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Lewis Hyde distinguishes between work that you can force yourself to do and labor that won’t be scheduled
quote
He suggests “groundwork”
Jocelyn Glei suggests groundwork is…
It’s not a matter of having so much push that you force yourself to do the work. But it’s also not about having so much pull that you are compelled to do the work as if by some magical force.
It’s more that we need the push and the pull in equal measure, such that both contribute to the eventual getting things done.
It’s not a matter of having so much push that you force yourself to do the work. But it’s also not about having so much pull that you are compelled to do the work as if by some magical force.
It’s more that we need the push and the pull in equal measure, such that both contribute to the eventual getting things done.
Or as Adam Moss describes, we need to have “child and adult in pretty much equal balance.”
Flow argument
Growing from→
Sprouts in this PostRainer Maria Rilke struggled with the loss of his creativity in the years surrounding the first world war. Only years before he had been writing what he thought was the best poetry of his life but with the horrors of war, he found his inspiration had disappeared. In one letter to his friend, Sophie Liebknecht, who was the wife of a jailed Marxist, Rilke contemplated, "Perhaps my indescribable suffering at being unable to produce is my most accurate response to the present situation, and I would sooner submit to that suffering than make any concession in the essential."
Indeed in drawn out hard times, perhaps it is unreasonable to expect that we have desired amounts of inspiration, creativity, and curiosity. Perhaps that is the most accurate response to our reality.
Indeed in drawn out hard times, perhaps it is unreasonable to expect that we have desired amounts of inspiration, creativity, and curiosity. Perhaps that is the most accurate response to our reality.
It’s not a matter of having so much push that you force yourself to do the work. But it’s also not about having so much pull that you are compelled to do the work as if by some magical force.
It’s more that we need the push and the pull in equal measure, such that both contribute to the eventual getting things done.
It’s more that we need the push and the pull in equal measure, such that both contribute to the eventual getting things done.
Lewis Hyde distinguishes between work—that you can force yourself to do—and labor that won’t be scheduled. With creative labor, you can only choose to do the groundwork, the labor is on it’s own schedule.
To lay the groundwork for flow—for falling into that magic place of doing creative work—we can lay the groundwork to prepare for the creative state. This is often tending to ourselves and maintaining of care so that we are ready for the creative work. The groundwork is all the stuff we can do—without feeling like it or being inspired—to keep showing up.