Rising from a Creative Rut
When I wasn’t Living my Life Purpose I Did This
Life ruts are not permanent and require a mindset shift to rise above.
Sickness & Injury is a Call for Emotional Decluttering
For 4 days and 4 nights in mid winter in the depths of the Rocky Mountains I’ve been unable to sleep. With nyquil, ibuprofen and a constant stream of herbal teas, I wage war against this viral invader, this foreign occupier of my body which is also injured in two places from two accidents.
For the last week I have been sick, bed ridden, mucus-clogged, and spinning in a stupor of self-doubt, paranoia, and guilt. Doubting my creative potential, paranoid I am not creating the life I envision for myself, guilty I am not further along in the process.
My hip flexor lights up in pain with certain movements. This is from doing a drunken yoga move at a bar with heavy boots on. Worse yet, I have a separated shoulder that was dislodged from the socket for life from a snowboard crash. In this state, I am well aware the same ideologies and motivations of my youth are not going to fly anymore.
The thing I most need is sleep. The night is long when you can’t sleep.
I lay awake tossing in my bed, expecting the dawn to come but in the middle of the night the planet is not even halfway done with its rotation back into the light.
I torment myself in a maelstrom of my own overthinking. Feelings of impending doom about the state of my life and my perceived failure to achieve all my life goals by my mid 30s. Yes, I apply too much pressure on myself without remembering to give myself recognition for how far I have already come. This is why I am sick.
I call this war against the virus (which 2 tests confirm is not covid) because of how uncomfortable and miserable I am. Yet in truth I know this is the Universe performing surgery on my soul. This is the Universe breaking down my self-limiting beliefs just like the nyquil is working to break down the mucus clogging my sinuses.
These are self-imposed beliefs that I have assumed from experiencing the inevitable disappointments in life which challenged my ability to work towards my dreams, or what might better be called my life vision. Being sick alone, I feel this is my own burden to bear. Yet in truth these limiting beliefs are commonplace in our society.
Our potential is held back by the mental stances we take against solutions to our problems. As if no solution poised to arise us from the ashes is to be trusted unless it is done our way. Once we reach a certain point we trust only that we must submit to how our circumstances and society tells us our lives should be. This is the same as submission to our own spiritual suffering.
I have molded my mental and emotional form to defensive positions that reinforce belief in the worthlessness of my own creativity. Belief in my own inability to change. We tell ourselves this is just the way it is.
Before this cold turned to full sickness I asked the Universe to rid me of these negative self beliefs. This sickness is the Universe making this happen. This is more than just a bad cold. This is a purging of the weaknesses of my character. A mending of my relationship with myself.
There is no question in my mind that this illness coincides with my personal mission to revive my natural creativity and establish a profitable way of working for myself.
I used to deeply care about publishing books and making films and creating music that were nurtured forth from my heart and mind. This was all I cared about in my 20s. I didn’t care about getting a well-paying job at the time like most my peers did. I just wanted to write and explore the natural world. I assumed if I realized my project visions the money would come on its own.
How I got Derailed from my Life Purpose
Writing for many hours a week was easy in my early 20s because I lived in a ski town before the cost of living blasted through the roof. Back then I could get by on very little and endure odd schedules where I could spend many hours writing and daydreaming.
Yet somewhere in my early 30s after self-publishing two novels without a thorough marketing strategy, making several no-budget short films without a legitimate distribution strategy, and playing in various short-lived music iterations lacking a consistent web presence, I realized that while doing this I had been jumping from job to job to support my creative scheming.
At some point I convinced myself I was a creative failure because I hadn’t managed to make all my money from creative projects, nor fund my full vision for a life of artistic creation, travel, and outdoor adventure.
I can only speculate when exactly this was but my best hypothesis is that it happened around disappointing life events like difficult romance endings, emotional family conflicts, or periods of financial strife. I didn’t handle the emotional pain well, misinterpreted all my valuable lessons from the journey I had been on as utter failure, and convinced myself artistic pursuit was a fruitless endeavor.
This self-sabotage perpetuated for years. I moved from the deep mountains to the city and worked jobs that didn’t utilize my creative skill sets but gave me nice benefits and allowed me to save money.
At this point in life I was living in the city, far from where I wanted to be with no creative projects in the works and no hope for a creative revival.
Understanding Creative Ruts
Creative ruts, or any life ruts where we experience sustained unhappiness are inevitable. This is part of the human experience. The Oxford dictionary describes a rut as “a habit or pattern of behavior that has become dull and unproductive but is hard to change.”
It becomes our challenge and a growth opportunity to rise from the rut. To rise from a rut we need to have clarity over where we currently are in life and what path led us to here. From this understanding we can accept the past and make peace with it and begin our route forward.
