My Summer of Rest and Creativity
How losing work forced me to "work" on my creative pursuits instead
There’s something about summer that just hits different. Sure, other seasons have their appeal. You got the cozy vibes of fall and the holiday cheer (if you wanna call it that) of winter. For those who like to feel slightly cold and wet, the damp air of spring is best. But for me, nothing beats a nice hot summer, even if it means sweating bullets underneath my bra because I’d rather be sweating my buns off than shivering to death. I think it’s a testament to the power of the sun; when the hotter temps roll around, the sun’s rays melt into your skin and alter your body’s and brain’s chemistry making you think, what the hell am I doing indoors? even if your natural disposition is to be a homebody. And the warmth makes you want to let loose and enjoy life. The good news for me is that primal urge to throw caution to the wind during the summer came at an opportune time work-wise. That is to say: work was slow.
According to my calendar, by the time warmer May came, my assignments began to drop off. I remember being in a panic because all of the work I had lined up was suddenly gone: one assignment deadline was pushed back months, a client took forever to return their feedback (thus bringing the project to a halt), an editor went MIA, and another assignment that I was already sort of working on ultimately didn’t pan out. All of it happened because of things outside of my control. Projects falling through is something that’s expected to occur every once in a while when you’re a freelancer but I was taken aback by these setbacks happening all at once. It felt like an avalanche. Suddenly, we were in June and I found myself with little work and a lot of time.
Now, if this had happened when I was young (and single), I would’ve immediately shifted into Super Ultra-High Gear to find more work, any work, even if it meant picking crumbs off the floor. I’m fortunately now older, wiser (I think), and in a much better financial situation than I was before. Most importantly, I have a wonderful partner who works a stable high-paying job, which means I don’t have to bust my butt and worry as much whenever the famine cycle of freelancing rears its ugly head.
This privilege affords me something that a lot of people don’t have: time to enjoy my time. So, I thought, you know what? I’m going to take advantage of this while I can. Instead of expending energy chasing down potential work trying to recoup the work I had lost, I decided to fill my calendar with creative endeavors instead, things I had always wanted to do but never had the time to. I decided to take a breath.
Here’s how my Summer of Creativity went:
I took my first painting class as an adult ✨
My birthday was coming up, so as a birthday present, I asked my husband to enroll me in a water painting class. It was nothing pretentious, just a casual art class organized by a local studio. Once a week for four weeks, our small group met up in person in an old walk-up that was converted into an art studio on the Upper West Side to play with watercolors for 90 minutes. The class was very loose and the instructor was very chill and just let us paint whatever we wanted the entire time. I can’t say that I’m now a master watercolor artist but the classes did help me understand the basics of how to use watercolor paint and not be so precious in my learning process. (In one of our first sessions, the instructor jokingly commented how “neat” of a painter I was because I had slivers of white space between my water-colored objects to prevent the paint from bleeding into each other. I no longer do this and have learned to accept the imperfections in my little paintings.)
I spent my mornings and evenings journaling ✨
Besides my weekly art class, I also kept a steady journaling schedule almost daily. At that point, I’d waded into the deep end of journaling and had (have) become obsessed with stationery and journaling ephemera. I started a bullet journal in February as a way to help habituate myself to writing casually not thinking it would amount to anything, but it did. Now my journal is almost out of pages and it hasn’t even been a year since I started it. People might assume that being a professional writer gives me an advantage over people who don’t write for a living when it comes to pursuing creative writing, but that’s not the case at all. When you are writing all day, every day, for a living, by the time you sit down to write for pleasure, for yourself, you often have no energy left because you’ve already been writing all day for other people. Another problem is that I’ve become so accustomed to actively shutting myself out of my writing—a rule that’s drilled into every journalist—that it’s really difficult to let go of that notion, which is not helpful when you are trying to do fiction or essay-style writing.
As a result, writing and being creative in my journaling has helped my brain ‘loosen up’ and get back to the idea of writing for myself. It’s now a hobby I can enjoy instead of binge-watching Netflix and scrolling endlessly through social media. In August, I even went to the Stationery Festival in Brooklyn and had an absolute blast gawking at cute stationery, and meeting fellow journalers and independent creatives. Anyway, please ask me about my favorite places to find stationery in NYC.
