On Not

I realised something earlier this year: if you want something different, you have to create space for it.

Something different requires time, creativity, serendipity. If there’s no space, you never find the new thing, because you’re so busy going from A to B you don’t have time to see it, even if you were looking for it, which anyway, you never have time to do.

Giving myself this year was actually giving myself space. I know I wanted something different, and that I wasn’t sure what it looked like… so here I am with space to explore what that might be.

So I thought, OK, take a break from writing a blog, and see what happens in that space! I thought I would feel more creative, maybe focus on some bigger projects, build up a backlog.

I was wrong.

I had a lot on in June. Maybe blogging doesn’t take up much time, maybe I just used that time badly, but I didn’t find that there was a resulting space which I could use to explore. I just… didn’t hit publish… didn’t write anything to hit publish on, didn’t think of much that I would write if I was going to sit down to do so.

And oh well, failed experiment. And now I come back to trying to write and I feel so blah so uninspired. And I realised that I didn’t just fail at creating space I actually gave up space – filled with other people’s priorities (and, honestly, West Wing), space that I had already carved out – where I do something where each individual act has an impact so small to seem pointless, where the value lies in the habit, the act of carving out time to do something for me that has no clear ROI, no plan, just because I want to.

Anyway. If you want something different, you need to create space for it. But creating space is much harder than I thought.