Finding the feeling

Sometimes, when the sun comes up, it feels like a spell is broken. (Image by Simon Blüthenkranz)

One morning before dawn, I rolled over, grabbed my phone, and posted on social media.

I wrote that if I ever started a local landscaping company, I would call it "Atplanta."

Then, I started my day. Hours later, I had completely forgotten that I had created and shared this silly pun on my city's name, and it made me laugh when I came across it again.

(Years later, there is now an organization called Atplanta, so I guess great minds think alike.)

As an early riser, I often have this experience of creating something in the pre-dawn dark that I forget about later. It happens with this blog. If I read through the morning's article in the afternoon, I can barely remember writing it.

For those of us who find it challenging to quiet the critical inner voice that seeks to edit or censor our work when we try to create, it is helpful to find these times when we can enter a lightly hypnotic state in which we are more suggestible and focused. For me, the early morning is such a time, but for others it might be late at night.

These moments, facilitated by proximity to sleep and enhanced by ritual and routine, can allow us, entranced, to do the work without thinking about whether it is good or bad. We type, sing, paint, or play, moving confidently forward instead of questioning ourselves.

The finished product, ideally, has a sense of ease and seamlessness as a result of the relaxed circumstances of its creation.

I suppose some people can open this kind of creative window via drugs, but I find that meditation, exercise, naps, and music are cheaper and more sustainable alternatives.

With practice, I've gotten better at being able to find a state of flow without having to depend on external circumstances. I know what it is supposed to feel like, so I can more easily access that feeling even when the situation isn't ideal.

I believe that discovering and developing ideas is a learnable skill, one we can cultivate on top of the skills necessary to work in our chosen medium. We need an acceptance of uncertainty and a willingness to give up control.

While there is no muse who can choose to bestow or withhold gifts, we might not be able force our work to adhere to a specific structure or timetable. There is a bit of letting go. We have to throw the ball and then position ourselves to be the one to catch it.

This process can be frustratingly unpredictable if we're not used to it, but our performance does improve with consistent effort. The sea of possibilities is different every day, but we get to be better sailors.

As we gain more experience in our creative pursuits, we increase the likelihood of positive experiences in that space, which increases our desire to spend time there. In this way, our practice becomes, itself, a way to access a more suggestible, focused state of being.

This means that more of our day (and our life) can be spent in that sleep-adjacent feeling of well-being and self-acceptance. Our creative playground is no longer a means of torture or a place to escape to; instead, it's home.

My two-year-old nephew already lives there — he spends half his time being a T. rex or a "tool guy." Reality is inseparable from possibility for him.

In this perfect moment, I can experience, fleetingly, that feeling of wholeness. Hopefully, at some point today, I can do it again. Whatever I make — whatever the finished product turns out to be — doesn't matter as much as how it feels. However, in finding the feeling, chances are I can make something I'm happy about.