Ep.033 Make Space Not Time

What does making space mean for you and what kind of space do you need? Do you need more creative working space? Do you need more processing space? Do you need more personal space, more time for yourself, or more time for family in order to live a fulfilling creative life?

In this episode, I get a little personal, maybe a little controversial, and expound upon the necessity of generous selfishness and how to make space for yourself creatively so you can make space and be there in other areas of your life.

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CREDITS:

Cover design by Sage; Illustration by Olga Kostenko

Cover’s graphic illustration – Kimba Sandwich by Sage

Music by Playsound

For Transcript click on the episode here: https://rss.com/podcasts/thesagearts/

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Transcript

Track 1 0:00
I think sometimes we don’t leave space in our allotted creative time to process our ideas. So do you make space for your processing of your ideas, not just your creating of ideas?

Hello, all my beautiful, caring creatives out there. Thank you for joining me for the Sage Arts podcast. This is Sage. I am very solo today. I am literally in the podcast by myself, which is not normal. I usually have a dog or two, as you may have heard last week we lost a dog, Kimba, who is an American Eskimo who is 12, so he’d had a decently long life and his cancer was thankfully short. But we are still having a bit of a rough time with not having that little pair of dogs running around and doing all their little things together. So Amber is having a bit of a tough time too. The poor thing, they weren’t like buddy buddies, like they didn’t play together, but they just always were together. They are used to each other’s presence. So Amber is sticking really close to us. Brett is working from home today and Amber likes to be where the action is and Brett does a lot of online meetings. So it sounds like there’s a lot of people in his room at all times. But when he’s here, so she’s off there. So it’s just me in the podcast room on this very hot Southern California day. So Summer finally arrived here. It just went from winter to summer still, you know. But we had had a nice, long, cool springtime. The originally today was slated to have a discussion on flow. I’m actually going to save that for next week, which will allow for one Brett to join so Brett can talk about his process as well and you know, do the usual comic relief stuff for me. But what I really wanted to talk about more than anything really has been about making space, about giving ourselves the space to do the things that we need to do, whether that has to do with our artwork, our business or our family, or in our case, right now, our process of grieving, the loss of one of our pack. I at first thought, No, I’m not going to talk about this. This is our own private little process. And some people don’t necessarily see it that the grieving process for a pet can be the same as with a human being or anything else. And I just wanted to speak to that really quickly because I’ve had just like such a wide range of conversations about grief over the last how I guess it’s been the last five years, like we’ve had a lot of death and breaking of bonds in our family. So we lost our father in 2017. He actually passed away on the day of Brett’s and my wedding celebration. So that was rough. In 2020, my sister lost her husband and he wasn’t just, you know, a brother in law or someone who came into the family. We all knew him since we were all very young. So that was extremely hard for all of us. He was part of our gang, really, our family gang. And then we lost Mom July 1st of last year after long a battle with dementia and then Kimba this past week and so consistently were dealing with grief. And although a lot of people don’t want to talk about it, I think it needs to at least be brought up that when someone loses someone, whether it’s a person or a pet or or anything, a house or whatnot, we need to, I think, look at the bond that that person lost and not judge whether their grieving process should be a particular way because it was a close person or not a close person or a dog versus a human being or family member versus a friend or a house versus, I don’t know, a loss of a painting or something, whatever. We all have bonds and they’re emotionally different for all of us. And when we lose that bond with whatever it is that meant so much to us, we will go through a grieving process and no one can tell anybody how that grieving process is going to go, how long it’s going to last, how intense it is, or how they do it. So I thought I’d share with you just a little bit. We’re we’re going through and it’s mostly I mean, Kimba was in the family for as long as Brett and I have known each other. We knew each other because we knew each other in high school and then drifted for a couple of decades and then reconnected and he was just part of our everyday and was such a character. And there’s an emptiness in our life right now. It made me think like, there’s times I want you to stop and really take it in and really consider it and spend time remembering him and maybe do some artwork that I can work out what’s in my head. And I thought, Oh, some people are going to think