What if it were easy?
What if our creative work grew like a plant?
Hello friends
It’s the month of June and Orkney is drenched in light. Daylight reaches deep into the night. It’s a little disorienting. Sleep is shallow and often restless. When I wake at 3am light is already creeping around the curtains and I have to persuade myself it’s still night-time as I tighten the band on my sleep mask.
But, especially after some much-needed recent rainfall, alongside this gush of light and warmth comes a gigantic silent eruption of green. You can see the grass grow from one day to the next.
I spent much of the weekend cutting back rosa rugosa that has been suckering and sprouting exuberantly, closing over paths and blocking entry to the shed with its thorny, arching branches. By the time I’d finished with the loppers I was left with a towering mountain of branches and shoots to run through the chipper and barrow up to the compost heap. Don’t worry, there’s PLENTY still left, full of insect and bird life, but at least I can get into the wheelie bins now!
I was struck by the sheer abundance of the plant’s self-creation. How, given the right conditions of light, water, soil and space, its growth is inevitable, vigorous, even unstoppable (I can only just contain it, with regular and energetic pruning). It also needs to be embedded in relationships of mutual support; with insects, mycelia, soil microbes, birds, other plants. Then, its abundance is such that, even now, as it heats up nicely on the compost heap, it’s full of life and will go back into the soil to begin the whole cycle again.
As I return to the studio, my muscles still a little stiff from the weekend’s exertions, I ask myself: What if creative growth was more like the growth I see in my garden?
What if it were easy, inevitable, abundant?
What would it feel like?
What are the conditions my creative work needs to flourish?
How can ensure I am putting these in place?
How would it feel?
Like trust, I think. Like enthusiasm. Like abundance. Like the exuberant, generous, unruly, moth-dancing, bird-filled, floriferous, rosehipped, sappy green rosa rugosa, as it slowly takes over my garden.
The Life Raft Co-Creating Community
If you would like to create the right conditions for your own creative growth, join our weekly creative co-working session on Zoom. It’s very simple. We just say hello at the start and say what we plan to work on and then leave our cameras on and work together in companionable silence. We start at 3pm UK time and finish around 4.30pm. Just click the link below to join us.
That’s all for this week!
Sam
I love this! Plant growth doesn't measure itself, it unfurls at it own pace.
"I ask myself: What if creative growth was more like the growth I see in my garden? What if it were easy, inevitable, abundant?"
I think organic growth only looks "easy" from the outside. Those mitochondrial factories are pumping out massive energy 24/7 to fuel all the cellular activity required to grow those grasses and roses. That bio-reality reminds me to appreciate the great energy/effort that goes into creative work, which only looks "easy" to the audience!