Creativity Stifled

I have been so busy with our foreign exchange student and also volunteering at day camp for about 40 hours in the last week, outdoors in the heat, that I have had little time for thinking about art or doing any crafts.

Being dog tired, physically drained, emotionally and mentally sapped, leaves no ability for creativity. The tiredness was also exacerbated by the fact that I was woken up too early (five in the morning) by various things (younger son's nightmare, on another day, the cats playing and knocking a framed print off the wall and smashing the glass front and so forth). I was so beat last week that I didn't even have energy for taking many photos while at camp. I could have cared less to snap a photo of a lovely cloud or the beautiful butterfly I saw. I had to force myself to even look at those things let alone SEE them and enjoy them. I literally forced myself to stop walking to watch a butterfly flitter and to look at the colors and I had to give myself permission to enjoy it.

I didn't knit for a week. I didn't journal. I barely blogged. I didn't watch much TV and I had no time to read a newspaper or listen to radio or TV news. I just slept at every possible moment that I was not entertaining people, taking care of home stuff (eating, cooking, laundry, pet care and so on) and volunteering.

This has me thinking that the door to creativity is not just about finding time and 'having time' but it is about having the mental and physical energy to allow creative energy to even flow.