Building A Life That Has Room For Art

Many adults believe they don't make art for one simple reason.

They think there isn't room for it.

Between work, family, responsibilities, and everything else that life demands, creativity can feel like a luxury.

But here's the truth.

Artists rarely find time for art.

They build lives that leave space for it.

Not perfectly, not all at once, but slowly, intentionally.

In this episode, we're talking about how to build a life that actually has room for creativity, even if your schedule is already full.

Foreign.

Hey there, friend.

This is Timothy Chemo Brian, your head instigator for Create Art podcast, where I bring my over 30 years, 30 in the arts and education world to help you tame your inner critic and create more than you consume.

Now, I've been doing this new series, Create anyway, for a while now, and in this episode, we're gonna talk about, hey, you've already got a lot of stuff going on in your life, and now I'm asking you to throw some art in there, too, just for giggles and whatnot.

But there is a way to do it, and we're gonna talk about that in this episode.

So let's get it started.

So I know I was giggling in that first section there, and I'm still giggling because of something I did when I started the recording is I didn't have my microphone up to my mouth, and I started talking.

I was like, oh, got to do that.

Hey, you got a.

You got a blooper there.

I told you what the blooper was.

You didn't get to see it, but that's okay.

That's all right.

That's why I'm so giggly this morning.

Anyhow, my first talking point for us here today is that art rarely appears in free time.

Now, how many of you have free time?

I have some on Sunday mornings.

Not really, because at the time that I record this, the weather is really nice.

So what that means is I've got to go do yard work.

Yay.

And I've got other family responsibilities I need to do today.

Come Monday, 6am I am right behind my computer for work and doing that till 2, 2, 2, 30 in the afternoon.

And then the kids come home and I'm recording other episodes for other podcasts that I'm working on.

And pretty much from 6 in the morning till 10 at night, always doing something.

So if your life is kind of like mine.

And remember, I have twins.

I get the stereo, papa.

They're breathing on me.

They're touching me.

They're in the same universe as I am.

Free time.

I used to have that before I had wife and kids.

But most adults imagine that they'll make art when life slows down.

And I'm still waiting for that to happen.

I don't know about you, but my life hasn't slowed down.

But life almost never slows down on its own.

And creative work usually begins when people intentionally carve out a small pocket of time rather than waiting for the perfect moment.

So I carve out I discusses with my wife and she is fully on board with it.

Two times during the week.

Friday night I go to a poetry reading and Sunday morning I get to quote, unquote, sleep in.

Which usually means I'll be in bed at.

I'll get out of bed at 6:30 in the morning versus 4 in the morning and.

And then I'll come down to the man cave and do some recording.

Throughout the week I'll find time where I can do some painting, do some writing, do some music.

But yeah, I'm carving time where I can in order to create the art that I'm creating.

Because I don't get a block of free time.

I don't even know what I would do with a block of free time.

But if you're like me, free time is hard to come by.

So we need to actually look at our entire schedule and go, okay, for this 15 minutes, for this hour, for this half hour, whatever it is, I'm going to create, I'm going to go into my studio, lock the door and let life happen on the outside.

And I'm going to go ahead and create on the inside.

So we need to carve that time.

And I know you can do it.

I know I do.

So I hinted at what I'm going to be talking about next, which is starting with small sustainable time blocks.

Now creativity can happen in a minute, a second, an hour, eight hours, whatever it be.

But you may need to start off with a small time block.

Maybe that's 15 minutes, maybe it's 30 minutes.

Maybe it's okay, you go to bed a little bit later or you get up a little bit earlier.

Maybe you just do it on the weekend.

Whatever it is, that small time that you spend on your creativity will reap big rewards later on.

Because it's not about the time, it's about the consistency.

It's about continually showing up for yourself.

So time is an illusion.

And as one of my favorite authors, Douglas Adams, says, lunchtime doubly.

So don't worry about how much time, just put it in your schedule, make it something that is consistent and show up and do that creativity for however long you can.

Maybe it is only 15 minutes and maybe you can only do it on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Great, cool.

Then do that.

At least it is something.

At least you're getting in the reps.

It's like going to the gym.

I my personal trainer, he was like, listen, if all you can do is come to the gym, get changed, go out into the gym, do no exercises, go back into the locker room and get changed and go home, that's fine.

At least you're building it in to your life.

And then the next time you go into the gym, maybe you go on that treadmill for 15 minutes and then you go home.

