It is lazy-daisy, pause-and-slow-down season in my world.
Tomorrow is my birthday, the Solstice has just past, we are in the longest days of the year, and in the U.S. the July 4th holiday is right around the corner.
Each year I take this time off. Maybe doing something big and special, most times just resting and unplugging.
This year when I asked myself what I most wanted what came up was time for “creative cocooning”.
Unstructured, free form, dedicated time to creatively play. Just because, just for me.
Time to pull out my sewing machine and make this and this, reconnecting to the sewer I was years ago. Finally signing up and diving into this, stretching into new art forms. Do more collage oracle creating and see what messages come, because I love how the unseens speak though images. Take photo walks and tap into the everyday magic in my neighborhood. All the things I have been wanting to do but haven’t made the time to do. Things I want more of.
So I will take the next week and a half to cocoon myself with art supplies, fabric, needles and thread, and what ever else strikes my fancy. I may come out with some really cool somethings, or not. I may work on just one thing or start many and leave them all unfinished.
But guaranteed I will come out more intimately and practically connected to my creative flow.
This is the deeper purpose of the creative cocoon.
Dedicated time and focus on creative expression and exploration. To break out of ruts. To see newly who you are as creative being. To honor the whispers of your muse and see where they lead. To reconnect to a creative you that got put aside when life got busy. To feel into what feels good now.
To see how the organic rhythm of your expression beats when untethered to expectation, external schedules and day to day demands.
For you maybe it is trying recipes you have pined or planting the side garden. Digging back into your novel or starting a blog. Wandering a museum or dancing on the beach. Learning to paint, quilt, rug hook, exotic dance, what ever is your fancy.
A creative cocoon will look different for each of us, but if you allow yourself to go all the way in you will emerge a new being in someway.
What do you think? Want to slip into your own creative cocoon?
It does not need to be a week long although I wont lie, knowing I have days to wander my creative trails feels heavenly! That may be unrealistic or perhaps too daunting right now. A few hours will do. This much more about the intention and permission to discover and lounge in your creative being than it is about time.
A good creative cocoon has these qualities:
* A dedicated time to explore what calls you.
* Intention to discover and play. No critical judgment allowed!
* No rules about what, how, or why you do what you do. Just that you want to.
* Full permission to the voice of “Because I want to, that’s why!”
* Mess. Make a mess. Gluey fingers, paint smears. Spread out. If needed, claim the dinning room table for awhile and have the family eat somewhere else. Remember this a cocoon time, not a permeant lifestyle.
* Get rid of anything that minimizes external distractions. Feel free to pick up take-out. Better yet, have someone else do it. Leave the dishes in the sink rather than put off your creative cocooning. Bowing out of meetings, dates, appointments that take you out of creative time. Again this is temporary while in cocoon time. Not a lifestyle choice. (Although you never know, you may learn you can do with out some of the assumed have-to’s of life.)
* Indulgent, creative musing and play.
When it is time emerge from the cocoon, celebrate your process and journey and take the learnings into your everyday life.
Because every creative act changes you.