It is a truth universally acknowledged that any person in possession of artistic tendencies must be in want of more time.1
I think the only thing more common among artists than money envy is time envy. And I’ve had a little taste of it over the past couple of days.
Hello, chaos!
As I began writing this post, I was unsuccessfully trying to screen out the background noise of the terrible cartoons that Rose was groggily watching on her tablet after a sleepless night for both of us.
The whole family is recovering from jet lag after being away to celebrate the holidays, and I am definitely feeling the effects. Yesterday, chaos reigned supreme. I missed a planned meet-up with a neighbour because I forgot what day it was, and lost my phone for about 6 hours when I left it - inexplicably - inside a tissue box. (A first!)
Our suitcases have exploded everywhere and the holiday decorations are still out: I can’t find anything and everything is a mess. It looks like some fictitious monster vomited Christmas and cardboard all over the home.
It is always hard journeying between time zones, and I’ve done this transition enough times to know that this period of readjustment is just part of the process. There is about a week of absolute anarchy, and another week after that until things start to actually feel back to normal. There’s no point fighting it, we just have to ride it out.
Still, it didn’t stop my own time envy from kicking in over the last couple of days
Stumbling into envy
I had been hoping (delusionally, I realise) that I would be able to sneak a bit of writing time over the weekend while Rose played with some of her new Christmas gifts. But she only wanted to play with her gifts with me. And because of the mess, everything household related, from making dinner to sorting the laundry, was taking so much longer. To top it off, being sleep deprived and mentally disorganised didn’t help with getting back into the regular swing of things.
The sense of time pressure always seems to be lurking in the background of life (no matter how many Instagram videos I watch about how to liberate myself from a scarcity mindset), and of course it chose this moment to leap into the foreground. I’m sure this is present in every industry, but there is a particular FOMO that feels very specific to the arts.
The deadline for the UK’s biggest playwriting competition is later this week - an opportunity that only comes around every two years. Last time around I made the longlist (woohoo!), so I’ve been hoping to get a new script in for this year’s competition. The only problem is, I have no idea where I am going to come up with the time I need to polish the script before submitting.
Simultaneously, I stumbled across a social media update about the latest creative success of someone that I know. I really like this person, so about 85% of me was happy for them - but the petty, selfish part also had some things to say. Even though I thought they were talented and deserving, my mind leapt to work creating a list of all the reasons that their success was because they weren’t juggling the burdens I carry.
Surely, that voice went on, if I were free of my struggles with the life this writer had - namely, if I had the kind of TIME available that they had, that would be my name on the announcement.
Right?
I cringe even thinking about it.
I don’t like this voice, but I’m still desperate to believe it because otherwise it’s all too easy to feel like it’s my fault that I am not matching this success. From there, it is just a small step to disappear into the vortex of self-blame: all the ways I am inadequate, failing, lazy, unfocused, disorganised. (And on and on and on with lots of other horrible things that our internal monologues can be so good at spinning out.)
In these moments where jealousy rears up, it feels like having to choose between bitterness (I’m at a disadvantage!) and despair (my failure is my fault!) - neither of which are places I particularly want to live.
Envy and jealousy are part of having a creative career - like speed bumps that we can’t quite steer to fully avoid. No one likes to admit to it, but we all visit these places. The trick is not to get stuck there.
To escape the trap, we first have to acknowledge that we have been caught.
And truthfully, I felt like a little kid trudging along with a heavy backpack, while watching another child skip carefree and unburdened across the grass.
Imagining the ‘easy’ life
Within this sudden swell of stress, I found myself imaginary how much easier my creative work would be with a different set of circumstances:
How much easier would this be if I didn’t have parenting responsibilities?
How much easier would this be if I wasn’t running a household independently as a single parent?
How much easier would this be if I had a non-disabled body that worked reliably?
How much easier would this be if I had more time, more freedom, more support to write?
And for a moment, I longed to step into the alternate world where everything revolves around me and my art.
But only for a moment.
