Is what I like to call being creatively blocked. (Which even THAT took me a full 20 minutes and all my brain power to figure out despite it 100% being a double entendre… so she’s here to stay folks) It’s even worse than being cock-blocked. In whatever form it may come in. For me: Writers block. Do painters get it? What about street performers? Slam poets? REGARDLESS fuck, every. Single. Damn. Time. I’m on a creative streak she comes in and rears her ugly head. Think you can be this excessively productive and ah-MAZE-ing pretty much endlessly? Think again! It’s a bitch and well, I’m annoyed.
Purpose of post? Mostly to bore you with the inane details of my super mellow dramatic life, but also in the hopes that aggressively mashing the buttons on my keyboard for long enough, that something prolific will birth itself from my fingertips. DO YOU SEE? I’m grasping at straws. Birth from my fingertips? Who says that? What, do I think I’m God? (Yes.) I’m digressing, again.
I mostly wanted you all to know that there isn’t a universal cure for being cocked. There’s some pretty standard bullshit advice when it comes to this garbage. Like: (Imagine a really effeminate, fabulously gay voice) Go for a walk, change your scenery girl! Don’t re-read your work until a few months later, that way you’ll look at it with fresh eyes. Always carry a note/sketch book. Dabble in some light heroin. Unfortunately when you’re truly bitter about your blockage like I am right now, the pre-packaged, ‘sage’ advice really makes me hostile. Don’t tell me how to live my life. AMIRITE. (It is true, I am a child.) When you attach your personhood to something that is created from within you and then this something fails to be produced due to any number of issues, but mostly your unprocessed emotional baggage, you suddenly question big parts of yourself. Should I be doing this? I don’t have a consistent out-pouring of sheer brilliance 100% of the time… should probably quit while I’m ahead right? If I’ve learned literally ANYTHING about my highly emotional self, don’t make rash decisions. I feel all the things so I need all the things to happen now, and I need to feel them now, and anything before or after is irrelevant. (Yes, it’s exhausting.) It’s even harder to keep up with, ask my partner in crime.
So in the effort to NOT contribute to the handy-dandy list-y posts (Disclaimer: I write list posts all the time) that solve all your problems and world hunger at the same time, (They do solve all your problems) I’m just gonna let you in on what I’ve been doing, and mayhaps it’ll inspire something in you? **But I’m certainly not judging or giving advice or telling you how to be or what kind of pizza to like.**
So WHAT have you been doing? You simply MUST tell us. We’re all on the edge of our seats. Well, I thought you’d never ask. I’ve been binge watching Netflix dramas that I’ve already seen. Why? Because I like to indulge feelings and I know that certain shows will give me all the feels and so I’m chasing them around like a junkie coming down. WHY THO? Because I tend to create when I have all the feelings, and I tend to have a blockage when I have all the numb. For example, last night I re-watched Still Alice (can we all just give a round of applause to Julianne Moore?) which is a heartbreaking movie about a woman who gets Alzheimer’s disease like super fucking young and then struggles to keep her sense of self despite her rapidly deteriorating state. It’s super depressing with like SPRINKLES of awwwwwwwwws. But it gave me all the feels, again, like it did the first time. Which made me feel less numb and useless. (Psst: that’s the first step.)
Secondly, I clean, constantly. I vacuum all the time (mostly because we have a dog, but also because I’m a level of anal I’m not prepared to admit to quite yet), I am endlessly doing dishes and I’m constantly adjusting and folding so that things are ‘just so’ and my immediate environment is ridiculously aesthetically pleasing. I do this so that I can HOPEFULLY prevent myself from being distracted by a mess to create, but since I’m spending all my time cleaning there is no time to create. Who am I kidding, there is always time, I’m just an asshole.
But mostly, I spend my time staring off into fucking SPACE trying to figure something clever out. For instance, I was waiting for my coffee to boil and staring at a box of cheerios. On the box it said “made from gluten free oats”, but I read the ‘oats’ part as ‘rats’. Then I pictured in my head, gluten free rats. Rats that wear saggy toques, that recycle and that don’t buy anything unless it’s from whole foods. How clever would that be if I had any drawing ability, what-so-fucking-ever. A little clan of rats that are always rolling their eyes, talking about how they spent a year abroad and somehow have the inability to explain to someone what gluten even IS when asked. I started audibly laughing. There is no limit to my brilliance! (This is actually where the lions share of all my ideas come from, staring off into space.) But yeah.. that’s what I’ve got. Gluten free rats, and Julianne Moore. Fuck. Pray for me that this doesn’t last too long.