I’m just nuts. It’s just a pet. I’m spending all this time over it. But here’s the thing. When you lose something and you need to process it well, you need to process it first of all, some of us don’t process it. I’ve noticed some people who, like they lose something and they’re like, I don’t want to be sad. I don’t want to be upset. I don’t want my life affected by this loss of whatever it is that you’ve bonded with. If you need time and space in your life to go through that, you should take it. You should process it. However you need to process it. There’s an emptiness in our lives and I’m like, I need to have space for this. I need a space just to take it in and realize it because I am one of those people that be like, Well, I got work to do. I got to go take care of things. I got to go take care of other people. I’ve got other people counting on me. And so those things come first, aside from whatever I feel emotionally that I might need at the moment. I will set it aside because I want to do things for other people and I want other people take care of, and I don’t want anyone disappointed in me and all these things. And so of course I’ve got, you know, I got things to work through. I always have. We always do. We always have room for improvement. Right. But it did bring up the issue of whether we as individuals, as artists make space for our creative selves, for our artwork, for the time we need to not just create, but to process things, to take in the inspiration that we see around us and actually spend time with it, spend time thinking about it, spend time sifting through it, and whether that’s staring out a window and daydreaming about it or writing about something that you’re eventually going to make into visual art or talking to somebody about the things that you’ve been thinking, trying to verbalize it, or doing sketches to predetermine kind of how you feel about it. We need time to process what we’re doing in terms of our inspiration, in terms of our ideas, time for our muse to meander and sift through, filter and translate the things that we are seeing in the outside world that we want to bring into our artwork. And I don’t know that a lot of us really think about giving ourselves that kind of space. So I decide that’s what I want to chat about today because it’s the most important thing on my mind and I am making space in my process by actually doing this. Now, normally I do a lot of writing before I record what I’m going to offer you because otherwise I could just babble or meander or maybe not make sense. Maybe not hit all my points today. I’m not going to do that. I decided I’m going to make space to just have an honest discussion with you without trying to corral the conversation too much. So hopefully I stay on track and hopefully everything makes sense and I make my points thoroughly. Let’s see how this goes. But before we get into that, a couple of shout outs I had some wonderful messages and I can’t honestly, I can’t remember them all because again, I was processing so many different things. But one in particular really stood out. Jill of Clay Down Under wrote me and said she listened to I Remember which the Mark making podcast, I believe, and it was the first podcast she had listened to, not just of mine but any podcast. It was her first podcast like ever, and she loved it and she’s totally into it and I’m super happy to hear that she likes podcasting. I think as artists, podcasts are one of the greatest information, all options we have for especially when we’re working or when we’re processing just to get ideas from the outside. So we’re not working in a vacuum and it’s so readily available and it’s not visual. I don’t know how people work on visual artwork and like have TV shows on. I guess they just listen to it. But I can’t. I have to stop and look. So it would never work for me. A podcast. You don’t. You just have someone talking to you and you can dislike having someone else in the room because it’s such a it can be such a lonely process because it’s just you and your ideas and you’re working on stuff and nobody cares until you go to the show or you post them in your shop. Nobody knows what you’re doing, right? So it’s nice to have those other voices in the room with you. I’m so glad Jill discovered it. And we have Belinda Broughton. I hope you say your last name right. Belinda to thank for that. Apparently she’s been talking up the show down in Australia. So. Belinda, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for talking this up and bringing people into our little podcast community. If you want to help promote the show, you can do so by going to the social media pages and liking the post. Follow me on the Sage Arts podcast on Instagram and or Facebook and comment there. You can send me direct messages through those social media platforms as well. You can also just reach out to me directly and tell me stories like this, like the one Jill told me about. Listening podcast for first time by writing me at the Sage Arts Dotcom. Go to the contact page to reach me There you can also, if you’d like to support the podcast financially. I love them. People are giving back and showing me how much they value what I do. And you can do that by going to the buy me a coffee or people donation buttons. There’s ones on the front page