Even Creatives Need Breaks… Kinda..

No, I am not trying to excuse the fact that I have not posted to my personal Medium in over three months, I am merely elaborating on something that has been floating around in my head for the last couple of weeks: the idea that even creatives need breaks.

I don’t know who I heard it from first, but I do know it was a rapper that conveyed the whole idea to me. Whoever you are, I do apologise for forgetting your name. For now lets just call you “Frank”.

In an interview Frank said something a long the lines of…

“..Rappers need to have a period of time every so often where they just don’t do or create anything, especially when they feel like they’re about to reach burnout stage.”

When asked why, Frank said that the reason he urged artists to have these breaks was so they allowed their minds to get some rest and ultimatley re-generate ideas.

Being a-wanna-be aspiring rapper, I used to jump at every chance I could get to improve my music. So I took his advice and put it into practice about two months later, when I was greeted by my good old friend “Writers Block”. I was two weeks in and I was suffering terribly . I couldn’t construct a single structured idea for some reason and just drew a blank every time I would go to.

At first, his whole concept, seemed counter intuitive to me. Surely when you have a case of writers block you fight through it right? In doing so you ultimately become a better creative? That’s what I thought.

Never-the-less, I took a break from writing my rap lyrics for about six weeks in total. During that time I dabbled in writing/blogging here on Medium and found a real passion for it. I know it sounds corny but I really did enjoy this little holiday. It was something completely different that I had never done before and surprisingly enjoyed thoroughly. After the sixth week had gone by I knew I had to return to my true passion, Hip Hop and the world of world-play and punchlines.

As soon as I came back I instantly felt refreshed. I could see things with so much more clarity. Things that were boring to me before were now interesting and made me think about them much more. In short, I had more of an appreciation for my craft.

Only six months later, looking back and thinking about this experience now, am I starting to raise some questions about it and form some separate thoughts.

Today I posted a wave about this on Anchor, asking the community for their opinions on this whole concept.

A guy named Derek Markham came back to me and pointed out that as creatives, we never really stop creating, so we actually never really take breaks. Which is true. His point was made even clearer to me as I could see it in the break that I took. I didn’t actually stop creating, I just took a break from a certain type of creation and turned to another.

“It’s finding that balance between creative work and creative play. Creating something for no other person in the world, for no pay, just doing it because it feeds you on some level creatively..”- Derek Markham

Writing this now, I’m beginning to realise the importance of this balance. Distributing your creativity into other practices that correlate to your preferred medium of creation. My preferred medium was writing rap lyrics. I took a step back from that and started writing and publishing general articles on Medium. I did something that was completely different yet similar to my preferred medium of creation.

When you distribute your creativity into other practices, opportunities that weren’t available to you before when you were concentrating on the one medium, instantly become available. We could get into a whole other debate following this line of thought about possibility and opportunity. What I’m kind of hinting at is the idea that if we don’t choose, if we don’t settle on one thing or practice, possibility is infinite.

Presenter of National-Geographic’s “Shots of Awe” and “Brain Games” Jason Silva best sums up what I have just mentioned in the following video. But that’s for another time.

Diversifying your creativity and adding to your skill set creates a whole other plain of innovation, where a whole load of other ideas can be spawned.

So do creatives really take breaks? No. We just stop working for a bit and take out our toys.

Thanks for reading guys. It’s been long overdue. I thank the people that have stuck with me and continued to follow me here on Medium.

If you guys really wanna be awesome then you can check out my Facebook page. It’s a place I recently just formed, where I share my ideas. Be it through links I submit, articles I write or videos I make.

You can do so: https://m.facebook.com/conorsmith301/?ref=bookmarks

Until next time guys,

Peace.