Turning the phrase “Out with the old, in with the new!” backwards makes sense as we near 2021.  Twenty-twenty turned our lives upside down with lockdowns, restrictions, remote learning, the disappearance of hugs, social distancing, and massive isolation. We hope for a return back to a life, post vaccine, when going to a movie, a restaurant, a museum, a concert —are a few of the “old” we want back. 

While I waited in line today at the post office to purchase stamps for my New Year’s cards, the woman in front of me spun around, shoved up her hand in an angry back off gesture. Even though I was not bridging the 6’ social distancing divide, her personal radar set off a signal that I was. When inhaling air from strangers, even friends and family, could land us in a body bag, anxiety under a cloud of uncertainty rages.

When life feels so strained, I need to “chillax” — chill out and relax. Streaming episodes one after the other, taking a walk, baking bread, re-organizing the closets for the fourth time, can all help. Distractions. Antidotes to high stress for me are to slow down, watch my breathing, and find some distraction that puts me in a creative space.

Creativity Unexpressed Turns to Poison
Creativity is as natural to all people as the capacity to move or speak or think. When that urge is squelched, or discouraged, poison results. That poison erupts as violence toward others when it’s externalized, or toward oneself in the form of disease when internalized.

Whether I’m writing about Botticelli’s struggle in my debut novel Botticelli’s Muse to find his own vision that eschewed religious dictates to paint his most iconic works, or a contemporary short story about a woman abandoning her marriage to find her own path, or a personal essay about claiming independence and creative life after children have left the nest, it’s always about the hunt to unearth that creativity, and to find the courage to express it. 

The best antidote for depression and worry is the immersion into one’s creative nature. Even for a brief period. That’s why I tell myself and my students to start small. Write for 15 minutes a day. Paint 15 minutes a day. Make a place in your home, no matter how small, for a project you’ve been wanting to bring to life your whole life.

Take an action today to honor your creative promptings. You will live a healthier, longer life because of it.

Joan Didion has defined a writer as "a person whose most absorbed and passionate hours are spent arranging words on pieces of paper. I write entirely to find out what's on my mind, what I’m thinking, what I'm looking at, what I'm seeing and what it means, what I want and what I’m afraid of." She has also said that "all writing is an attempt to find out what matters, to find the pattern in disorder. . . The scene that you see in your mind finds its own structure; the structure dictates the arrangement of the words.... All the writer has to do really is to find the words."

Definition of a Writer from The Longman Dictionary or Poetic Terms

Writer in the words of William Stafford, “not so much someone who has something to say as [he/she is] someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them.”