Regulate, then make your art anyway
Care for yourself so you can create. We need you more than ever, Artist.
The world is on proverbial fire again. I’m losing it, personally. Between the two girls getting shot outside of Stonewall, “Alligator Alcatraz,” and The Big Disastrous Bill, I am LOSING IT. And yet I remain oddly calm, warmed by the reminder that I have lived through many global crises and historic shitshows. At least it’s not as shocking as it used to be and I seem to have a better foundational understanding of survival. Surviving 2020 was the ultimate deep dive into my values of communal care, mutual aid, and finding an authentic way to show up to the ongoing fight for Liberation. It solidified for me that “none of us are free until we are All free.”
One of the biggest lessons of that time for my creative practice was that someone cannot be dissociated and creative simultaneously.
The beginnings of 90 Day Magic started with back pain, high anxiety and the desire to heal. Every creative practice has required me to use my body and therefore find my limits with my back pain. Baking, Photography, Painting. I had to believe that there are different ways, more regulated, sustainable ways, to engage my body in the things I love the most. I was tired of being in pain after a creative sprint. Eventually I had to acknowledge that my anxiety has kept me from my creative practice. This led me to yoga and meditation (two birds, one stone). Add in a heavy reliance on cannabis for both and I finally learned what regulation felt like in my body.
In the last few years I’ve been reflecting on the nervous system and diving deeper into what “regulation” even is. I still have a lot of learned stigma around cannabis, even though I personally consider it a life-saving drug. Lately I’ve been thinking about the other drugs that run through my system- the natural hormones that are released with stress and trauma as I continue to weigh the costs and benefits of using cannabis.
This is my brain (and probably yours) on Existential Dread.
My mind says “we’re fine.” Cortisol says, “sure— but just in case, here’s a surge of ancient survival chemicals to make sure you can outrun the lingering threats.” I am happy and lucky to report that most things in my personal life are at an all-time high. I’m thrilled in my home, in love and grateful for my partner, finding balance with movement and nourishment, and I have the ability to start dialing back my work to accommodate a need for slowness, art and presence. I feel immense gratitude for everything it took to deliver me to this moment and privileged when I look at the state of the world. And even still, I know I’m one medical emergency away from bankruptcy, I have no prospect of owning a home in the next 5 years, and I just got insurance after a four year stint of “winging it”. I’m scared for my immigrant neighbors, I’m scared for my queer community, I’m scared for future generations.
To hold all of these as truths feels impossible. To accept that I’m in a new place in my life where life feels exciting, hopeful and grounded feels naive and willfully ignorant. But to look at the world news every day and try to imagine any future at all feels nihilistic and futile. More than anything, one thought keeps me up at night- what if artists stop making their work because they are stuck in fear?
How do we continue to write and make art in the midst of what feels like Total Societal Collapse?
When I think about the potential of a world void of expression, I feel like we will have lost the war. Our creativity is our humanity— pure expression of an emotion, a moment, someone saying, “I was here.”
Somewhere in the midst of asking this question and jotting down potential answers and reminders to myself about how Artists Hold The Vision For the Future, I developed some strange bumps on my skin. At first I thought they might just be pimples- the kind that must’ve been lurking deep under the skin for months or even years and are finally being released. I’ve been on a movement journey doing many very sweaty workouts every week for the last few months, so it made sense. But then they started itching. And then more started appearing in strange places- my back, the side of my leg, above my eyebrow- I showed my partner and they suggested it might be shingles.
This is my brain on Hypervigilance. Immune system activity is like a grief sensor. Itching as grief. Bumps as alert. When you’ve lived a long time in threat, even goodness can make the body flinch.
Yes, histamines are a literal immune responder, but they are also part of the body’s emotional activation system. People with chronic stress or trauma histories often have hypersensitive histamine responses. Your body becomes over-responsive to stimuli as if it’s still under threat.
For a few years I had to take a break from my movement practice. I was having intense panic attacks every time I hit the yoga mat and I didn’t want to push through and potentially ruin a nearly life-long relationship with yoga. The endorphins and oxytocin, the dopamine I’m now receiving in my body after years of not allowing myself to move and get those juicy, hard-won workout hormones, are now overwhelming my system and the change is so big it feels like a threat.
My mind says “we’re fine, we’re safe, you can relax now” but my body is saying, “are you sure?”
All of this has led to my big breakthrough that the nervous system is wildly important to tend to in order to find your creative flow and a sustainable creative practice. Nervous system regulation has long been a part of my practice but I haven’t always called it that. The shingles are really driving this idea home that even when I’m “doing everything I want to be doing” it doesn’t guarantee that my wiring is ready to receive it (yet).
In the past I’ve written about the mind through the lens of battling anxiety and depression, navigating the battlefield of past traumas and present triggers. I’m happy to report that the systems I’ve put in place for myself hold a lot of that at bay these days. But now I find myself at a new threshold of needing to hold an immense amount of joy and love in my personal life and also bear witness to the fucking atrocities in the world. I refuse to look away, I refuse to go limp and complacent, but it’s short-circuiting my system to hold both truths.
This is my brain on Joy. Oxytocin, dopamine, and endorphins. The Good stuff. Turns out, oxytocin can be destabilizing too. Intimacy after emotional isolation is still change and our little lizard brains don’t much like change, positive or negative.
I’ve heard myself telling my friends lately about this idea that manifestation is preparing the nervous system to receive the things we call in and not let your system sabotage you just because of the “threat of change.” The lizard brain perceives all change as threat so sometimes we self-sabotage because the system is not prepared to receive the Goodness. It was probably the third time I was telling someone about this “breakthrough” that I started to think about it in my own life.
I’m calling in Slower, Softer, Tenderness. I’m calling in Flow and Options and Rest as a Radical Act. I’m calling in my Authentic Offerings so that I may continue to show up for my community in ways that are true to my talents, gifts and capacity. Now that I am at a resting point, now that I have my basic needs met and I can step out of Survival, I can imagine the next chapter and it is one of Slowness. And yet I’ve been hustling hard to finish projects, make the money, make the art, nest in our new home, tend to my people and launch a new business. I have not been doing the work to show my system that I am serious about slowing down. I have not adjusted my life to accommodate the Slower Frequency I am calling in.
Side note: My whole problem with manifestation as a concept is that it doesn’t account for systemic oppression or trauma histories. But this new framing of nervous system regulation does. Regulation requires titration- little bits at a time, slowly growing your capacity to be Present so as not to shock the system. If you have thoughts or comments on this theory/these ideas, please comment them! I want to hear from you!
This is my call to Artists and Creatives to REGULATE, AND THEN MAKE YOUR ART ANYWAY.
Move your body, tend to your mind, nurture your soul.
THEN MAKE YOUR ART.
A sneak peak at my latest two paintings in my Colors as Companions Series.
I apologize that it’s taken me weeks to get this post out but I clearly had some stuff to process and digest before I could serve it up to you. This whole experience I’m describing (somewhat disjointedly) has brought me to the realization that the “Mind” module of 90 Day Magic needs to expand to include the nervous system and that 90 Day Magic is really a tool for regulation. I’ve been using the phrase “sustainable creative practice” for so long and searching for more language around what it really means and it’s this: you cannot be creative and dissociated at the same time. To be dysregulated and creative will only burn you out. And if you burn out on your creative practice, you rob the world of your authentic offerings.
Find Joy wherever you can.
Care for yourself so you can create.
We need you more than ever, Artist.