In my past there were things I had once wanted to create and share with the world. I wanted to write novels and make movies and write songs. When I was in my 20s, I had immense optimism and drive. Yet that momentum took a sharp turn in the opposite direction when I realized how emotionally, mentally, and physically draining working an unfulfilling full time job is on my creative energy.
I suffered through a series of jobs that did not use the creative tendencies of my brain. None of the projects in my variety of jobs required creating from my own values and interests.
My new reality was evident in the view from the high rise office building I worked in for two and a half years in downtown Denver. From the 14th floor lounge I could only see a tiny sliver of the mountain range through a gap between buildings.
Even a sliver of hope can keep a life vision alive.
This range to the West of the city spans the horizon from South to North. A massive upturn of the plains. A natural chain of landmarks that draw the eye and make us wonder what kinds of possibilities exist in the world.
Here I spent 8 hours of my day devoting my mental focus to others in exchange for a paycheck while obstructed from the landscape that gave me my biggest inspiration.
When I’d go home in the evening I was burned out from the commute and from acting like I cared about the work. I did not work on any form of my own creative project. Instead, I decompressed from working an unsatisfying job.
I’d walk the train tracks at the edge of my neighborhood and catch the sunset from the hill in the suburbs and then go home and watch movies alone, a half full bottle of glowing dark red in a flickering candlelight. I could have found ways to be creative during this time. Could have found hope in this sunset view I had from the tracks. But I didn’t.
I convinced myself I was defeated. Like so many of us do when we forget the pathways to the memories of our inner creator.
After a few years of non-creating, I accepted this barren perspective as my new reality. I thought making a sustainable income is to spend half of your waking hours doing something that does not ignite your soul or light up your brain. With this mindset, I was trading my time for my perceived survival. To keep paying bills. Buying food. Funding the next bout of fun. It was a self-feeding cycle.
I was distraught that I would not be able to keep up with documenting my ideas and cultivating them over time when I felt my job demanded all of my emotional energy just to make it through the day.
I felt that to be a responsible adult, I had to edit my true nature. Resist my heart’s sincerest desires. I had to kill the artist in me. Murder the creator within.
I employed a lot of tactics of self sabotage to repress my creative idea flow and the need to birth those ideas into being. I fell for the modern tragedy: to ignore our heart’s desire for a stable paycheck. I came to view any creative urgings in me as something that was egotistical, selfish, and irresponsible.
I suppose this was part of the process though. If Newton’s third law of physics is correct in saying “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”then this has to apply to emotional reactions as well.
I had not been a stable creator, I told myself. There was a lesson here I hadn’t learned. To have any footing at all to work at manifesting our vision for our life, it helps immensely to have a stable income.
I learned this the hard way, which I am sure many artists and creators can relate to.
Adults all learn this truth in their own unique way.
I had been exploring mountains and traveling around the States and into Canada at a high cost, but this was part of my life vision. Still, I felt something was missing. I was not using all of my gifts nor engaging all of my interests.
A Change in the Winds
There was a change in the winds when I started working digital marketing for a friend’s YouTube ads software & coaching business. The job involved email marketing, video production, and managing a content calendar.
The topics were not ones of my own choosing but still, I experienced a sort of relief when I realized I was using some of my natural skill sets.
At first, I had a sense of inflated pride and ego to be working in digital marketing. I had come from Education software support before this that helped teachers and educators do the part of the job that they hated.
Now I was selling marketing software and coaching. Not a pristine landscape for my creativity but there was still some sense of enhanced mobility in working with words and video.
I learned how an online business works and developed both copywriting and video production skills. I also started narrating some of our company YouTube videos, reviewing ads and demoing our software on videos.
This reminded me I had creator skill sets within me. The job provides me with a flexible schedule and I’m able to travel far and wide for snowboarding or backpacking trips and still get my work done. This was a drastic improvement to where I had been.
After a few years though, it started to wear on me. I had to be in person every so often to shoot videos with our CEO. I’d end up zigzagging and circling the Rocky Mountains of Colorado by car to get between my work, my adventures, and my home. The big concern for me was that I wasn’t creating my own projects.
In the years where I embraced mountain adventuring without a creative outlet, I assumed some high spending habits. I ended up purchasing 4 ski passes a year so I could chase the snowstorms to any resort within a thousand miles of where the snow fell.
I kept the job but moved to the deeper mountains. My objective was to taste creative freedom again. I wanted to figure out a way to work for myself and have even more control over the natural winds of my creative energies.
Rising from the Rut
I can’t speak for everyone but for me when I start to make efforts to rise out of a deep rut I will typically meet some kind of cosmic backlash.
It comes as a test from the Universe in the form of unfavorable circumstances. Its intention is to verify we have the emotional control and mental fortitude to maintain our new mindset. I experienced a backlash like this two months before this sickness, which is where my injured hip flexor and separated shoulder happened.
