Craft Mojo

It would be amazing if craft mojo was something I could summon on command. Artists, writers, creatives in general, all face a sort of on-demand attitude from people who... Well, aren't creatives. Okay, we're ALL kind of creatives but there are certain types of creativity that are inevitably wishy-washy. Writing nonfiction is about gathering facts while writing fiction requires tapping into a fickle world that sometimes isn't bridging the gap into something translatable. Web design is using a visual space while sculpting is about manipulating a physical space, and depending on whether you're using a source or pre made assets, there lies the difference between organizing or creating original content from imagination. Imagination isn't really a wholly logical space that can be harnessed. Nor should it. Part of the thrill is the slippery, wild chase to catch it.

Inevitably, what is drawn from imagination sometimes get jumbled for me. It doesn't dry up or burn out, it just comes gushing like a waterfall and I'm standing at the bottom with a goldfish net. Often, I play with a lot of snippets before I expand all at once, able to start producing with insane efficiency.

Which is why giving advice has always felt tenuous, or like I was giving recipes with no way to list the ingredients. I've got my craft mojo, so I feel like I want to describe it but I can't. It just means over the past week, my goldfish net traded up. I'm probably catching mid-sized sharks but that's a good sign. The burgeoning ambition was simply a sign I'd been in the throes of mania. It really wasn't that good for me in the long term.

In any case, I started crocheting a cupcake for my friend's daughter's birthday and an Ezio plushie for my nephew. Yesterday it was a small yellow flower shaped dress for a small doll. Tomorrow...

Well, I can tell you what I'd like it to be. I'd love to work up a swimsuit and wig for my doll project, keep working on the crochet I started. I'm not in the headspace for writing. Right now, that part is a stream, frozen on the surface, rushing beneath. Ideally, the ice will crackle and slough away in time, but I'm not looking for it to be the rushing river. 

That place was too much an obsession, too much a diversion to pull me from pain. When I first started to slam through writing, it was a way to salve the grief of too much loss piling up. Once I healed those wounds, the writing itself had masked too many bad habits picked up. My health started another decline and I had to face that there are aspects of myself I'm blind to and I needed help to get back on track.

Don't look for a secret to creative mojo. Just understand there may be some intuitive signal that there is something else needing attention. You will find you are more productive over time, more thoughtful with what you produce, if you listen to those urges that go ignored. Now, I'm not talking some serial killer urge. Lock that way the fuck up. But if you've got some voice saying you suck at self-care, maybe take a breath and listen a little more closely.