Every week I write a Wednesday blog, and every week (recently) I struggle with what to write about. Not the garden (again) or mental health (again). Not the dogs (again) or writing (again). Not drought (again) or wildfires (again).
I realized that one of the reasons I’m having a hard time coming up with blog ideas is because I’m not doing enough things to talk about. It’s what Julia Cameron talks about in The Artist’s Way – you have to fill your creative well in order to be able to draw from it later.
A lot of this stems from the depression I’ve been squashed under for the past year. I spend a lot of time sleeping, which limits my time for doing, and when I *am* doing I tend to prioritize chores and other tasks over pleasant diversions.
So we haven’t been on any field trips lately, whether that’s to see the gardens at the Horticultural Centre of the Pacific or Government House in Victoria, or a trip up to Skutz Falls to see the salmon running, or a walk or cycle along the Kinsol Trestle trail to check out the water levels in the Koksilah River.
I feel I need to set up some field trips to get me out of the house and expose me to something other than my yard and garden. Is there an art gallery I can go to in my local town? Is there a garden I can visit that’s not too far away? Maybe I could check out the raptor centre, which I’ve never been to. Or we could get out on our bikes and I can test my ankle to see how it’s healed after spraining it in September.
It can be hard to prioritize yourself instead of your chores, but sometimes you have to let the chores go and do something, anything, that fills your creative well (especially now with the ongoing stress of the pandemic and the US election).
Hopefully I’ll have a new adventure to report on next week.
Note the featured image is Creativity by Nick Youngson (CC BY-SA 3.0) Alpha Stock Images