of the Sage Arts dot com to scroll down a little ways to find them. And in the show notes, everything I talk about, there are links in the show notes. So wherever you’re listening, you can go find the description or the show notes. They’ll be called different things on different types of listening platforms. So you can grab those links there to directly contact me or join in the conversation online or donate or just find more information about the things that we’re discussing or the guests that I have on the show when I have them. Okay. So let’s talk about what it means to make space. And this is going to mean different things to different people. So the questions you kind of want to have in your mind as you’re listening is what does making space mean for you and what kind of space do you need? Do you need more creative working space? Do you need more processing space? Do you need more personal space, more time for yourself and more time for family or whatnot? So keep in mind what kind of space that you would like to have more of or do a better job of providing yourself with. And this making space thing is going to sound a lot like making time or scheduling things, which in some ways it is. But making time is a pressure thing. We feel pressured to clear our schedule, to schedule time for the things that we need to do, that other people need from us as well as what we need to do for ourselves. And most of us do need that to some degree. But making space is really about prioritizing and about taking the pressure off, about saying, I don’t feel guilty if I do something just for me, that I am nourishing myself, I am filling my cup, I am feeding my muse, whatever it is with the space that you’re allowing for yourself. So all those scheduling and making time is an important consideration when you’re looking at the whole of your daily schedule, your weekly schedule, coordinating with others and their schedules. But when we’re talking making space, that means that you are prioritizing things to be open for you to do the things that are necessary for yourself. That has you in mind first, which might sound a little odd and maybe a little selfish. And as a matter of fact, when I first started to try to write the outline for this, I thought all the things I was writing down sounded very selfish and like I could call this a selfish episode, but that’s not what it is, is it? Our society doesn’t like the word selfish, which is kind of sad because selfish is not a bad thing to take care of yourself. For it to be self-involved or self-focus is not a bad thing. But we live in a society where you’re supposed to be generous to other people and thinking of other people and be kind to other people. And of course, these these things are all, you know, hugely important. But it doesn’t leave us space to be kind to ourselves and generous to ourselves and considerate of ourselves in those ideas. Right? But at the same time, it is so confusing. And Western civilization sometimes is such a series of conundrums. We are constantly told we need to promote ourselves, we need to improve ourselves, we need to buy things to make our lives easier. We need to climb that corporate ladder. We need to rise above. We need to go after our dreams. And you know what? They’re not wrong. But we don’t have a lot of bridges between that. Don’t be selfish, but take care of yourself and do it for yourself and go for it. Right? What we need to understand is that in actuality, that selfishness needs to come first. And from there, once you’ve taken care of yourself, you can do all these other things being generous and being charitable, You know, when you’re on a plane and they do the whole thing where they show you how to use the mask, it drops from the ceiling so you can breathe oxygen. And they say if you have somebody that you need to assist, put on your mask first before assisting others. And I love that metaphor for pretty much everything that we do. If you are not taking care of yourself, it is very difficult to do for others as much as you could do as well as you could do it, because you are not in a position to do the kind of work that would help others the way you would want them to be helped or the way they need to be helped. You do need to take care of yourself first. Now, for a lot of people, it’s like, it can’t be about me, you know? And a lot of women, especially if you’ve been a mother or you just have a very strong mothering instinct, it’s very hard to say, I’m going to take care of myself before taking care of other people. And it may be because of the way you were brought up or whatnot, on top of our all of our societal expectations. Right. You need to take care of yourself first. You need to put the mask on first before you can put the mask on anybody else before they can get oxygen, too, because you’re going to run out of oxygen and not be able to help them further Take care of yourself. And if being creative and making art is what fills your cup, if it is a necessity to you, and it doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about necessity, as in like, it’s my business, it’s how I put food on the table, because obviously making money is a very strong imperative and you will do it because that actually takes care of other people. Right. And that’s actually a really great example