Make Time For Your Creative Side To Bloom

If I only had more time, I’d write a book.

If I didn’t have to (pick one) put food on the table, pay the rent/mortgage, or put the kids through school, I’d be (pick one) an actor, a painter, or a musician.

How many times, have we all caught ourselves rationalizing our choices and blaming our jobs for our unfulfilled creative aspirations?

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Fear, parental expectations and real-life responsibilities all play a role in stifling people’s creative potential.

But it’s possible to be both practical and creative - to, as author-artist Carol Lloyd says, “create a life worth living.”

“Creating a Life Worth Living: A Practical Course in Career Design for Artists, Innovators and Others Aspiring to a Creative Life” (HarperPerennial, 1998, $14) is the title of her new book and the workshops she gives.

People are hungry for creative outlets, said Lloyd, herself a self-described struggling artist. “My sense is for every person who ever tells anyone else about (their creative aspirations) there are 10 others who don’t tell anyone.”

People often don’t admit their ambitions for fear of looking foolish, or failing, or ruining the fantasy.

Instead, people often choose careers based on their ability to earn a “decent” living, she said. “But that’s a completely subjective term. It doesn’t matter if you’re earning a decent living if you hate what you’re doing eight hours a day.”

And often people who make those choices early on discover that their latent artistic ambitions don’t go away.

“It’s like a ghost haunting you, or a love affair that you can’t get over,” she said. “Until you do something about it, you won’t move through it.”

Having a fulfilling, creative life while still earning a living isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition, she said. “You start to layer in, weave into your life new strains.”

That could mean taking evening classes, getting involved in local arts groups and attending readings, lectures, gallery openings or concerts.The goal is to nudge your creativity out of hiding and build a network of people who are trying to do similar things. But all the support and creative input in the world won’t make a difference if you don’t commit to your own creativity, she said. Lloyd recommends people spend 15 minutes in the morning just to think about or explore those ideas.

Doing it in the morning gives your unconscious mind a chance to chew on your ideas all day.

Which brings us back to the day job.

People make the mistake of biding their time in jobs they hate, hoping some magic time will open up in the future, she said. “But the best way to make an intolerable job tolerable is to start stealing back part of the time from your job.”

Not literally. “I’m not saying write your novel at work,” she said. “Get up half an hour early and do whatever inspires you creatively.”

As you explore your creativity, you can simultaneously begin setting goals for how to restructure your career to better fit your artistic needs. Some people choose jobs that put them in touch with people in their field of artistic interest even if they’re not actually using those artistic skills.

As for fame and fortune, that’s not the point of inventing a creative life, she said. The chance to create is its own reward.

“There are a lot of people who want to be creative,” she said. “It cuts across class, age and cultural background.”

She has had high school students, homemakers, executives and homeless men attend her readings looking for that spark.

And for all of them, she has the same piece of advice: “Just start now.”