9:07PM. 12/17/2024. First Quarter Moon in Cancer.

Upside down

I have been in the strangest creative rut I’ve had in a long time. I couldn’t put my finger on it for … forever. I tried to blame so many different things. Being away from Chicago and being here. Having so much on my plate with school, clubs, an internship, an org, work, and preparing for my next adventure this summer. I’ve considered that something is off in the placement of the stars and the moon. Saturn is in opposition with Jupiter and my transits mean this is just the season I’m in right now. Mercury is retrograding and I missed the last new moon. It’s the executive dysfunction; I’m not eating right. Ah! I’m not drinking enough water. It’s because of that weird thing that happened in September. There’s something wrong with the earth, in the soil. I’ve considered it all. And it all could be true. But, the fact is that the rut remained. I spent time trying to determine the reasoning behind it, but I couldn’t seem to actually get out of it. The more I think, and I’ve done a lot of thinking. Part of the reason for this massive creative block is that I am always trying to top myself. I think a little competition with yourself is healthy. Yet sometimes I admittedly take it a step too far and lean into that pesky perfectionism. I am always evolving and so is my art, day-by-day actually. One day I’m all about a project, and the next, I want to do something different entirely. I find myself not following through on projects perhaps for all of those reasons I listed (who knows?) but also because maybe I just don’t want to do them anymore. Maybe it’s that simple. Maybe it’s okay that my creativity is chaotic and winding. Because when something clicks for me, it flows. Maybe this project I’ve been trying to get myself to work on for months is just not where my heart is at the moment. That’s why I can’t get my head to follow. Ideas will always come back when I need them, and maybe I don’t need this one right now. I always have so many ideas in my head. I’m constantly rolling the dice and landing on a different one. Sometimes I do not pass go or collect $200 on an idea I’ve been trying for months. Every artist you talk to will tell you this is just part of the process. I don’t think the phrase “roller coaster” has ever been more accurately applicable to my life than it is now. I’m climbing, and then I’m sailing smooth, and then there’s a big drop and I’m going miles fast again … and now I’m upside down. Creativity is unpredictable. And it’s only ironic that writing is my primary art form because that is unpredictable too. So, you see my dilemma.

Head on a swivel

I’ve been thinking about what I’m going to do in 2025, and what I’ve done in 2024. “Memories from 20xx” appears across my phone screen at least once a day. I click on these notifications. I reminisce about what I was doing and feeling in 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, and beyond. I used to refuse to look at myself from the past. It would instantly send me back into the emotional state I was in at that time. That was never a good feeling. For some time now, I notice I look upon these memories with fondness. Even my worst times. I am still sent back to old emotions, but now, I have a new respect for them. For myself. I can look back at 17-year-old me and smile. I have grown so much. I look back at my past self and I have so much reverence for her. As I’ve been trudging my way through this rut, though, I see something else. I see that I’ve always been there. The person I am now was inside of me then. I can see it in my own eyes. I don’t know what’s changed, maybe this is just what getting older is. I remember having a premonition once and telling my mom about it. I told her how I could see the girl I wanted to be, I could see her, she’s close. It feels like the craziest case of deja vu, “who is that girl I see” syndrome. I stare into my eyes past, and I see myself staring back at me. I’ve always been here. Jogging down memory lane has shown me that my creative process, much like my life, is a cycle. There will always be a point where I come back to myself.

Here again and back again.

I’ve been unraveling the rope that I felt was binding my creativity this entire time. Slowly but surely. In my feeling like I wasn’t doing enough, I’ve had to remind myself how far I’ve come. I had to remind myself who I am. I had to let life show me that the creative process is a process. It was hard to see how much I have been creating, building, and healing when my head and feet were stationed one way. I had to remind myself to look around. I can look up, I can look down, I can look beside me, and I can look back. If I have to ride the same roller coaster I will do it every time. It’s chaos but I love it. I love what it produces. I love the feeling when I step off the coaster and I feel joyous. Even if I was kicking and screaming the whole way through. I’ve had this spiel a million different times in a million different ways and the lesson is new every time. The return to self is always imminent.