I printed and published my first zine ✨
This summer, I had more time to commit to publishing my first-ever zine, which I think is very cool! I started this project last year with other women writers I met through an online creative writing class geared specifically toward Asian creatives. After weeks of exercises and workshops together, we all decided to continue collaborating after the workshop was done and settled on doing a group zine. June and July were really the final days we were trying to wrap up the project which we had to juggle amid everyone’s busy schedules and between four separate timezones (our members are scattered all over). It was perfect timing; I was able to commit more time to tweaking my part of the zine and helping others review their pieces to finalize everything. The zine is unofficially titled Vulnerability: Artifacts of Play and she is a thick gworl (mostly because everyone who contributed put in multiple pieces of work except me lol). My piece, Memory Lane, is a flash fiction story exploring vulnerability—the zine’s unifying theme—through the lens of dating and relationships. I’m not a fan of the romance genre (nothing wrong with it, just not my cup of tea!) so I challenged myself to explore the theme by writing about romance. This is the first time I’ve self-published something so intentionally made. I can’t believe I did that and I’m super grateful to the women in the group for pushing me and keeping me accountable (shoutout to my Sandbox girlies if you’re reading this!). If you’re into supporting indie art, please check it out!! You can read a digital copy of the zine here (pw: sandbox).
Also, for any zine-making folks reading this, if you have your own zine I’d love to do an exchange! Let me know via comments or messages and I can send you a physical copy of ours.
🌊🌊🌊 The takeaway
When I was a kid, I was very creative. I wrote stories that I would type up on our old family computer and intersperse with pictures from clip art to go along with the storylines. When I was playing with friends in my neighborhood, I would come up with elaborate make-believe scenarios for us to have fun. In middle school, a classmate known for his creative streak flipped through my sketchbook for art class and very earnestly told me “wow, you are so creative.” I remember thinking that was the highest compliment I could ever get, having my creativity recognized by another artist (FYI, my talented friend now works as a very successful music producer).
Sadly, I found that my creativity dulled over time. Like most people without enough confidence in their talent to become working artists, I swept my childhood joys under the rug to focus on being Grown. My love for creative writing was reworked into journalism which is inevitably the route I took professionally. But instead of helping me keep those creative writing skills, being a professional writer had inadvertently dimmed my light as a creative. I began to realize this when I started to try and reconnect with my creative side as an adult. I found it difficult to dig into my imagination and conjure up fictional arcs that were exciting enough for me to want to write about. I admit it’s the main obstacle I have in my creative writing practice, that loss of unbridled creativity.
It still feels weird talking about this openly. Our society has conditioned us to believe that our worth is defined by how much we’re doing at work or how much we’re being “productive” in a capitalist sense. I think that pressure becomes ten-fold when you’re a full-time freelancer and is multiplied further when you come from a certain background. Because if you’re not working like a horse then what exactly are you doing with all your free time?? Just living??? It’s irrational but it does feel like a sin to admit out loud that I was, in fact, spending my time doing creative things that I enjoy (read: things that don’t make me or other people any money) instead of hustling for work. When friends asked how I was doing during catch-ups, I had to learn to be comfortable telling the truth that “oh, actually, work has been a little slow lately” instead of acting like I was booked and busy and, therefore, doing very important things. But I mean, if a mega-popstar is okay with admitting to lulls then surely lil ol’ me should be okay with saying it out loud, too.
But who says nurturing my creativity isn’t important work? I think a big part of my uneasiness is the lack of permission our society grants us when it comes to small things that bring us joy. Because the common wisdom is if it doesn’t pay the bills then it’s not something worth your time. But the truth is, I now have more sources of joy to tap into for myself, I made memories from new experiences I took up, and I’ve unlocked new achievements and skills, all because I decided to give myself a break. I think that’s priceless and I’m very grateful to be able to do that. Now that my work schedule has mostly returned to its normal rhythm following the slow summer, I’m figuring out how to incorporate my creative practices into my everyday life, no matter what my schedule looks like. I’m planning on enrolling in another creative writing class soon.
What I’m enjoying at the moment 🌊
Public libraries are treasures. Like a lot of millennials who grew up before the internet age, libraries hold a special place in my heart. I don’t spend as much time in libraries as an adult but I’m proud to say I’ve gotten a lot of use out of my library card lately. Mainly because I’ve somehow been cursed with the bad luck of repeatedly reading books that turn out to be duds—including those that raked up rave reviews. At one point, I realized it was probably best to start checking out books from the library instead of spending $20 on a hardcover book that I end up hating every time. It’s honestly saved me so much heartache.
Anyway, if you haven’t yet I highly recommend visiting your neighborhood library, even if it’s just to take a peek to see what’s up. Right now, I’m finishing up The Stardust Grail by Yume Kitasei courtesy of the Queens Public Library. The book is a fantastic sci-fi story infused with a bit of Indiana Jones vibes. It has extremely well-thought-out world-building and characters that you actually give a shit about. I’m excited to check this one off my reading list.
Read any interesting books lately? I’d love to hear about it!
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Yessssss I feel SO much of this!!! The pressure to be productive, the recent urge to take some time for myself and to journal! So glad you got to have a summer for yourself and creativity