Happily Hostile 
As a visual artist, I get cocked quite a bit, too. One thing I do is remind myself that not producing is not fucking off, but what I call “percolating.” It’s kind of like when I was pregnant and lying about (as you do) and someone would ask, “What did YOU do today?” and I would say, “Made kidneys and some brain tissue.” You can’t see it, you can’t feel it, but something is being made.
I also re-watch television series, but only one, and I love it so much I don’t even tell most people which one it is because I feels so personal and I don’t like other fans of it who want to talk about it. It’s mine. My husband made fun of it once and I cried for an hour. He doesn’t joke about it anymore, and patiently watches it when I am in that place where I NEED the feels it gives me. It’s emotional comfort food.
For me, being busy (and I can talk for days about the right way to fold a towel) actually becomes a way of not letting myself work. I have issues with letting myself fully embrace my creative side and so there’s all this stuff that has to be done first before I am “allowed” to work. Someday, someday, I will be in my studio and THE BED WON’T HAVE BEEN MADE. But I’m not there yet.
Here’s to your cocked situation ending soon.
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Yes I have the busy issue too. Very much so. Everything needs to be done before I can allow myself to work. I guess it’s a good thing I don’t work from home haha
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Ohhhhhhhh dearest, you are not alone. I have been cocked for almost the entirety of 2016.(That sounds like a naughty boast. If only it were.) Being cocked is a bitch. BUT you have totes done the right thing and written a blog anyway! My remedy for being cocked is to often do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, which isn’t helpful to anyone or anything apart from my self-loathing.
So I wish you luck my friend. Binge-watch those Netflix series, vacuum the shit out of everything, and remember that you cannot be creative 100% of the time, and that maybe you’re not cocked at all – maybe you’re just resting.
Here’s an anecdote that may help, and has helped me: in my very first creative writing class at university back in the dark ages of 2003, my wanky writer tutor said, very ardently and scarf-swishingly ‘I need to write. To me, writing is like breathing. If I don’t write for a day, I feel physically sick.’
WOW, thought my 18 year-old aspiring writer self. I have never once felt sick for not writing. Maybe I’m not cut out to be a writer??
And that has stayed with me for YEARS . ‘Shit, I haven’t written in weeks and I don’t feel sick and it’s not affecting my life o shit o crap maybe I’m not cut out to be a writer maybe I should just be a civil servant forever and eat tinned macaroni cheese until I just die’ etc etc.
But you know what, it’s taken me a long time to realise that, actually, that was a load of wank. If my pretentious tutor was telling the truth, then fair play to him, each to their own. If he wasn’t, and he was just trying to impress a load of wide-eyed, adoring writing students (which I suspect to be the case) then he’s a monumental dick. The point is is that the pressure to write when one wants to be a writer is often very detrimental to actually doing anything, and it’s comments his that that are unhelpful and only increase the pressure. So, being cocked makes us feel guilty, and makes us vacuum and re-tile the roof etc etc, and the pressure for our next bit of writing to be 1000000% amazing gets the better of us and we fear not being to able to make it that good, or even write it at all, and thus the cocking continues.
My point is RELAX. I am an expert on cocking and procrastinating, and I’ve only recently accepted that it comes with trying to be a writer! But relax. Have a break. Do something else. Bake a cake. Eat a cake. Mow the lawn. Then when you least expect it, you might get a bit of inspiration. It may take days, weeks, months. BUT IT WILL COME.
And that turned into a mighty long comment. Sort of ran away with myself there.
BUT GOOD LUCK and embrace the cocking! 🙂
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Thank you!! That tutor sure sounds like a mighty d-bag, I’m glad he turned out to be wrong !
I definitely know that creativity comes in strides but seriously fuck the down stride. Hahahaha!
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