We have been taught that work should look like work.
You clock in. You clock out. You produce something. Somebody pays you. There is a title attached to it, a schedule attached to it, maybe even a little badge attached to it that tells the world, See? I am doing something.
But creativity doesn’t always work that way.
Not all work looks like work.
Sometimes a creative is working while walking the dog. Sometimes we’re working while driving down the road, taking a shower, sitting in silence, staring at a tree, listening to somebody else’s conversation, or waking up from a dream.
Sometimes we’re working when it looks like we’re doing absolutely nothing.
Because creativity needs breathing room.
You can’t schedule inspiration, but you can make room for it.
And maybe that’s why that sentence came to me so clearly in my dream:
Being a creative is a full-time job.
It doesn’t mean you’re producing something every second of every day. It means some part of you is almost always observing, collecting, connecting, imagining, questioning, noticing.
The world is constantly handing you material.
A conversation becomes a paragraph.
A heartbreak becomes a chapter.
A weird interaction becomes a comedy bit.
A dream becomes an essay.
A walk becomes an idea.
A moment of silence becomes the answer you’ve been trying to force for three weeks.
But you have to leave some room for those things to land.
White space isn’t wasted space.
We’ve gotten so good at filling every opening in our lives. If we have ten free minutes, we grab our phones. If we have an empty afternoon, we feel like we should accomplish something. If we’re sitting still, some little voice starts asking us what we should be doing.
Maybe nothing.
Maybe nothing is exactly what you’re supposed to be doing for a minute.
Because rest isn’t always the opposite of creating.
Sometimes rest is part of the creative process.
Maybe the job of the creative isn’t always to create.
Maybe sometimes the job is simply to stay available.
Available for the sentence.
Available for the dream.
Available for the weird little idea that makes absolutely no sense today but becomes the thing six months from now.
Available for whatever is trying to find you.
So create space.
Create space in your calendar.
Create space in your house.
Create space in your head.
Create space in your conversations.
Create space in your day for absolutely nothing to happen.
Because sometimes absolutely nothing is where something begins.
Create the space, and let the creation fill it.
