“I’m in a conflicting space: my own creative process vs. money and opportunities for the kids.”
Jo writes:
Many of us do administrative jobs to earn a living while longing for a more creative job. There are many opportunities to be creative, especially as a volunteer. If you have a family and kids going to High School you enter a conflicting space: own creative process versus money and opportunities for the kids. I try to stay with both aspects but sometimes the tension builds up in my body. In my current situation I work 4/5 in a ICT administrative job and 1/5 I try to develop my creative process. But that doesn’t seem enough. What next step can I do?
Dear Jo:
Of course the tension builds up in your body! You’re juggling many priorities, all important, and you can feel that the time you have left for your own creative process is just not enough. Many people today are in this spot, as the world seems to demand more and more from us all the time.
So the first step is to pause…when you have a bit of time…and allow that feeling of tension to come into your body just the way it is. Feel it, and acknowledge it, with a gentle Hello. It’s not your enemy, it’s trying to help you. So start by feeling it and describing it just as it is.
Next I would recommend saying to it, “I am with you now.” The word to emphasize in that sentence is the word “I”. You are cultivating that sense of being the compassionate “I” that is bigger than the problems…and this sentence “I am with you now,” spoken to a part of you, is a great way to do that. Now you are in a position to listen. It may know something you don’t know.
You are facing a situation that feels impossible. If you would be able to think your way out of it, you would have done that already. The best thing is to wait at the edge…the place where you can feel “the impossible”…and open up to what emerges from the contact there.
As you know — because you are a creative person — new possibilities emerge when we can offer a space that’s bigger than what we already know. By turning toward and saying Hello to tensions, worries, doubts, etc., we begin to occupy that larger space. It’s a space of Not-Knowing. From there, something really new can come.
