listen to podcasts or audio books
5. Turn off your phone

Mentioned in this podcast:

Turning off autoplay videos on Facebook

The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
Beauty’s Sister by James Bradley
Governor Bligh and the Short Man by Peter Cochrane
Lists of Note by Shaun Usher
Women of Letters titles
Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine  l’Engle
Homecoming by Cynthia Voight

(And others)

You can subscribe at iTunes or Soundcloud. If you are an android user, Soundcloud has an app that you can get so you can listen on the go. Or it is embedded here – hit play!