of you taking care of yourself to take care of other people. You do your creative work, you make the money that you need to help your family. There’s a very straight line between doing that thing that you love and financially helping yourself and your family. But a lot of us do it and it doesn’t necessarily pay the bills. It may be a part time job. It may be an adjunct career, it may be a hobby, it may be simply something that you feel driven to do and you don’t even sell your work. But it’s still all extremely important. It’s something that you feel a need to do if you get grumpy or depressed or feel like life is just stale. And what’s the point? Because you’re not creating, then you need to create. If you are consistently creating and you notice that during those times you are happy and you’re fulfilled and you can go on to the world and just have so much wonderment, then you know, that’s a necessary part of your life and it is as important as taking care of your health, take care of your family, taking care of your bills. Because if you’re not fulfilled, if you’re not happy, if you’re sad and depressed, you don’t have the energy and the motivation to do the things that you need to do for the other people in your life. Right? So why is it that so many of us don’t make the time and space to do what we need to do creatively? I think in large part and for some people this won’t be true. But I think in large part it’s because our society does not place a lot of value on creative work. If you said, Oh, I need to go paint or I need to go sculpture and you go take pictures and I’m not going to, I don’t know, clean my house, I’m not going to take care of my yard or I’m not going to go to every one of my kids softball games. You have to look at the things that are going on in your life and say, Am I doing this because I think other people expect me to because our societal is like imperative for us to be generous and helpful and be there for other people is making us feel that’s what we need to do over the things we need to do for ourselves. Like for me, I have some depression issues because I’m not completing my own work. It’s actually one of the big reasons I stopped doing the magazine because I was having health issues. I was having depression issues because I wasn’t doing my own work. I loved doing the magazine. Oh my God, I miss it so much. But I was not creating my own work and it was really getting to me. But since then, with a smaller workload and making space for my actual creative time, I’ve been much better. There were some times when I got a little depressed because I wasn’t connecting to people, so I started the podcast and I’ve been in a very good place since then. So if you see a difference between how you feel or how you act or the energy level that you have during times when you’re not really creating versus times that you are creating and you see the difference and you see when you’re creating that, you personally feel much better. Know that your creative time is immensely important to you and your health, mental health, physical health. Let me tell you, when you don’t have good mental or emotional health, it affects you physically, and then everything’s just a downhill spiral from there, right? So make the time for yourself creatively. And for a lot of us, I think we think, Oh, it’s just making the thing I need time to paint. I need time to sculpt, I need time to work on my photographs, I need time to knit, I need time to whatever. That’s only part of your creative time. Making something starts with an idea, but you don’t go. I have an idea. And then you go make it. Not usually. There’s a process in between. When you process how the inspiration that that idea came from turns into a plan or an approach to creating it. And you need to have time for that process. And I think sometimes we don’t leave space in our a lot of creative time to process our ideas. So do you make space for your processing of your ideas, not just your creating of ideas? It’s different for all of us how we do that. For me, I do the whole like staring out a window and doing nothing thing is hugely important to my process of processing my ideas, especially for my writing. I can’t just sit down and write. I have to like spend time doing nothing and letting the whole story like run through my head until I have like a structure to work off of with my artwork. Sometimes I can’t sit at a table and just play with the material and the ideas will come out. But I’m much better If I sat down and I’ve sketched or just doodled or went and stared out a window, I can do it that way as well. All of us will have a different process. Find out what your process is if you don’t already know what happens in between the idea and the making of it. Start making notes, start becoming conscious of what it takes and maybe a little bit about how much time it takes. I don’t think that part of the process should really have a lot of time limits on it, because to me that’s the most important part of the process, the planning or the just stating of the idea. So once you’ve figured out what your processes and it may change over time or it may change depending on what kind of project it is, give yourself, you know, like ten, 15 minutes, whatever, to just process. It’s like, okay, what did I do today? Well, I