When women return to the workforce after maternity leave, there’s this immediate focus on maximum efficiency hour-to-hour, minute-to-minute. Never a moment wasted “on the clock,” for wasted moments during the work day lead to workload spillover at night, thus infringing on those precious few hours that can be enjoyed with one’s darling children.
Creativity is a lot like that child begging for attention at night (and, in my case, is in addition to actual human children). I constantly yearn to do more than what has already been deemed excessive by most definitions of work/life “equity.” It would be far less emotionally taxing to not feel so compelled to CREATE and instead remain focused on that maximum corporate efficiency during the day and the dutiful parenting at night.
Instead, I often feel like I’m strapped to one of those medieval limb stretching devices, being yanked to the north, south, east, and west until my carcass cracks and splits and pops open like a piñata.
Yes, it really would be so much more pleasant to not feel driven to stay up until 1 AM to write a bunch of meandering metaphors about screaming babies and splitting carcasses, but here we are.
It’s been 454 days since I last wrote an original piece of my own. It’s been two years since I last produced a sketch show. I recently discovered that I’ve forgotten how to read music and my muscle memory as a pianist is all but gone. This is more than a little dry spell. This is my own personal artistic Sahara Desert, all 3.6 million square miles of it. (Yeah, I’m using a lot of metaphors but I fact check the hell out of them.) And while I’m in the middle of the desert, something is pushing me to find that oasis that will rehydrate me and propel me out of the dunes.
I’ve been feeling an overwhelming sense over the last many months that my next big creative “a-ha!” is right around the corner. I think I just needed to let that crackling pig skin tear open. In the desert. While a baby screams for attention. As a crappy rendition of “Chopsticks” clangs in the background.
Wow, I am really rusty.
Okay, Pokay. Time to get to work.