For The Always Interrupted Creative
with special guest Holly Revere
You made a plan to do this thing called engaging with your creativity. You’ve set aside a stretch of uninterrupted time.
You settle into your chair, take a deep breath, and let your imagination roam on the page.
Ahh, you’ve been looking forward to this all week. You’re in the flow when…
BAM out of nowhere:
There’s a knock on the door or your phone rings and it’s your kid’s school or your own mind barges in and now that you’re thinking about it, did you remember to schedule an appointment to get your tires replaced?
You feel yourself splitting, attention fragmenting, the part of you that’s skilled at running a household peels forward, and the you that’s been in the creative flow is irritated.
Conventional advice would probably tell you to Set Better Boundaries or do something about being more focused and intentional. And I don’t know, maybe you do, but…I don’t love the energetics it sets up of framing your creative time as something you have to defend.
And for readers with kids or other caregiving responsibilities, I think it’s limp advice.
While I do experience fragmenting attention, I don’t have a tiny human in my care, so I invited my friend and hug personified Holly Revere to help me out with this one, and they did not disappoint! Holly is a writer, maker, community facilitator, somatic life coach and the default human to put down work when the kiddo is sick.
This could easily be framed as a Problem To Be Solved. But as a trauma-informed coach, I question that assumption, so after we rooted into our conversation, I asked Holly if they’d say that having their creative time interrupted is actually a problem.
“I love that you asked if it's a problem, I think it's a puzzle more than a problem. Part of my thinking for the interrupted creative conversation we were going to have, there's practical things I can do to address the transitions, like time blocking or scheduling chaos time into the schedule, or nourishing myself and asking for help. But the biggest thing that has helped me: Let this be a puzzle and not a problem. Reframing interruptions as opportunities…
“It's not like there's no tension with being interrupted, but reframing it as actually being part of the creative process—while I still tend to my transition states and time blocks and holding some boundaries—is necessary, especially now. I think that you just can't plan a calm life and be successful.
“…You know, I'm in my brain, and I think I need to do this thing, and I made a plan to do it, and there is a lot to honoring what you want. But there's a lot to: ‘Oh, what's here now? Am I missing anything?’ and letting the interruptions tell you about life with a capital L.”
Holly is practiced at reframing, they help their clients with it, and I’m imagining you, dear reader, calm, drinking your tea and thinking “I could try that.” I’m also imagining it might not be so easy in the moment of irritation at your next interruption to remember this option. So I asked Holly to share some guidance for you. First, they shared about mantras they use and quotes they keep on a board near their workspace:
“One is Say Yes to Life, which is a book title by Viktor Frankl. That was really helpful to me in some dark times, and so I try to stay open to: What does this moment have for me that wasn't in my agenda? Because there's so much creativity in plans gone awry.
“…Awry has so much potential because it brings extra materials, variables, energy, and shifts in physiology needed to bring you beyond what you know now. Creativity is making things that weren’t there before. You need unexpected input to fuel much of creativity.
“And then two other things that really helped me are:
‘All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is change. God is change.’ Octavia E. Butler
“And the last one is Bayo Akomolafe’s book These Wilds Beyond Our Fences.
“Akomolafe talks about how life is not made in the end goal. It's made in the middle. It's made in the cracks. It's made in the dark.
“Akomolafe writes: ‘...everything begins in the middle. There are no beginnings that appear unperturbed, pristine, without hauntings. And there are no endings that are devoid of traces of the new, spontaneous departures from disclosure, and simmering events that are yet to happen. The middle isn’t the space between things; it is the world in its ongoing practices of worlding itself.’”
Beyond mantras and visual reminders, they share what to do when reframing is not accessible….
“I have to have the capacity for it. I have to have honored myself. I have to put myself in the mix of all the people I'm tending to. It's not as simple, actually, as ‘put your own oxygen mask on first.’ But I need nourishing myself to give me capacity to reframe in the moment.
“So I'm nourished by standing dates with certain people. I'm definitely nourished by reading, spending time to read these books. So I guess that would be a tip to ask: What nourishes you? And calendar it in, and hold it as sacredly as you can.”
And remember:
“Part of the nourishing is asking: who can help? Because this type we are, this healing type, often likes to be the biggest giver, and/or feels a little good about doing more than other people. It's nice to maybe be the one that's doing the most.
“But, like, even my kiddo now does the garbage, recycling, and litter at night, and I can't even tell you how much that has relieved a burden I didn't even know. Or I've been doing some skill trades with people where things are easy for them, and then we trade for something that's easy for me, or I just stop if I'm overburdened. I just let the dishes pile up.
“This might feel so trite, though, it sounds like ‘self-care,’ but it's community care. Maybe maybe that's the answer.”
I don’t think this sounds trite at all. It’s all in that seemingly simple reframe: You're also in the community of people that you're caring for. And…
I think that's really hard for a lot of people: to put themselves in. So I asked Holly: Is there anything you would like to say to that person who is thinking “I don't know if I can. I really like doing things for other people, but I don't know if I can ask for help.”
“You're missing so much joy and wholeness if you remove yourself from being loved.”
I’d really love for you to read that again and let yourself feel that before we go on: “You're missing so much joy and wholeness if you remove yourself from being loved.”
“When you ask that question, I have so much tenderness for my previous self, who really thought they had to earn it. It's almost just so silly how hard we work to be cared for when we're so lovely. Everyone is such a delight, even with our bumps and rough bits, we're so cute and adorable and lovable. And it's so silly how serious and hard and how much math and gymnastical bending this way and that I did to try to earn it when it's, like, there. I've been trying to remember. People love me. It's not far away. People who love you or who could love you if you let them in a bumpy, imperfect way. We're not taught how to do it, but it's not far.”
Before we closed our conversation, I asked Holly where they would start if this was a tension a client was bringing to a session.
After getting clear on what’s happening and how it feels in their client’s body, they’d explore:
What do you want to feel instead of what you're feeling?
What are the barriers to feeling that?
Are there ways to reframe this that give your body a feeling of more spaciousness?
“And then gently reverse engineer: how to get that feeling. But very often, between the ‘what I want to feel’ and talking about the barriers before we get to reverse engineering, ‘what you want to feel’ evolves because of the reframing.
“Because very often some of that is filled with cultural expectations, capitalistic thinking, all the isms that tell us our worth is in what we do. Tuning into what we uniquely are and want, and how we belong already is a kinder compass.”
🧐We’ve covered a lot today, what feels most important for you to remember?
Holly Revere (they/them) is in love with books, plants, good conversation, her kid (yours too), and the spell a good soup creates. Their great joy is journeying with humans through tangles and into so now whats in the practice of Tending (not fixing or perfecting) our unique Me and kinder Togethers. Holly offers Words of With and 1:1 Somatic Life-Tending Sessions at www.thecozyexpanse.com.
Along with Trevia Woods and Janine Bertolo, Holly co-hosts Kin Keepers’ Collective, an intentional online community created as an accessible, liberation-rooted space to practice Connection to ourselves and each other through co-working, crafts, and conversations that move us towards reciprocity and revolutionary Care.
Next time, we’ll explore what to do if you tend to get distracted by your next big creative idea.
Until then,
Ryn
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Love this. Yes, sometimes interruptions end up being an element of our creativity in a unique, unexpected way whether through conversations or clarity within rest or a change of focus.
I love reframing taken into a loving space, knowing there can be angst along with trying to be within Life and what it's offering. It's an escape from the forced, fake optimism reframing of my youth where difficult emotions were suppressed in order to appear optimistic or faithful. Holly is so wonderful.