And then the next time you go on the treadmill for 15 minutes and you lift some weights and then you go home and the next time you come in, you go on the treadmill for 15 minutes, lift some weights, swim two laps and go home.

That's how you build the consistency, that's how you build the practice.

And some days you revert back to, I made it to the gym and now I'm going to go home.

That's fine.

You're going to have those days.

You're going to show up and something is going to be exploding in the kitchen and you need to address it.

And it's going to take more than the 15 minutes you've allotted.

Okay, you showed up.

Something happened, Life happens.

But you showed up that day.

So we start off with those small steps and then we get bigger and bigger until we're satisfied with the amount of time.

And you can do art for 10, 20, 30 years.

Gosh, I know somebody that's been doing art for 30 years.

But sometimes it's just that 15 minutes, an hour and you're done, you're good, you got what you needed out of that.

That's the important thing.

Get what you need out of it.

And if it's just showing up, picking up the paintbrush, putting it back down, picking up the pen, writing the date on your notebook and then putting it away.

Okay, you showed up.

Good for you.

We'll move on to the next day.

Okay, so now you've shown up.

You got the pen in hand, paintbrush in hand, whatever it is.

You sent the spouse and the kids away to a movie for the afternoon.

You've got the time we need to back up a step.

Let's think about our environment.

Let's think about where we're creating at.

You need to have an environment that supports your creativity.

Maybe it's a small desk, maybe It's a sketchbook.

Maybe it's a guitar on the stand instead of in the case.

Make it visible.

Have a visual cue for yourself that, hey, this is my spot to create.

You know, I have my man cave here, which I, hey, I'm very lucky to have you know it.

I used to live in studio apartments, so the whole apartment was my space.

But now I have wife and I have my kids and I have a nice house and I took over the basement and that is my man cave.

My wife has her.

She shed up on the.

Up on the second floor where she can do some crafts and art and all that kind of stuff.

Usually she ends up in the living room on the couch.

As a matter of fact, yeah, I'm recording this on a Sunday, Saturday night, we sit and we watch a TV show or a movie and she's sitting there right at the coffee table doing diamond paintings.

And that's her creativity.

That's what she does.

But yes, she has her own place.

I have my own place.

And that's the thing.

Have that environment that has the visual cue that this is the place where I create.

And that way everyone can see it.

Everyone in your house can see it and let folks know, hey, listen, let's not mess stuff up here.

This is where you are going to be creating.

And it's a great example for your kids.

If you have kids, it's a great example.

You're showing them that art matters, that it's important, so that way they don't have to go through the same things that we did when.

When we were coming up in the world and people were telling us, oh, artists just, yeah, it's frivolous.

Why even do it?

You're not going to make a million dollars off of it.

I got told that many times, and especially when I went for my degrees.

People were like, oh, with that degree, you'll be qualified to go, would you like fries with that?

That.

No, I don't do that.

I have a big boy job and a lot of responsibilities, and that's because I have a degree.

Didn't matter what it was in.

I just happen to have a theater degree.

Go go crazy with that.

But set up your area.

Maybe it's a shrine.

Maybe it's in the closet.

Whatever it is, maybe it's your favorite notebook.

Maybe you're a writer and you have like a mini laptop or little Chromebook that is just for you to write in.

Done.

You've invested your money, you're investing your time.

You got to invest your space to make sure that happens.

Okay?

We have our space, we have our visual cues.

And I hinted a little bit at this in the previous section, but now we got to communicate your creative time.

A lot of adults feel guilty about protecting their creative time because they worry conflicts with family or work responsibilities.

But creativity becomes sustainable when people communicate clearly with those around them.

But what that time means.

So communicate that with your spouse, if you have a spouse, with your kids, if you have those friends, family, even work.

Maybe you take that afternoon coffee break or the morning coffee break or part of that lunchtime and go and just shut everything else off and do the work.

Maybe that's what you got to do.

Maybe in your desk at work, you have a notebook there or a sketch pad there or a journal there of some sort where you can do with watercolors or markers or colored pencils or something along those lines, and you put it into a journal, and then you bring that home and go, oh, that was the idea that I had at work.

I'm going to work on that at home.

But communicate that creative time.

Let people know it's important to you.

Treat it like a business meeting.

You're not going to get fired if you don't do it, but you're really short changing your creativity if you don't do it.

And with jobs, there's jobs out there.

You can get another job, but you can't get another.

You can't get another creative spark.

You got to think about what's most important to you.