need to give myself some process time. So what is that going to be? I’m going to sit here and stare at a window or I’m going to pull a sketchbook and start sketching, or I’m going to call a friend and tell them about my idea, or I’m going to play around with this material, with these ideas in the back of my mind and see what comes of it. I mean, a lot of people don’t like to plan what they’re doing, and that’s one of the reasons I asked that question of my guess are you a planner or answer? Because for some people, absolutely no planning is the way that works for them. But when you have a little structure to work off of, I think we can be much more effective in our process and what we end up with be more satisfied with it because we started out with a direction process in your intention. So that’s extremely important. Give yourself that time. Make space for that in your creative process. And then when I was a creativity coach, which I did on and off when I started, I think 2007, one of the primary things that I’ve talked about with the majority of my clients has been how to find the time or how to make themselves sit down and create. And this is making space in your life for creativity. And we don’t a lot of times because we put so much importance on so many other things or we think they’re more valuable, but we’ve never stopped to consider are they valuable to me, what I need, what my life needs, what my family needs. For instance, we all think our house needs to be clean. I mean, to a certain extent, yes, it does. There are certain health considerations that a clean house does give you or you need to make sure the neighbors aren’t going to be upset because you have overgrown bushes. We have ideas about what needs to be done because of how we think other people are going to see us. And I think that is one of our biggest time wasters that we worry about appearances. And what will people think? Well, whatever people can think, whatever they want, it matters. What do you think now? I like to have a clean house, but I don’t necessarily care if it’s neat if things just get a little chaotic, whatever little chaos can be good. Some of us actually thrive off a little chaos. I don’t care if my car is dirty. That can’t be a priority in my life, you know, And if other people think, oh, gosh, she drives around this dirty van all the time, it doesn’t matter. My creativity is so much more important. The things I create, my discussions with you, these are the important things to me. These are what fill my cup. These are what make me a happy person. I put my mask on to breathe the oxygen and that oxygen to me is being creative and connecting to creatives. But I do with you on this podcast. And so once I’ve done that, then I can help other people with whatever it is that they find is important. If I can help my in-laws or help my kids with what they need, I am trying to make the space in my life for the things that I need first. And in a society where selfishness is really looked down on the idea of doing something for oneself first can be really hard to get past and really hard to overcome. But again, it’s necessary for us to be happy and fulfilled in order to help other people to the extent that we can. So look at what your life is filled with. And if you’re not getting to the studio table as often as you like, if you’re not doing the creative work that you want to be doing, if you are not having time to process the ideas you have. So you have a lot of like half assed partially made things that aren’t going anywhere because you haven’t had time to process it. You need to start considering making space by putting other things aside until you’ve used the space you need. For you. I could say, Oh, I’m going to put an hour aside every day. I’m a 2 hours side every day, and I’ve tried to do this. I tried doing like, okay, first thing in the morning, I’m going to write in, then I’m going to do some artwork and then I’ll get to work. Well, that didn’t work out because I’m not a morning person, so by time I get up, brush my teeth, eat some breakfast, whatever. It’s 10:00. The day’s like fading. If I want to get out before it’s too hot and exercise or walk the dog or water the plants that my mornings get eaten up very quickly. Okay, so that didn’t work. Okay, how about the end of the day? Because I’m a night person, Brett falls asleep at like nine. I’ve got three, 4 hours to myself. I should do all my creative work then. And many times I do. But if I’ve got other things that weren’t done during the day that I can do, I tend to do that stuff, whether it’s clean up something in the house or wrap up something for the podcast or something for my business. I don’t like those things hanging over my head, so I do them first. But what I’m doing is I’m not leaving space for my creative work and I’m not getting a lot of stuff done. So I finally figured out that making space for my creative work was not a daily thing for me. I couldn’t necessarily set time aside every single day, like 2 hours or 3 hours. What I figured out was that I do much better when I have large chunks of time, as in like a half a day or a whole day or a whole week, and just say, I’m going to be focused on this thing. So I make space in large amounts so I can just be immersed in the particular thing I want to do. So