Creativity after a creative workday

There is a problem with spending your entire workday being creative, especially if you have to continue being creative beyond the workday.

Months ago—maybe years ago at this point—I was researching on the best routines for creative individuals to not get stuck at creating. The consensus answer seemed straightforward—make use of the best part of the day for your creativity.

For me, this happens to be the morning. Early morning, actually. When things are quiet and when there is more hope than the bottom of the barrel.

I still remember a period about a year an half ago. It had felt like I had come upon the gentle slope that would lead one out of a trough of depression. It was not. At this point, the trough seems more like the freshly minted ocean floor that surfaces as the ice age deepens.

There was this one morning when I had woken up before dawn and I had written a song about suicide called The Night Ends at Dawn. Within a couple of days, I was able to render it in a draft recording that somehow made me sound less like how I used to be. It has turned out to be one of the best songs I have written.

Anyway, at the end of this recording, I came to the conclusion that the more I used the mornings for music, the more I would feel satisfied being a musician.

Then my reading routines changed. I was reading more and it was easier for me to settle myself for the day if I were to have read with my morning coffee, before my morning exercise routine.

It felt okay to change the routine because I still had the evening, hopefully, after a busy but rewarding workday. And it did work, for a few months, until I started doing creative audiovisual work at work.

Coming back the full circle. Today, at work, I spent a lot of time outlining, prepping for, recording, and early post-production for some videos that I’m making as part of a video series at work.

But unlike other days, today I was positively triggered (?motivated/?inspired) by a new piano VST plugin that I could download. So right after logging out, I installed the plugin and started singing (no surprise) Dave Matthews songs. And that led to other songs and that led to me singing Seesaw, the song that I’m struggling to complete.

By the time I reluctantly peeled myself off my desk to grab some questionably safe dinner (leftover yesterday’s prawn biryani from the fridge), I had already sort of worked myself into a mindset of hope/determination to be able to make some strides on the song.

That’s what I’m about to do now. Wish me luck. And maybe hope and determination.