Courting Your Beloved...

Relationships with partners, friends, family, and creative projects...

As I continue to explore courting creativity, this Valentine’s Day, I want to say a bit more about the choice of the word courtship and areas of our lives and relationships where we might feel a connection to this practice.

Beginning with the idea that everyone is creative, the metaphor of courtship looks at ways to deepen our relationship with creativity. How might we shift from desiring creative output to a recognition of creativity already in our lives? How might we seek to acknowledge and deepen this relationship?

Courtship implies deeper commitment than casual acquaintance. It might refer to a romantic partnership but equally applies to friendships, relationships with family members and children, and even our relationships with passion projects and beloved activities.

These relationships require a level of commitment and the investment of time and energy. After our pandemic years of time apart and shifts in how we interact and gather, I think many of us are now more aware of the energy involved in socializing in person and in planning and attending events. We also have a new appreciation for the ways relationships enrich our lives.

You have to set aside time for friendship, we are reminded in a recent article from The Guardian. The article talks about ways we may have moved away from just hanging out and especially from the efforts to meet and gather in person after new habits were formed in the isolation of pandemic times. It notes that even as we may feel more distance from others in modern life, research continues to emphasize the importance of relationships for our lives and health.

Chronicling My Courtship with Creativity

As I consider my relationship and partnership with creativity, I am reminded of what I read about unconditional positive regard in a book by Dr. Gabor Mate. Unconditional positive regard is described by Carl Rogers as care “which is not possessive, which demands no personal gratification. It is an atmosphere which simply demonstrates I care; not I care for you if you behave thus and so.” It is a challenge to offer this stance to our children, our partners, our friends, co-workers or clients. But how much more so is this a challenge with our creativity?

For the past several months, I have been wanting to work on writing my book about creativity. I have started to shift my commitments and priorities to make space in my days for writing and have sought support systems to help with establishing routines and gentle accountability.

I say gentle accountability because I always think I can accomplish more in a given time than truly seems to be possible. Ideas arrive at a much faster rate than I can realize them. And I am noticing my creativity doesn’t have the same commitment to production that I do. In fact, when I become too laser focused on production, she often moves more toward distraction.

I’ve been writing about my octopus color wheel project for several weeks. My kickstarter campaign finished up to great success this weekend and I am grateful for all the support.

It has been interesting to note the way my octopus project has impacted my relationship with creativity. It offers something playful, exploratory, and fun. Maybe it is also a way of testing the relationship. I continue showing up for creativity, to demonstrate I care and want to collaborate, even when I find our time is spent with yarn and crochet hooks rather writing. I first became interested in octopuses through researching my book so there is a connection even if it feels tangential. Through the surprising expansion of the project, creativity and I are practicing working together and getting to know each other better, inviting play and surprise into our process.

I find now that the kickstarter campaign is finished and there are some deadlines associated with the octopus color wheel, creativity is ready to move on, ready to move toward writing. That now feels like the freer, more playful work.

And, in some ways that works, I’ve crocheted all the octopus bodies, chosen all the colors and begun photographing the color wheels. These tasks ahead require more technical skills and perseverance to complete things. I need to manage my time well to send things out according to the schedule I’ve set. Creativity gets bored with these repetitive and detail-oriented tasks.

I am grateful creativity and I have the early stages of writing, the discovery of messy first drafts to engage our relationship going forward.

I’d love to hear from you too, what are you and your creativity working on right now?

An Update from the Consortium of Octopuses:

Octopuses continue to explore the house. The small ones have had a great time with legos - they went for a hayride, had a tea party, and flew in a space ship.

I recently posted on Instagram some stages and steps of the process for crocheting, sewing, and assembling each size octopus.

Thanks again for all your support, those of you who backed the project will receive a survey this week through kickstarter with next steps.

Thank you for reading and being a part of creative community through this newsletter.

With a grateful heart,

Kathryn