that’s what I’m doing now. Basically, I work from Tuesday to Friday on the business, on the podcast, on the house stuff, and then Saturday, Sunday and Monday is family time and creative time. And I’m able to do that because I decided on the weekends and mostly on Mondays, I am not going to leave space for work. I’m going to leave space for me. Now, granted, I do check in on emails to make sure the websites aren’t melting down or if customers need something right away. But basically I’ve said no to business during those time periods and the reason I picked Monday is because sometimes family takes over the weekends. So in a weekday, so side means Family One to disrupt. And I can guarantee that I’m going to get to my creative work. So that’s why if you try to write me on a weekend or sometimes even on a monday, I might not answer right away. But this approach is working out so much better because I determine what kind of space I needed in my space needs to come. Like large chunks. I don’t like shifting gears. My brain does not like to go from from business stuff to creative stuff and from house stuff to podcasting stuff. It doesn’t want to go back and forth. So this might not be a conventional way of scheduling your creative time in, but think creatively about what kind of space you do need and where you can place it. Maybe you can’t do it in a regular daily routine. Maybe you’re like, I am devoting this entire month to all this crap I haven’t gotten done. I’ve got a to do list that’s, you know, ten feet long. I got to fix everything in the house. I’m going to go run all the errands I’ve had to run in my car, all the people I have to call. And then you put that to do list away at the end of the month or whatever. Didn’t get done. Didn’t get done. So prioritize it for the important stuff on top and get those done first and then that next month. I’m like, It’s all about creativity because think about it, if we need to do something different than what we normally do, like we won’t need, let’s say you want to go on a vacation and you’re going to take a week away. Somehow we manage to get everything done that needs to get done in order to spend those weeks away from home. And how do we do that and why can we manage to do that for our vacation time and not for our creative time? All right. We go away on vacation, we come back and stuff is still there for us. It didn’t go away and most of it didn’t burn down or die. And sometimes some plants die If you don’t take care of them before you go, you really can just go do what you need to do. So if you say, Hey, you know what? I am going on a creative vacation or creative day or creative half day or whatever, whatever it is that you need, it’s like me going on vacation and everything is going to still be there when I get back. Make that space for your creative work in whatever fashion you have to, and realize that that time does not include anything else. And if you can do that on a somewhat regular basis, because I think routine does become important in making sure these things happen, then you can successfully, I believe, make that space that is necessary for you to be happy, content fulfilled person and get your creative work done. Another area you can make space that can help you with your creative work is by really trimming down what you do on the business aspect. If you are selling your work and you feel like you have to be doing a lot of promos or a lot of social media stuff, really analyze what it is that you’re trying to accomplish and ask yourself why it’s important for you to be on social media every day posting something and you need a lot of followers. What is that doing for you? Is social media accomplishing the things that you need to accomplish? Because like for me, like I’m trying to do these roles for you guys, which I love to do. It’s just been a kind of wacky couple of weeks, of course, and they haven’t gotten done as many as I want to. But, you know, maybe I don’t do a real this week. Who’s going to notice, Prime? Not anybody’s gonna be like, Hey, where are you? You know, why isn’t your real love this week? Sometimes that happens, but for the most part, other people are going to keep you busy and entertained. But then there’s the concerns about things like the algorithm. I’m not going to get as many followers. All the hard work I put in previously is going to be lost if I don’t keep posting all the time. And yeah, sometimes that’s true. But is social media doing for you what you wanted to do? Is it actually accomplishing that? And if you’re just doing it because you want to get the numbers because you need the validation from other people and there’s nothing wrong with needing the validation, we all need that little boost here and there. But is it worth it? Is building the numbers going to do what you need to do for your artistic business? Maybe it is, and you do need to pay attention to that and you do need to build on that. But if it’s not, if it’s really just the thing that you think you’re supposed to do because that’s what everybody else is doing, then step back, really assess what it is that you need out of social media and your promotions and your marketing and only do what really services your goals, your idea of success. If it supports your idea of success, then yeah, you can prioritize it. It