A bit at sea.

Recently, I have been particularly introspective. Of course, my blog is its own form of “reflective practice” and so by default looks inward. However, in an attempt to not stare blankly, I have been attempting to think of ideas to develop in my blog space. This has led me to think more about how I go about my thinking and creative process. Paying attention to my process has revealed I don’t have one.

I am a seat of the pants, write when the creativity takes me, sort of poet. And yes, I have a lot of work in my back catalogue, a lot of it is precisely that, back catalogue. I can see when the drop off happened, it was when I lost hope due to the “crisis of the metrics”. That is not all of it. I am writing less; this year I have had the admin task of cataloguing my work to be busy with, and I can blame that. Last year I blamed my ongoing struggles with health. However, I have to take personal responsibility; I don’t need much management for the life I have; I do need some. So, while I have been falling back in love with the process of creating, the doing for the purpose of doing, I have not been paying attention to the structure that supports it.

My physical space reflects my mental one, everything is everywhere with no focus. Nothing is properly organised; no project is finished and there is more coming in all the time. It’s not doom and gloom; instead, as February turned into March and I wrestled with feeling like the year was half over before it had begun, I realised that I have been steadily building. My weekly blog has been weekly, and I have posted one poem a week to all the socials not just Instagram, heck I am even on Tumblr.

I have consistently journalled and I have moved my wake-up time gradually earlier ready for the clock change so that I am getting the best time available in the day. Stopping and pausing, I have done more in six months than I did in twenty-two after moving home. My health hasn’t been great, but it is stable and I actually do self-care now. Introspection isn’t a bad thing when you use it as a time to appreciate. I don’t gratitude journal, but if I did, I would have things to write that I didn’t before.

I wish I was only looking inward. However, the world is there, I feel the desire to detach and run up into an ivory tower, but I can’t shut myself away completely. I try to take the world in measured doses. My dismay and loss of hope run deep. The files reveal the very worst of human nature, wars brought by a dementia ridden rapist paedophile who should be in a hospital not power are the stuff of rejected fiction. People make structures and systems that reflect them. There are warnings about social media because people made them in their image.

In the UK the government, which people thought would be a change for the better, has proven to be nothing but a vicious punching down machine. There is an anxiety crisis because we all know nothing is secure or safe anymore. I say this because I am not isolated and when looking for the roots of my “creativity gap” I saw a clear break. My health was poor, but my creativity nosedived when the war on the disabled started. I am still trying to learn to live with being disabled, I am still struggling with management and the grief of both the life I lost and the future I was building.

I see people talking about creativity while the world is burning; they make excellent points. For me, it’s about making art while my world is burning. Back in twenty-two when I started, I felt secure that I would have a roof over my head, and that the money would be the money. I feel like that security has gone, in the spaces where once I may have penned an idea or a poem, either the anxiety intrudes, or I disassociate away, precious respite from the relentless reality over which I have no control.

Life feels like it is being run by an algorithm, something that doesn’t care for who at affects and only serves the people it is designed to benefit. I exist to be crunched, I don’t make art, it's content, like rubbish in a bin, there to fill it up while everyone moves on to. Sure, I write poems and create for myself; I don’t make them for an audience, that is how it has to be.

All of which, suffice to say, makes being intentional and conscious of both my ideas and my ideation, difficult and at times impossible. That’s why AI feels fake, it's creating without the creation, a product without a process. Art is a labour of love; without labour, there is no love.

It has been a week of scattered thoughts, share yours, do the like, share, follow thing please, and until next week: keep on – keeping on.