Wild Woman of Queens: Notes on Urban Creativity from across the East River.

Oh Baby, Baby

Man my head hurts. It is a pounding that keeps creeping up on me when I least expect it. It starts with a slight stiffness in my neck and then spreads up the back of my skull flowing over the top down my forehead into my eyes. Spreading like a wildfire I can't contain. Today I slept for 3 1/2 hours the world was spinning and the headache creeping. When can I create with this insistent pain?

The distractions pile up and just when you think you can sneak a moment something happens. But that is what you must do. Sneak in some time, hack out chunks of time from the mass of distractions to be the creative creature you were meant to be. When I am not engaged in some form of creativity I am not a happy being at all. I do get tight and the headache appears as a dark reminder that I have better things to do then suffer for my art. I have art to do. Even if it is in small bits in the middle of day create I must. Still I am not fully engaged in art. It still eludes me. I am a creator in short spurts and stops. Is this any kind of creative life?

I don't think so. I believe I could do better. I could be better involved in my life. My life could be art and not just a dry day with bursts of life.This is my struggle. My creative distraction. I want to be creative but I push it off then question the reason why. It is so much easier to be in the question of why I don't create then do the creation. Easier, safer more comfortable to continue to ask why then to get my hands dirty, to feel the scratch of the paper under my pen, or smell paint.

But my headache gets the best of me and I sleep to ease the pain rather then write. This is the challenge in front of us all. How to create our life and not have it create us in image that is not life sustaining. I would like be fed differently to live more completely. Pondering the why of not creating keeps me safe. Each day I push against this looming question so that I may be a creator.

Here I am. Headache and all I am writing.

Sandra Lee Schubert is a creative vagabond, a poet, writer and dabbler in the arts and online entrepreneur. She co-facilitates the Wild Angels Poets and Writers Group at the historic Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine. She is also the creator of the e-course, Writing for Life: Creating a Story of Your Own. Visit her blog: Email her info@writing4life.com or @writing4life via twitter.