Amputation, amplification, ritual: What you learn about your creative practice by stepping away from it

Amputation, amplification, ritual. You learn a lot about your creative practice by stepping away from it.

For the first three weeks of my sabbatical from The World Is Freaky Beautiful I wrote maniacally. Day, night, in little air pockets of time that bubbled up like fizz in ginger ale. I was busy reworking passages from my upcoming book Bohemia in Suburbia.

Then I stopped.

I handed the book off to my editor friend — and eased into a week of downtime. No writing, no research. I don’t even think I took notes. And I’m a note frrreak. Sometimes when I awake in the morning my nightstand is littered with notes the way a stadium after a game is littered.

Then I took another week to research what is cool and compelling out there at the nexus of creativity and contemporary spirituality.

That is not a creative practice. It’s R&D. It’s sifting and observing. Noting what works, being alert to what misses.

When you step away from your creative practice, you learn this:

When you miss a day it feels like an amputation.

Not a big one, not like your leg below your left knee has gone missing — something small.

Something small is missing. But you don’t know what it is.

Is it an earlobe?

The tip of your little finger on your non-dominant hand?

If you keep skipping days of your creative practice more of you will go missing.

Until you disappear.

Someday — if you lose your practice entirely — a ventricle in your heart will shear off, and the life you could have lived will have vanished.

Your creative practice is like that. It’s your life purpose, sure. But it’s also the beating heart of your existence. It’s what gives you juice.

Your meaning is your energy. Fuck with your creative practice and you fuck with your life force.

The antidote is what I’m doing right now as I write these words to you. The antidote is to rev up your practice and to go at it daily.

A creative practice is a spiritual practice.

You wouldn’t go a day without breathing, would you?  

Then why go a day without something essential to your soul path?

Your creative work is your soul work. It doesn’t need to overwhelm your life, it simply needs to get done. Daily. Or else you begin losing small parts of yourself.

Creation is connection, have you noticed that?

When you are creating you are tunneling into the mystery at the core of our existence. You’re stirring up soul stuff and bringing it to the planet surface. It’s like bringing gold up from deep in the earth.

For Seti, my lover woman wife, the creation connection is found as easily in the kitchen as in the studio. For me the creation connection is as alive in relationships as it is in text squirreling onto the screen from my fingers.

The creation connection is everywhere in our lives. Nothing meaningful can exist without it.

Which means it is sacred. And worthy of being honored. By doing it daily. Wherever you find it, amplify it.

Daily.

You’ll gain parts of your self you never knew existed. Big BIG parts. Aspects of your self that might have been whispering to you, aspects that got lost in the din of modern life.

The opposite of amputation is amplification. Honor your creative practice daily and discover one of the wonders of life:

You, amplified.

You big and bold.

You quiet and powerful. 

The amplified you is the crazy beautiful you just waiting to be unearthed.

Time off is fine every now and then — consider it a well-deserved nap. But time on is where it’s at, baby. Time on is where the gold is.

That’s where you’ll unleash shiny resplendent you. Daily, in your creative practice.

For you —

Evan Griffith
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