When a Creative Outlet No Longer Fits

Reflections on Interview with Noemi Johansson-Miller

“Cooking under duress doesn’t feel particularly creative. There’s this bind that happens when home-related stuff is your hobby. . . . You don’t need to exercise for someone else, but you do need to put food in front of your kid. That can so easily turn it from a source of joy to a chore.” – Noemi Johansson-Miller

I generally think we make too many distinctions about what constitutes a creative outlet. Sometimes creativity gets a narrow rep—thought of only as the “high” arts. My mom makes large-scale hand-woven fiber art, and she has often had to contend with people who call weaving a “craft.” Lawyers rarely consider the creativity used to create their legal briefs. But why should making things with paint be categorized differently than making things with fiber or for litigation?

I love Liz Gilbert’s expansive definition of creativity in Big Magic. Figure skating can be creative. Making up games to play with kids can be creative. Parts of almost any job can be creative. We all have creativity in us, and the particular outlet we choose matters far less than finding a channel for creative energy.

When Noemi spoke last week about how cooking no longer feels creative for her now that she must put food in front of her son multiple times a day, I thought for the first time about the difference between creative outlets that overlap with basic needs and those that don’t. Food preparation may be uniquely susceptible to turning from creative act into chore in the caldron of raising young kids or living a busy life.

But I actually think many of us can relate to Noemi’s experience of no longer finding joy in something we once loved. Any creative outlet can turn into a chore under certain conditions. For me, there are times when legal writing feels truly creative. And there have been months when I’ve been working around the clock and writing the next brief feels only like work. For Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author whose life I write about in After Anne, her feelings of being compelled to write sequel after sequel to Anne of Green Gables took away part of the joy of creating.  

Noemi spoke to the seasons of life. A time to plant. A time to harvest and preserve. A time when cooking is a creative retreat, and a time when it is performed under duress. During a particular season—and having young kids at home may be one of the most particular—old outlets may no longer bring joy. But that doesn’t mean creative energy is gone. It just needs a different channel. Noemi talked about taking joy in the simple act of arranging cucumbers and radishes on a platter for her birthday. For me, in particularly grueling work months, sometimes my creative outlet is five minutes spent journaling at the end of the day. Or writing a short awful poem that no one will ever see.

The trick is accepting the season and finding what does work, rather than letting creativity die on the vine—and looking for the time when an old outlet may feel new again. As Noemi put it, “Nothing feels carefree anymore. But I don’t feel doomy about that because again, I’m following in my mom’s footsteps. She took 25 years off from [food preservation] projects and found them again at a time when she was ready to partake.” What a lesson in patience. And in grace. 

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