Where Did All My Creativity Go?
I always want to write — but never know what about.
In January 2020, I found myself hiking alone through the majestic forests of Chilean Patagonia in the hours before my flight back to Santiago. It hadn’t been planned as a solo trip but I decided to go anyway after my partner dropped out just six hours before our flight. It turned out to be the last real adventure I’d take before COVID shut down global travel.
While hiking the quiet loop through the forest at dawn, I spotted a funky tree with a folded trunk. It looked like a knee. My knee, I thought. And with no one around to chat with — and tell me I was being silly — a poem spontaneously burst out of me. I scribbled it into my phone notes while trying not to trip over roots. I couldn’t not write it.
In stark contrast, I sat to write last night about a topic I love and felt words coming about as painstakingly as scraping old layers of paint from a wall. Having worked as a professional writer for two years, I know the feeling well, and I know how to push through it. But since I have been on a personal mission to heal my relationship with writing by making it fun again, I closed my laptop. And I felt like a failure. Anyone who has committed themselves to writing more knows this feeling.
Then, I realized I’ve been fighting the creativity trap in the wrong way.
Like the majority of the Western world, I’ve been largely trapped in my home with minimal social activity beyond my immediate family and significant other for over a year. I’ve been lucky to travel a bit more than the average person, but the energizing portion of my work (in the travel industry) has been completely shut down since March 2020.
I had just started a brand new travel startup in February 2020 and have therefore spent the past 13 months trying to figure out new ways to engage non-existent customers. I’ve been through all five stages of grief about this and like any high-strung ambitious young person, I’ve tried to adapt by developing new outlets for my energy, rather than sinking in to understand the pain of losing the work I so love. One of these many outlets became my writing, specifically on Medium. And I very quickly hit a wall and began to judge myself for my failure to develop a grand audience through the consistency I had once harped to entrepreneurs looking to build their content strategies.
I’ve tried a number of solutions to the creativity trap:
- I keep a list of new content ideas on my phone, writing them down every time something pops into my head.
- I ask friends, my partner, mentors, and readers what they want to read from me.
- I participate in writing competitions with specific prompts so I don’t have to think of it myself.
- I read articles about tricks to publish every day or every week, and how to reward yourself for success.
- I listen to several podcasts on a variety of subjects, read articles and books, and have thought-provoking conversations on a daily basis.
And despite running this gauntlet of creative inspiration, my brain feels like a cinder block every time I sit to write. I’ll scroll through my list of ideas, text friends for inspiration, then head over to Linkedin and lament my lack of creative spark. If only to press the salt into the wound, it was starting to feel I was scraping the bottom of the bucket of my ideas on how to pivot this travel company after a year of casting my dreams into the world only to see them gobbled up by a situation I have literally zero power over. It seemed like a vicious cycle, like digging for water in the desert, only to see it sink into the sand as soon as it was in reach.
Then, this morning, I read an article that clarified to me what was wrong. And — shocker of the century — I am not the problem!
Of the 31 tips mentioned to help break through the ‘don’t know what to write about’ problem, at least one-third were about social interaction, people-watching, and spontaneous adventure. Yes, keeping a journal of ideas, reading inspiring books, and considering past memories are in there, too. But the bulk of the creative juices were shown to come from tiny interactions with an old lady on a bus, or the person selling you ice cream, or a deep late-night conversation with your best friend over a bottle of wine. Another source? Spontaneous adventures into nature with your phone nowhere in sight.
After reading this piece, I reflected on my best moments of spontaneous creativity. When working in the Ecuadorian Amazon on research expeditions, I often find myself writing silly poetry on long boat rides on the muddy Napo River. As I hiked to the North Cascade larches alone in October 2020, I came up with a whole slogan and marketing campaign for a new startup idea. After a 20-mile loop hike through the Olympic Mountains — a test for a brand new relationship — I wrote the best-performing article I’ve ever published. And as a child, I used to become inspired to write short stories as my family drove through the mountains (not sure how I avoided nausea!), taking inspiration from goofy tales I played out with my friends between classes.
I’m certainly not the first person to have their creativity quashed by the pandemic.
After all, we are being asked to completely reimagine our lives and not for just a few weeks. For a few years. And if you run a business, you’ve had to reimagine that, too. If that alone doesn’t exhaust your creativity, then remember we have been in a virtual world of partial sensory deprivation for 13 months. Books and podcasts and Zoom happy hours do not replace people. Virtual reality and documentaries don’t replace the sense of success at reaching a summit with lungs and thighs burning.
But as someone who prides themselves on being creative, flexible, and adaptable, this inspiration lacuna has felt unacceptable. I thought I could write, read, and podcast my way to creativity. But I am learning that I have to fill that cup to be able to play with thoughts and share something interesting, engaging, and insightful. Otherwise, I’m just trying to make bread without any flour.
How can I get my creativity back?
It is time to accept that the full bounds of my creativity will not return until I can get back to spontaneous adventures and frequent human interaction. Part of gaining back some of that mental playfulness that created a poem about the tree that looked like my knee is accepting that I cannot force it. Yes, I can force myself to write an article if I really want to, but in doing so I will practically guarantee it will feel like hard work rather than creative play.
In the meantime, there are still a few tricks to try, recognizing that I have been doing many of “the right things” already.
- Keep consuming content I enjoy that sparks my curiosity and excites me.
- Keep having thought-provoking conversations with people that inspire me. But now, write down thoughts, quotes, and funny ideas that come to mind, if they do. Don’t be mad if they don’t.
- Start going for walks without a podcast or being on a call to a friend. Observe the people around me (without being creepy).
- Bring a journal on my walk to the park rather than a phone. Sit and write in nature with no agenda.
- Keep working to release expectations. And expect that will take a lot of journaling.
Like many others, I’ve spent hours in quarantine in online classes, including Masterclasses by award-winning writers like Salman Rushdie and David Sedaris. And if I gleaned one thing from these dense lessons on creativity, it was that human interaction, a daily exploration of their surroundings, and finally reading and listening to other content were the crux of their inspiration. Not one of these, but all.
So until the first two come back, it’s still a good time to play, especially with new ways of sparking creativity and writing things you might never have time to explore. But I won’t be expecting another “Knee Tree” soon.
