Kate Oliverのインスタグラム(birchandpine) - 10月20日 00時55分

I just sent my therapist a message in which I shared with her that after weeks of being in grief (everything hit me at once - all the loss and fear and uncertainty), I am feeling better, except for one small little thing.

I am not feeling creative, I wrote. I don’t have motivation. My job is literally all creativity, how can I fix this?

I closed my laptop and looked over at the dining room, which looks...well, like this. In the kitchen, sourdough bread on the counter. Apples in the basket, ready to be stuffed into a homemade pie crust later today.

What I should have said is that I’m not being profitably creative.

For the first time in a long time, I’m struggling to keep my head in the game at the things that constitute a livelihood. For so many years, everything I did was for my job. My very artistry had only become useful if it was profitable. Even my personal growth and therapy was about how I could be better at my job, not how I could heal from trauma and pain.

In normal times - I love my work as a writer and designer and normally feel very inspired and invigorated by the work I do for a living. I’m still working, of course, but I feel stifled creatively. The words are not pouring forth onto the page. My brain feels scattered. Administrative tasks feel more doable than ever, because they require so little of that deep reaching down.

I am not struggling, however, to create a home, to wrap myself and my family up in the comfort of place and cozy nourishment. I am - for the first time in so long - only fulfilled by the things that don’t make me a single dime.

I am giving myself permission to work less, to get only the tasks that must be done checked off my list, and to fill the remaining time not hustling, but quieting.

Find me: listening to the rain, holding warm kittens, sitting with the dog on the porch, reading with Adelaide, building fires and having long conversations with my wife, creating a home, baking and cooking.

Perhaps this slowing down isn’t quite so bad after all, and maybe I’m finally getting things...right.

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