makes sense to prioritize that. But don’t just do it because everybody else is doing it and it’s what you think you need to do. You know, Like I stopped posting my poetry and my photography. It’s not because I don’t want to do that. I did it to make connections with people and because it’s something I do. And then therefore I can like share it with people. And I love sharing with people and having people comment back and seeing that they see things in the same way I do. That’s really validating for my my view of the world. But now I’m connecting through podcasting and I don’t need to connect through there as much. And although I do imagine I’m going to return to doing that in the, I don’t know, not too distant future, it’s not a priority right now. It’s not where I need to make space. I don’t need to make space for my poetry, my photography. I’ll still do it because I can’t help it. I’ll still make these things, I’ll still take those pictures, I’ll still write those poems. But to sit down, edited poem together visually and post them, I’m not going to make space for those right now. That’s not my priority. So take a good hard look at what you’re doing online. That can take up a lot of space, a lot of energy, a lot of mental space, and you could be using that for your creative endeavors if it’s not servicing what your version of successes and so that feeds into the idea of getting rid of the shoulds because we believe we should do a lot of things like we think we’re supposed to put our work out online somewhere, we’re supposed to have a website, we’re supposed to try to get into shows and sell our work. We’re supposed to make a body of work. We’re supposed to have a line, we’re supposed to have a recognizable style. These are all shoulds that we’ve been fed, and they’re not necessarily true in all of those. Things need to be individually analyzed by you to determine if those are actually necessary in your life, if they’re actually necessary for your creative work and for the type of thing that you do. So go through all the things that you do. What I did for a little while is each day I would write down everything that I was doing. Okay, I’m can do this now. I put on my list because sometimes I don’t realize some of the stuff that I was doing. But every time I shifted gears, I put it on my list or there are schedule trackers. I use one called a tracker, a t, r a care, and it’s like clocking in and out for a job. So every time I would do something different, I clock in and out and I would see, you know, what I did throughout the day. I’m always taking up the most time. And I realize I spent a lot of time popping up on Amazon to go see if they have certain types of things that I was thinking I might need some day. Stupid. I think it might have been a procrastination thing and I found I spend a lot of time on social media a lot more than I thought. I was not like looking at social media, but like trying to figure out how to make good posts or trying to, you know, make better deals or learning every time something change, like what are the new algorithms? What do I need to be doing to keep up with the Joneses? And I finally was like, okay, this is just it’s not working. I spending way too much time on this stuff. So if you can go through all of those things that you do and start saying, okay, is this really necessary, why am I making time and space for these things versus my creative work and then start getting rid of some of those things? In fact, I would challenge you all right. Now to find one thing that isn’t necessary. And I would even say find one thing that serves others but doesn’t serve you. Like once I started posting the poetry and the photography and a lot of people who regularly checked in and regular commented asked me if I would put out books, all these things, that’s kind of fluffed my ego and made me really happy. But then I started to think that they were expecting these things and that I had to do them, you know, three or four or five times a week. And I realized I want to connect to people, but I wasn’t posting these things for them. I was posting them for me because I wanted to share what I did and I wanted to connect. And that’s okay for me to recognize that I was doing this for a self centered reason. But that shifted, and when I realized I was pressuring myself to do these things for other people, even though it was no longer serving me, I knew I needed to set that aside. And so when that no longer served, I no longer made space for it. And so do the same thing. Like maybe you’re doing something for like the family, for a neighbor, for your kids, whatever it is. But look at something you’re doing for someone else, something that they don’t need, something that they have a viable alternative for. If it does feel like something they need or something you want to make sure they have and allow yourself to say, I’m not going to do this because I need to make more room for myself right now. And once you do in your happier person, you’re going to be able to do more for them with more quality time with them or for them. I read somewhere recently that nature abhors a vacuum, so I thought I ought to bring up the fact that if you’re making space in your life by setting other things aside, things will automatically start trying to fill in that space.

