Rediscovering comfort and creativity
Leaning into the things that feel good
Hey friends,
It's raining as I write this. It's 8.25am and I'm in bed, the lamp casting a gold hue over the room. I'm sitting under the covers with the cat curled up at my feet, typing on my phone.
Outside, I can hear the sound of the rain and birds chirping, a reminder that there's just a single wall between me and nature. It's all a construct. We are from the same stuff as trees and flowers. We live by the same seasons, under the same sun and stars.
I start most of my days this way at the moment. The ritual before the rising - even if the rising is slow.
My body is craving comfort.
I want to wear soft fabrics; dressing gowns and slippers. To warm my cold hands on hot chocolate and spiced chai. I want to spend my nights buried in books, and my days working from bed.
Perhaps it’s the literal seasons; the cold nights and darker mornings. Perhaps it's the metaphorical ones - my body craving an antidote to all the discomfort that comes from being a creative, starting a new business, and bearing witness to my mother's descent into late-stage Alzheimer’s, albeit from the other side of the world.
On paper, there's no reason I can’t give into these wants and wishes. Inside, though, there's a fight between the conditioned part of me and the soft animal that wants to love what it loves.
I have a strange relationship with comfort.
For years, I denied it. I wanted to swim in the depths of everything; to run towards danger instead of away from it. I wanted to be on the front line, feeling it all. Letting the discomfort of it all remind myself that I was still alive.
Subconsciously or consciously, I suppressed anything that could be seen as comfortable, pushing it down in favour of adventures. I saw the desire for comfort as a weakness, rather than a worthiness.
Back then, my idea of living a good life meant waking up somewhere new every day; finding fresh adventures and a new version of myself in the world that awaited outside wherever I found myself; ticking experiences and countries off like a check-box exercise.
I was also vehemently independent, and determined to build an entire creative career, from scratch, with no one to help me. I didn't want the comfort of help. I wanted to feel the sting of it all. To carry the burden of the failures as much as the successes.
At 23, grief pushed me to the ends of myself and the ends of the earth, kicking me out of the nest like a mother bird.
Now, at 34, it's brought me home. It's to a new home - on the other side of the earth from where I was raised - along with a new career, a new community, a new path, and a new direction, but a home all the same.
After years of intentionally being out in the cold, it's interesting to have to acclimatise yourself to a home again; to rediscover comfort in a creative practice, like writing or photography.
For much of my wandering days, writing paid my bills. As the main thing that kept the dream alive, I had an uncomfortable relationship with it and all the pressure, deadlines, pitches, and rejections that came with it. In shaping my creativity to become the carrier of my life, I backed it into a corner. I even stopped writing in my journal.
Writing was work, and that was that.
Photography, too. It started as a hobby but turned into more of a compulsion. As someone with total aphantasia - no visual (or sensory) memory - I can't recall mental images of where I've been.
Every day I woke up someplace new, I wanted to document it; to create a physical memory bank of all the things I'd never be able to remember otherwise.
As a creative, though, I also wanted to make art with my camera. To capture scenes and light and magical moments of life on the road. And I also wanted to take photos to sell with my articles - both to illustrate the point I was trying to make, and to maximise my income. Many editors added payment for photos.
The three didn’t cross over very well.
Each time I saw a scene and pulled out my camera, I'd have to think “Am I taking this for me, for art, or work?”. I usually ended up taking multiple shots, and then not doing anything with any of them. It was overwhelming.
Even for someone who thrived on discomfort, trying to sort through hundreds of thousands of photos became too uncomfortable. As did trying to create for pleasure. I stopped drawing or reading. I felt like my creativity was a finite resource.
I later discovered the issue wasn't creativity, it was energy. I hadn't realised it at the time, but I hadn't “hacked” life like I thought I had.
Sure, I was happy on the surface, and life was exciting and fun and I was getting to do things people would have “killed for” - as they often told me - but I was actually actively existing in a constant state of flight and fight.
I’d reprogrammed my body to become reliant on all this external stimulation. I'd flooded it with dopamine and figured I could just use that as fuel rather than the usual things people need to replenish their energy.
In the same way long-term travellers can suffer wanderlust burnout, the rush of landing an article or getting paid for some photos quickly wore off, too.
Instead, it was replaced with fear:
Will the editor like it?
What am I going to write about next?
Where is my next paycheck coming from?
When is this all going to come crashing down?
Eventually, of course, it did.
Though I'd say it was more of a slow crumbling than a crashing; spearheaded by a coin flip, a flight, a pandemic, and an Alzheimer’s diagnosis.
Almost overnight, I went from having full control over my physical experience of the world to feeling like I had no control at all; stuck in one place with no working rights, my career slipping through my fingers, and my mum slipping away on the other side of the planet.
It took a depressingly long time for me to adjust to the physical comfort and mental discomfort of a settled life - especially as I grappled with the guilt that I hadn't given up my life, my partner, and my one shot at permanent residency to rush back to my mum's side.
For a long time, I felt unworthy of comfort.
