No One Wants to be in a Box

My creativity and I have an ongoing relationship that can be tumultuous at times. It’s always there, but often elusive and everything is on their terms. My creativity doesn’t like to be held down, placed on the spot or made to feel responsible. Creativity wants my attention, time and patience. They just want to come and go as they please without any responsibilities or obligation. They refuse to be required to earn an income, entertain or frankly consider anyone else’s feelings or plans. Creativity leaves all this emotional labor to me which I happy to do to keep things flowing.

Lately I’ve been making a real go of my art with the very high hopes that it could finance my life. I have been off work for a bit, both by design and happenstance, which has afforded me a certain level of sanity I’d like to continue. It’s been so lovely to allow myself to be bored, regularly interact with other creatives and give my creative relationship some attention. I want more of this life and less of my current employment.

Don’t get me wrong, I love flying around in helicopters helping people but there are parts of my job that are wearing on me. No matter the season transporting patients is uncomfortable; I’m either melting in a flight suit or in fear of losing a digit in the bitter cold. Also, I don’t know if you have noticed but people are bigger and this puts a greater strain on my body. These are things that have creeped up on me over the years. 

That bit of whining above doesn’t begin to compare to the compassion fatigue or vicarious trauma that is so real in jobs like this. People always want to know “what’s the worst thing you’ve seen?” and I know what they want to hear. They want the gory details of a bad trauma, the odd situations humans get themselves into or some type of heroism with a happy ending. I usually oblige with a few anecdotes I have accumulated over the years. The reality is, the worse things I have seen, I don’t talk about. Those children I couldn’t stop from dying, the mothers who wail over their loss and those trapped I couldn’t reach. I’ve now been in the world of EMS for 23 years and I’m just not sure this is my retirement gig anymore. 

Healthcare has changed a lot and COVID put a real strain on the system. The pandemic altered the pay scales, opened up travel jobs and created a staffing vacuum that hasn’t recovered. The healthcare machine gets overwhelmed easily with low staffing and patients need to be transported further and further away. Emergency rooms are filled to the brim due to a lack of suitable admission options and a decrease in available beds. With all of this, I feel the need for change and have been thinking about what skills I poses to move beyond healthcare. 

I turned to art, it is a skill I poses but how can I make it work financially. This started to make me hustle hard mentally in search of a solution. Maybe that graphic novel I’ve been working on could be my meal ticket. What about getting a few children’s books published, maybe that could work. Could I just tighten my belt and live from opportunity to opportunity? Maybe I could work from home providing tech support for Apple (which, as a side note, pays more than I make as a critical care paramedic) and work on art between calls. All of this expectation and pressure sent my creativity into a frenzy. 

The results of all this strain on our relationship and my need for them to perform landed me flat on my face and alone. I’ve had ideas but the flow, the ease of our thing has been out the window. My creativity is over in the corner, arms folded with their back to me refusing to connect or engage. I stomp my feet like a child and attempt to put marks on a paper but it all results in frustration and feeling stuck.

During these moments in the past, I would fear that this was the moment that I would lose creativity forever. As if they would just decide they were over my shit and bail on me forever. Maybe I pushed them too hard this time, held too tight and it’s just over. I have learned, over the years, that this relationship isn’t so petty. 

The connection with them is deeper than that. Creativity wants to be with me, play with me but just doesn’t want to be tied down to the outcome. They are a free soul that wants to connect on it’s own terms, come and go as it pleases but ultimately cherishes me as much as I cherish them.

I have learned to put out a gentle, open hand and when we connect to not squeeze to hard or hold so tight. Our relationship requires openness and room to flow. Creativity, relationships, don’t fit in a box; it is far more expansive than that. It is in that space that we dance and flow.