This is Part 4 in a series of posts on labyrinths ~ structures that channel our creative energies in all the right ways.
Part 1: How to Make Sure Your Creative Work Gets Done
Part 2: The Kind of Help We All Could Do Without
Part 3: Three Wishes? I’ll Take a Cook, a Maid, and a Butler
Interlude: When Autopilot Trumps Discipline
Is it ironic that I am writing about this topic on my third consecutive day with a sick child at home?
The minute you become a parent, you enter a long and winding labyrinth whose course you cannot predict, and whose structure is inescapable.
Children come with all kinds of routines pre-installed: eating, sleeping, and pooping are just a start. Then there’s playgroups and dance classes and school schedules. Rituals around which blankets to put on the bed in which order. Touchstone phrases that must be repeated (at the moment, my five-year-old daughter must tell me she loves me in seven different languages before I turn out the light).
And you learn early on that life is easier when you stick to the routine: fewer meltdowns, less whining, more co-operation. Lord help us if we don’t have breakfast ready before 7:30 am; we’re nearly guaranteed that one or both kids will have a tantrum.
There are also many ways in which predictability goes out the window (ref. sick kids home for three days). You come to value every moment when things go the way you planned, because you know it could have just as easily gone the other way.
What does all this have to do with being an artist?
Discipline-avoidant creatives like me can take advantage of our kids’ built-in penchant for routine.
We can find dependable hours in the interstices of our parenting schedule that we are more motivated to keep sacred because they’re all we have.
Naptime is a classic example ~ prime time for getting a little creative work done. (Are you surprised that there’s a blog called Naptime Writing?) A writer friend told me that she spent hours composing poetry in her head while she pushed the stroller around town. Carol Shields claimed the hour just before her five kids came home for lunch to launch her writing career.
My kids are the source of my devotion to early rising. During my six-month stints of parental leave, I couldn’t handle facing the day (with its delights and drudgeries) unless I’d had some quiet time for myself. I’m still not a clockwork early bird ~ it’s not a perfect labyrinth, since I have to make a choice when the alarm goes off.
But knowing that 5:30 am is my best chance all day for concentrating on writing is strong incentive to get up.
Childcare, whether volunteered, swapped, or paid for, can also be a creative oasis. I love knowing that the short story writer Alice Munro babysat her grandchildren so her daughter Sheila could work on her book Lives of Mothers and Daughters. I think of that every time my mom comes to show my kids a good time (they go into raptures over her grandma bag, stuffed with craft supplies and games) and to give me a bonus day.
Another friend, a children’s writer, is doing her MFA at the moment, and her sons go to daycare two days a week so she can work. I find that kind of commitment so inspiring ~ because I can imagine the parental guilt and cultural pressures she wrestles with in privileging her writing that way.
As our kids have grown old enough to take classes on their own, I’ve created rituals around these activities too. When I take my daughter to Chinese school on Saturday mornings, I then go to a coffee shop and write for a few hours. When my son goes to music class, I get 30 minutes of delicious reading time.
Conventional wisdom says that you can put your creative ambitions on ice for a while after you have kids. But I haven’t found that to be true in all cases.
I’ve accomplished so much creatively in the four years I’ve been a mom.
By necessity, I focus on the essentials of my creative life and use my time as efficiently as I can manage.
I have oodles more to say about the dynamic between creative work and parenting, but it will have to wait for another day. I hear little voices upstairs.
In the meantime, I want to know: how have you turned your kids’ need for routine into studio time for yourself? I’m looking for ideas!
P.S. Check out my guest post on making friends with resistance at ScoutieGirl.com. That piece dovetails perfectly with what we’re talking about here.
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