Joe, my monster of a rescue cat, helped me immensely with that. He helped me realise that there's nothing morally wrong with being comfortable. Comfort isn't something earned or given on merit.
It also took years - and many teachers, courses, workshops, mentors, and practices - for me to learn that, even though I'd used and abused my creativity, I was still worthy of using it for pleasure and comfort. That leaning into the comfort of creativity was actually regenerative, not degenerative.
I also had to learn that even though I hadn't had a “real” job for 10 years, I was still deserving of the comfort of having my own business. And just because I was fortunate enough to work for myself, didn't mean I had to work 60-hour weeks at my desk and break myself for the privilege.
It's taken a long time - and a big support network - for me to untangle the mess I'd made of my nervous system. To find comfort in my life; in waking up in the same four walls, and walking the same streets.
To let go of the guilt and the conditioned part of me that says I don't deserve this; to let go of the ingrained story that I operate best in survival mode, and instead to rewrite it to say I actually do my best work when I'm feeling my best.
To give myself permission to work in bed.
Giving myself permission to work from bed has also helped me reconnect more with my physical body, too.
It's surprisingly easy to forget the importance our bodies play in our lives, our work, our creativity, and our communities. It sounds ridiculous, but with so much of our lives lived in our minds and online, our bodies can often become overlooked.
I've learned that the more comfortable I am in my physical body, the more capacity I have for work, creativity, and caregiving.
The more I tune into what my body wants, the more I want to eat well, exercise, and go outside every day - not just sit at my desk for hours and then numb out in front of the TV, scrolling social media, wishing life were different.
So now, when I feel the guilt seeping in, or hear the sounds of trains and cars rushing by; like cogs in the machine that keep the world we've built turning, I remind myself I'm doing my part - even if it looks different to everyone elses.
I'm over sucking lemons. I'm all in on the lemonade.
Reflection questions
Are you more inclined towards comfort or discomfort?
What motivates you most? Are you more carrot or more stick? How do you feel about that?
What season of life are you in? Does your external world match your internal world? If you feel out of alignment are there ways you could try to bring the two more together? Ie bringing some of winter’s slow, internal retreat, and introspection in the height of summer.
Is there any way you can invite more comfort into your life? How might this look for you?
I feel like it would be remiss of me if I didn't tell you that writing this piece made me quite uncomfortable - more in a sad way than a bad way. I'm grateful for how far I've come, for all the opportunities I've had, and how I've managed to turn my life around so I can now exist in this place of comfort.
However, I'm also a little sad about how long it took me to get here, work out those knots of guilt, and rediscover my creativity, too.
But hey, this life is a journey. I feel like I've been climbing a proverbial mountain these last few months and I keep reaching lookout spots and being like: Oh wow, look how far you've come! But also like, Oh wow, how was that you?! Damn!!!
I guess we all have these things, though. No one is perfect. Life isn't perfect, but we all do what we can to get through. Those moments of reflection, looking back and grimacing a little, and then coming back to the present with a deeper acceptance of all parts of us, warts and all, are a big part of it, too.
All my love,
Cxx
PS: I have room for three more creative mentoring clients over the next two weeks before I head off to Europe. These can be booked as one-offs or as packages with monthly calls and ongoing support via email, voice notes, and/or messages. Visit my website, leave a comment, or hit “reply” for more info!
PPS: All my posts are currently free to read. However, I'm feeling drawn to write a lot more about these experiences of grief, this Alzheimer’s journey, and the ripple effects that it has in every aspect of our lives, along with the more… practical realities of life with a parent with late-stage dementia and being on the other side of the world.
It isn't necessarily “pretty” work, and I know it won't be for everyone - hence wanting the comfort of the paywall - but I do feel like it will have value for anyone going through similar journeys or who are keen to learn more about grief, loss, and the life-death-life initiation. I expect my first post will be about this trip back and how it was to see my mum again after a year, along with some of the challenges we've faced in recent months.
I'll send another reminder nearer the time - I envisage that first post to be out around mid-September. But if you are interested, please let me know!
As always, in the meantime, if you would like to support me and my work, you can sign up for a paid subscription, buy me a coffee, like, comment, share, or even invite a friend to read these posts. Thank you!
PPPS: If you liked this post, you might also like this one: Marshmallows and Nails.
no big thoughts from me other than: i feel this one. i spend a lot of time in my head dissociating, and while it helped me get through life for a long time, it’s not serving me anymore and i too feel like im working on living a more embodied life. but i hate discomfort and am trying to not always make what feels like the safe choice every time…it’s hard.
Loved every part of this Cassie- as I do all your writing. I feel in a similar stage of life although with different life features playing havoc with my enjoyment of the now and not dwelling on sadness of the past, or anxiety for for the future holds…finding my way out of this rut I hope one day may be the feature of something creative if I can harness the inspiration and hold on to an idea longer than a couple of days! I’m still recovering from surgery so doubt I’ll be ready to commit the time to working with you before your trip but I hope to tee something up when you’re back and have capacity xx lots of love xx