Now, I'm not saying demand from your boss that 15 minutes in the morning.

I cannot be.

If it's emergency, it's emergency.

If it needs to be done, it needs to be done.

Make sure you're fulfilling your responsibilities.

So I'm not saying shirk off your responsibilities, but you also got to have the mindset that this is important for me.

This is going to improve my resilience.

It's going to improve my productivity at work, my ability to be there for my family.

It's going to help me feel better about myself.

It's going to put me in a better mood.

So prioritize it and communicate why it's important.

Because most people may not understand unless they may just go, he's just sitting there drawing.

He's not doing his job.

No, he's sitting there, or she's sitting there recharging, so that way they can do the job even better.

All right, for our last section here, we're going to be talking about how art becomes part of your life and not Separate from it.

Our goal isn't to escape life, to make art, although art can be an escape, and that's perfectly fine.

But we're not checking out of life so we can create art.

The goal is to weave your creativity.

And I'm not a weaver.

I can barely knit.

But we want to weave that into our life, make it a part of the life.

Work life, home life, social life, to what you already have.

It's not to separate it.

It's not to escape.

Makes it a part of it.

That way, it makes us a better person, a more resilient person, more productive person.

And when all that happens, art stops feeling like an extrovert.

I gotta do this.

It starts feeling like a natural part of who you are.

Just recently, I was talking to my wife about this.

I was talking.

She was like, hey, yeah, you're doing all this creativity stuff.

And I'm like, I'm not really feeling it.

I'm feeling it like it's more like a job than something I enjoy doing.

Even podcasting.

I was like, man.

And there was other things going on in my life that.

That were happening that were the real cause of my dissatisfaction with podcasting and making art and feeling like this is all the job, like this is all a con job, and I'm really wasting my time.

There was other things going on, and it took me a couple of days to figure it out and just reset myself and go, no, I create art because I enjoy creating art.

It makes me a better person, makes me more resilient.

So when all this crap happens out in the world, I can deal with it better again.

We're not replacing things.

We are incorporating or integrating.

We're integrating it into our life so that way we can't tell where one ends and where one begins.

It's all part of your life.

So that's the goal here for this episode for you.

All right.

That's all I got for you here on this episode.

I want to thank you so much for joining me here at Create, our podcast and our series, Create.

Anyway, you know, the big thing is that we want to incorporate this practice or we want to integrate this practice into our life.

And I've shown you a few ways you can do that.

We take the small steps.

We set up our environment.

Just by taking those small steps, we can start incorporating it.

And then I'm just thinking off the top of my head here.

If you put it in your calendar, a lot of times, things that we can manage.

Things that we can measure, we can manage.

So manage it.

Put it into your calendar that might be something that you might need to do and then communicate it with everybody.

These are all things that we talked about here.

So if you found this of interest or if you know somebody that would find this of interest, feel free to share it with them.

Whatever podcast app you're using or if you're watching this on YouTube, it has a share button there.

I can't press it for you because I don't know your friend that needs this, your friend that needs this.

So make sure you share it with them and let them know, hey, listen, this guy seems to know what he's talking about and maybe this will help you.

Feel free to go ahead and do that.

If you would like to leave your thoughts on the show, make commentary on it, any critiques that you have, I am very open to that.

You want to tell me about what's going on in your neck of the woods?

I'd love to hear that.

Or if you want to appear on the show, we can make that happen to email me.

Timothy Create Art.

Podcast.com is where you can grab me at.

And let's start that conversation up.

Speaking about sharing, I run another podcast.

It's called Find a Podcast about and you can find that at findapodcast about xyz.

And that's where I help my listeners there outsmart the algorithm and find their next binge worthy podcast.

Check it out for yourself.

And I also run a business, it's called TKB Podcast Studio and you can find it at tkbpodcaststudio.com I know, very creative, isn't it?

Anyhow, I help my clients there lead through the noise with quiet professionalism.

Basically, I help people start up their own podcast and share their vision with the world and I can do that for you.

Get in contact with me over there at the website and you can also look at a portfolio of works that I'm doing there.

So check it out for yourself.

All right, I'm gonna let you get on with your day.

I'm gonna get on with mine.

Thank you for, for taking time out of your day to listen to this podcast or to watch it on YouTube.

I definitely appreciate that.

Now I'm going to challenge you.

Go out there, tame that inner critic, create more than you consume and make some art for somebody you love and make some time to make that art for somebody you love.

Yourself.

I'll talk with you next time.

It.