Because immediately, another question arose:
If all those challenges disappeared, what on earth would I have to write about?
Cherishing our challenges
I suddenly saw a vision of myself in this other life, almost like a princess in a tower. Surrounded by all the time (and money) in the world, but in the process completely insulated from life itself.
Sure, there would be plenty of time to craft something beautiful. But would there truly be heart in it, or lived experience, or grit? Would it have an understanding of what it means to be human with all the struggles that entails?
My hunch is that if I was free of all the things that make it harder to make art, I would create meticulously crafted work about nothing - things that are ultimately pretty, but empty.
I’m sure there are others who can create work of nuance, sensitivity, and sophistication while living inside a bubble, but I am not one of them.
When I started to think of my circumstances this way, the prospect of stepping away from my obligations or burdens to feel less appealing.
I don’t want to be an art machine, I want to be a person - and that is a messy thing that involves living in the real world.
My hunch is that the kind of work I can create in that ‘easier’ fantasy life is not work I would necessarily feel proud of making, or a life lived to the fullest.
Nothing is wasted
To create work that is meaningful, we have to lean into life, not shy away from it.
It’s important to protect our creative time however we can. Also: sometimes there is just not enough time to create art in the way we want to.
That time spent ‘not writing’ (or creating in whatever medium) is NOT wasted time. It is the material that will fuel us for the future.
This is true for the time we spend tending to feverish children, or sweeping up the shards of a broken glass, or entering spreadsheet data at a numbingly boring day job.
These things do not diminish us - they give us the material of life that we will weave into art. They are essential to the creative impulse.
The things that take us away from our art actually give us something to write about.
Even in the process of writing this post, I had to step away from the keyboard several times - to book some childcare, to get a snack, to tend to my wonky hip, and to have a swordfight in an imaginary game. And honestly, my the writing was probably better for it, because I was not lecturing from a protected pulpit, I was sending a dispatch from the front lines. There is a beauty in simply making the most of the time I have, fragmentary and truncated though it may be.
Resistance can be an accelerant
The tension between the desire to create and an inability to do so in the immediate moment can, at its best, function like the string of a bow - pulled taut until the arrow is finally released. The obstacles we have to push against can make the urge to create even stronger when the opportunity finally arrives.
That doesn’t mean it is easy - there is a real ache to the sensation of needing to create and feeling like our hands are tied. The drive to make art can hit with the intensity of a physical craving, like you might almost explode with the need to release something built up inside, to express what exists inside us and to share it with the world.
But just as life enriches art, so can art enrich life.
Even when we don’t have the capacity to pick up a pen, or a brush, or an instrument, there are still ways we can engage with this impulse.
When we can’t make art, we can turn life into art.
Today, I may not have put words down on the page for my play in the way I had hoped, but I wrote a story through playing a game with my daughter as we imagined the narrative of that sword fight. I may not have crafted a sculpture, but I noticed the way the peel of the tangerine unfolded in a fascinating shape between my fingers. I may not have danced, but I turned my strange little hobble from my injured hip into a rhythmic pattern all its own.
We are never truly trapped in circumstances where we cannot create art.
The opportunity to cultivate beauty, connection, and magic is with us in everything we do.
Access Support: If you have access needs that I’m not currently meeting, please do drop me a line! (The best email is contact@ac-smith.com.) I’d really like to make this project available to anyone who wants to participate.
Image: generated in Canva Dream Lab with the following prompt: a clock running to chase something with sprinting legs and arms outstretched. Looks as if it was painted by hand
Happy 250th birthday, Jane Austen!
This is so true. I nearly finished my first novel just before my first child was born, then resented not having time to finish it for the next few years. When I finally got round to it, my next draft was so much richer because I was able to incorporate my lived experience of being a parent into the story.
Love this, Alison, and relate to all of it!! Lots of love to you. Currently reading Black Milk by Elif Shafak which is really compelling about women writers over the years and about her own struggle with being a mother and an artist.