Hello there! It's Jocelyn Mathewes from my studio in Appalachia. And I took a massive (rather nice) break from making work over the last few weeks.
This felt out of character for me.
I’m the type of creator that firmly believes in showing up regardless of whether or not you feel inspired. I block time on my calendar to work in my studio to ensure that I don’t let the urgency of the everyday bleed too far in to deep work. As Clarissa Pinkola Estés has said, “Art is not meant to be created in stolen moments only.”
But one day I woke up, saw my studio time on the calendar, and said, “Screw it, I’m tired.” Instead, I took my ease and followed whatever my gut wanted me to work on. I didn’t want to force it in this season, so I stopped.
Later that day I discovered that creator Elise Cripe had a similar but much larger and long-form experience with a sense of grinding in creativity, specifically on the internet. Hugely successful entrepreneur Emily McDowell also recently published her own story about going mega-viral in her newsletter.
It made me wonder how much of this feeling is winter, or life stage, or changes to the internet, or changes to the economics of creativity, or even just the unfortunate side-effects of our hyper connected life. I’ll never know the cause of my desire to pause, but it was nice to know I was not alone.
inside the pause
So what have I been working on? Small, personal projects that had been set aside. Spending lots time with my family. Singing Christmas carols. Playing Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. It’s been immensely restorative and clarifying
I’m fortunate to have a very full life (a job, three kids, married to an Orthodox priest, organizing in my local art community, my dining room gallery, etc.). So taking this break helped me to think and connect to my work and studio fresh eyes. Some of my works-in-progress still light me up. Others are clearly meh. Some of the projects and supplies in my cabinets are definitely no longer needed.
After doing a studio and project purge, my next phase of making is going to look like this—
xo,
jocelyn
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Really relating to this. My break has showed me I need more space for play and ease throughout the year. I think the hustle culture is so strongly permeating our lived experience we forget the part of being an artist that is simply living life. The times I’ve taken away from my art always inform it in unexpected ways.