This led to a multi-month recovery and the acceptance of the hard fact that my right shoulder would never be aligned in its socket again for life. I’ve read that the right side of the body relates to decisions, action, and energy. If I injured it, something was out of balance. I was pushing myself too hard. Not being grateful for where I was. Lacking patience and compassion for myself.
I took this as a hard reminder to always be grateful for the joy we do experience in life. For being at peace with where we are on our life’s journey. The doctor said that although my shoulder would never be perfectly aligned in the socket again, I’d still be able to do all the things I do with my right shoulder. I was grateful this injury wasn’t worse.
Now with this illness in the depths of mid winter there is a lesson for me to learn too, though it is much more challenging to see at first.
I lay on my living room couch and watch the wall of mountains across the valley. The apricot afterglow of the setting sun washing the slopes in the final light.
This glow lasts a few minutes and then begins to fade as my place on the planet spins away from the Star that is our light source. The One we call the Sun. Night descends on the Rocky Mountains.
I have come to fear these nights of sleepless torment. The shadows of death’s minions looming in cold shadows of the darkrise beyond my window. Chills run my spine.
In the olden days, if we got sick during winter it usually meant dire circumstances. Imagine laying sick in a bed before electricity. No furnace. No Nyquil.
I don’t have statistics but I bet more people died during winter than summer. A common cold turned into something that never got better and the person had to hold out until spring or die. Many likely decided they had had enough suffering and gave up.
During these days of spiritual and physical torment, I had had similar thoughts. What was the point of life? We just spend the majority of the week working a job that doesn’t fulfill us just so we can get the survival paycheck and stay alive.
I was lacking a sense of purpose.
Feeling this way is a natural part of the process.
Reframing Mindset
Sitting in my apartment deep in the Rocky Mountains this last week, I’ve been studying courses on starting an online business while working my full time job. I have been overworking my mind trying to soak up every detail. The sickness has not made me feel like I am making any progress.
I start to think maybe it is just easier to give up on all this. But then where would I go? What would I do? Ceasing to exist is not a viable option.
We love the real memories of life too much to quit now. Like snowboarding a high mountain bowl in fresh powder. Making love outside beneath the stars in the high desert. Watching the sun set into the ocean from a surfboard. Finally getting the words right on some pages of prose.
I can’t throw in the towel. I can’t keep complaining about the way things are or how they went. It only makes it worse.
This kind of subtle mindset shift is what energizes us in the process of change. We need to elevate the vibrational frequency of that desire for change.
Just because our reality doesn't happen the way we envision it from our first efforts doesn’t mean we can’t still realize our personal goals in some other mysterious and beautiful way.
Tonight instead of engaging in the paranoia of my perceived failures and the self-implied guilt, I express my gratitude to the Universe for having a place to keep me warm. For having a cozy bed. This is me accepting the presence of my reality. I ask to be rid of this sleeplessness and to unclog whatever energy and trauma is stuck in me.
I take care of myself. I read in bed. I drink Valerian tea. Soon a comforting fatigue overtakes me. I am being led towards deep replenishment. I turn out my bedside light and burrow into my covers. As my place on the Earth rotates the long arc of night back towards the shine of our star, I slip into a deep slumber.
This sickness and my injuries happened as a means to clarify how I feel about the way things happened in my life. My intentions are not defeated. That was a false belief I had convinced myself of. The modern day enemy is our own inner critic.
It has been me that has been holding myself back from taking up writing and creating again in the present. Yes I was hurt by my past and the way I reacted to life’s harsh truths, but that was the past.
I can adapt my actions and beliefs to the present. Accept that pain of the past but also accept the new opportunity that we are given each and every day the planet turns us back into the sunlight to start again.
Every day is a new opportunity to take up our life’s work.
New Light
In the morning after my first night of sleep in 5 days I wake to a soft light drifting through the angled slits of my blinds.
I stir from the covers and draw open these panels. Daylight floods my eyes. I blink and refocus my eyes on the massive wall of mountains backlit by the coming dawn.
Snow plumes gust like turbulent spirits off the ridgespine, trailing eastward towards the new day.
The Sun crests the jagged back of that stone dragon sheathed in snow.
The sunlight is warm on my face and I feel the heat wrapping my heart. I lay here, basking in this sunlight that traveled about eight and a half minutes from the surface of the sun to my bedroom window.
Thanks to our home Star that holds our Earth in orbit. That orbit whose motion shapes our experiences. When we move with that motion and not against it, we access a power to wield a force that can improve our lives.
It feels good to wake after a night of sleep.
I rise from bed and start writing.
-Brady C Snow, 4/2/23. Written mid February, 2023.