So, you know, it’s like I never seem to have enough time in the day. And I think that’s because when we have a spare moment, we fill it with something. And this day and age, with the social media stuff and having those phones on hand, we fill every moment with something because we have something to fill it with literally at our fingertips. So I think once you start making space for more creative time, for more creative processing, you have to be really careful that that space does not get filled in with something else. Sometimes, though, things will be stuff that you just feel pressured by because a family wants something from you or you think other people need these things from you, or there’s expectations of appearance or whatnot that you’ll be like, Oh, well, I have that extra time now. Go, you know, start working on the front yard. Don’t let the time that you are setting aside the space that you’re making for a creative work get filled by things like you’re like, okay, well, I’ll be in the studio. Don’t let that time in your studio be filled by cleaning it or organizing it. If you set that time aside for creative work, if you need to clean, organize it, set time aside for that, specifically intentionally make space for it. But if you stop doing other things to make more time for your creative work, for processing your creative ideas, then that extra time that you get needs to go directly for that. Don’t let that vacuum be filled by all the other things floating out there, all the other possibilities. And remember, one of those things may be giving yourself permission to do nothing or do things that feel kind of lazy or to relax and just gestate on your ideas. And especially those those can be the hardest. The whole like do nothing and give yourself in your brain that time. And if you have a really hard time just doing nothing, I would suggest doing things that allows your brain free time. But maybe fulfill some other things. Like I walk my dogs and gives my dogs, you know, or my dog, oh my one dog. Time to get out and get some energy out and the things that she loves to do. And I get exercise and I get some sunshine and some vitamin D while I’m doing it and I do not put on headphones. I don’t play music, I don’t do anything else. I just let my brain process everything that’s going on around me. So I’m getting exercise, my dogs are getting exercise, and I’m giving my brain space to process the things that I’m doing and the thoughts that I have. So you can kind of multitask on some of the stuff, but just be careful not to fill that time with something that does not allow you to actually do what you intended, be it thinking up new ideas, processing ideas, or making your art. So overall, what I’ve been talking about, if we need a little summary because I just rambled right, make space for yourself for what you need, what fills you, what intrigues you? It’s how often what we do for ourselves feeds into what our people need. Our family, your friends, coworkers like I need to talk about making space is something that’s been on my mind. And in talking about the subject for the podcast, I’m allowing that and I hope this hits a button for a good chunk of you out there. And if not just now, these words you have them now, they may pop out and reverberate down the line coming to the surface when they’re actually needed. So yes, I’m doing this for me, but I know that talking about this, talking this through is also something that can feed my people. You are my people that I can help you through doing something that I feel is necessary for me that I’m making space for. So again, more space that you make for yourself often means more space and more things that you can offer other people in your life. So I hope this made sense and that my ideas were fairly cohesive as we have. We have people here. This week is another reason why I didn’t spend a lot of time writing this out. Brett’s daughter is here. She was trying to get here before Kimber moved on so she could say her goodbyes. So I’m a little distracted by that, but I made space in what I’m doing to have that time with her and her partner. The hence me not writing up a script for you. But I think I hope that what I am telling you in the way that I’m presenting it to you is actually helpful for you as well. So consider that. Consider what’s in your life that you may not need and that you can clear space for. So I hope you found my words and my stories useful. Maybe they’re really resonating with you right now, or maybe they’ll resonate with you more in the future. But we need to keep talking about the stuff. We need to keep exchanging those stories. So if you have your own stories, whether they’re about making space or making time or grieving or any of these things, any of the adventures you have on this journey through your creative life, please do reach to me. I love when you guys send me stories. I wish you would send me more stories. You can do so by reaching out to me through the Sage Cars.com page to the contact page. There you find the link in the show notes as well, or on social media, Facebook or Instagram. Go to Sage Art’s podcast page, follow me and send me messages. I would love to hear from you through there as well. If you like what I’m offering and you want to give back, you can do so by going to the Buy Me a Coffee or PayPal donation buttons or links. The buttons are on the home page of Sage Ask.com about halfway down, and they’re also in the show notes links as well. And if you can take a moment now on your podcast player, you’re listening in a podcast player and follow. I would love that. It does help with the search engine results because I want to bring as many people into this as possible to really get a conversation going, building this community of people who are becoming more aware of things in their creative lives. And if you want to leave me a review as well, some people started doing that. I’d love to hear your thoughts. And anybody who’s checking out the show would also love to hear the thoughts of other listeners, so I appreciate that. So that said, I’m going to go run off and see our visitors are doing. And so do yourself a favor. Make space for your muse to get out and be fed. Be true to your weirdness, and come join me next time on the Sage Arts podcast.