Say it with me: Slow work is good work

Not every week with your art practice is going to feel like you are doing a speed run in your favorite video game. Some weeks there won’t be much going on and it will feel like you have even less to report. That’s me right now. It’s frustrating to feel like I’m getting nothing done. But that frustration is a sign of a larger mindset that I’m working to set aside.

I have to keep reminding myself that there’s all sorts of projects I’m working on and they’re in all different stages. Some are short and quick and some are long haul projects. I’ve picked up art from a show this week and am about to apply to five or six new shows. That work is always ongoing. But it feels like I’m not getting anything accomplished – when I’m not physically making the thing.

Tiny little steps

But still, there’s glimmers of movement. A few tiny progresses. I worked on my Etsy store last week. There’s nothing new there yet, but there will be soon. Some journals I made recently that you can purchase and love.

I picked up the Magpie shawl again and worked out the mistakes I’d made that caused me to quit working on it from frustration. At the beginning of the month, I set a goal for me to finish this shawl in May. I made some good progress this weekend but there’s still a lot of work left to do.

I finished my crochet Venus of Willendorf. Then I finished the cover I made for my new Tarot deck.

I had a brainstorming call this weekend with a friend to discuss a project we are collaborating on. We had a wide ranging conversation on where we want this project to go and when we might meet up to work on it. Of course there’s travel involved because of course we don’t live close to each other. But our conversation was energizing and the prospect of travel is delightful.

All of this happening during the month of May. Which every parent knows might actually be worse than December for sheer number of tasks that need to be completed in order to finish out the school year. I thought when my youngest graduated high school last year that would put a stop to the madness of May. I was wrong. My oldest is graduating college in a few weeks so there’s prep for travel to graduation. We’ve been to graduation parties and sent gifts to new grads this month. (I still have another gift to make!! Eeep!) And so the May whirlwind continues.

I am not a machine

I’ve been working to decouple what I do from a capitalist/production mindset but let me tell you, it is freaking hard. Like pull my hair out hard. Feeling like what I make and how fast I make it as a measure of my worth as a person and artist is hard to release and keep out of my head.

If my job is to take my experiences and then create things that reflect and synthesize those experiences, that’s not an easy point A to point B extrapolation. It takes time to do that and sometimes that looks like nothing at all from the outside and even maybe a little bit from the inside too. Learning to lean into it and allow it all to flow and take the time it takes is the work of a lifetime.

In this age of asking the computer to make a thing for you and it taking less than five minutes, why am I doing this? I think about this a lot. Why would I go to the trouble when supposedly so many things are so easy? And it comes back to this: I’m not a machine. I don’t need or want to experience the world like a machine. (That’s kinda a dumb sentence in the first place because machines can’t even experience the world because they aren’t conscious. AI usage has caused a lot of chatter about these machines being conscious. They aren’t. They have the structure of language without any actual thought behind it so don’t believe the hype. )

Being human is hard and I know that in this moment in history it sometimes feels excruciating. But treating our minds and bodies like machines won’t fix it. I think it’ll actually make the problem worse and make us miserable in the process.

So what can I do?

Lean into the slowness and the meandering nature of my work. Allow for the ebb and flow of some weeks being low or zero production weeks. Allowing my brain and body to rest in the knowledge that it will come back around with the answers to the questions I’m asking. Continually remind myself that going slow isn’t a personal failing or that it means I’ll never get anything finished.

I’m sitting on the idea for my next In search of Alchemy piece because I haven’t had time to do a bit more research. Or to start the supply sort out of the yarn bags in my art closet. Or to make a batch of avocado pit dye to dye some canvas. There’s all these setup steps that have to happen and those take big chunks of time that I haven’t had lately. Feeling stymied in the progress of this work is what’s caused this to bubble up for me.

Maybe you are feeling this pressure too? If you are struggling, I see you. Take a breath. Go outside and look at the grass and trees. Take a book and read outside for thirty minutes. Just be. Just be here now. Rest in the moment long enough for you to gather your strength for the next thing you want to work on. You are not a machine either. And I’m pretty glad about that.

Thank you for stopping in! Nothing on my website is AI generated. Not the art I make and not the words I write. If you’d like to keep up with what I’m working on, I’d love to have you as a newsletter subscriber. I include blog posts from here, cool things I find online, and occasionally pictures of my dogs. Sign up here. Or if you want to drop me a note to catch me up on what you’re working on, email me here.