Slack tide
On creativity and the curse of contentment
Here is a truth that I wish wasn’t so: when things are going well for me and I am generally very content, my writing tends to skid off course and disappear from my life like a loose stone tumbling down the edge of a cliff.
I never intended to be one of those insufferable people who believes they can only create art when in an unregulated emotional state, churning out their best work through clenched jaws or tear-blurred eyes, but it turns out I am just that. I don’t know if it’s because I started writing as a way to process difficult feelings that I didn’t know how to articulate as a child or if I just use happiness as an excuse to procrastinate, but I know that I want it to change. The question is - how?
Before we come to that, I suppose I should talk first about the contentment part.
Since I last wrote several weeks ago, shortly after undergoing a hysterectomy, I have been happier that I have been in a long time. Not only I am I no longer plagued by horrific cramps and bleeding, but the chronic, debilitating back pain that has ruled my life for the best part of a decade has dialled itself down from a roar to a whisper, barely registering as noteworthy upon waking. As a result, I’ve been able to come off of the daily painkillers and anti-inflammatory medication I had been taking for years, sparing my liver and kidneys the damage they were doing. Those benefits alone would have made the surgery worth it a million times over. But there have been more as well.
It not only removed a good deal of physical pain from my life, it has also somehow excised the dark psychic matter that had accumulated alongside it. It’s as if, overnight, I’ve escaped from the hormonal hellscape I’d been lost in for so long, returning me to a state of emotional stability that I forgot was even possible. Even amid the stress of job-hunting, I’ve been cool as a cucumber, taking everything in my stride. Things will work out as they should and It will happen when the time is right are phrases that have come out of my mouth several times, accompanied by the zen smile of a woman I barely recognise in the mirror.
‘Is this what it feels like to be a man?’, I wondered aloud the other day to a friend. She laughed but I was serious. Is it?
I remember learning in biology class that male hormone levels fluctuate gently throughout the day - best represented by an image of shallow hills and flat valleys - but generally return to baseline every 24 hours, allowing yesterday’s bad mood to be forgotten by today. Meanwhile, female hormones operate on a 28-day cycle of fuckwittery, shooting around our bodies like a pinball propelled from its chamber by a spring-loaded piston, sending us on a month-long journey best represented as a loop-de-loop roller coaster with vomit-inducing drops and twists so vicious as to cause whiplash to its occupants.
And look, I’m not post-menopausal, or even mid-menopausal, perhaps. My ovaries were not removed and should, in theory, still be making those hormones. But for whatever reason, I suppose because there is no longer a uterus to which they can direct their demands, they seem to have quieted down and allowed me a period of respite. For all I know the real hell of menopause is around the corner and this is simply a brief interlude, but when you’ve been suffering for so many years already, even a few months’ break is a welcome gift.
Suffice it to say, I’ve been fantastic these past couple months. My social calendar is full, my home life is the best it’s been in ages, and my confidence is high. The only thing getting me down even a little bit is the cliff-drop of creativity that I mentioned, this seeming inability to commit thoughts to paper.
Every week I put ‘Write Subtack post’ on my to-do list and every week I skip over it until everything else is crossed off and, eventually, I turn the page and write it again the following Monday. Ideas for essays linger briefly at the periperhy of my mind, sometimes I even scrawl them down on bits of scrap paper or send myself a text just before I drift off to sleep, but the drive to do anything with them never seems to come. Instead, they slip away quietly, back to the edges from which they came. And despite having an entire novel mapped out and the time now to write it if I so wish, I find myself drawn to doing anything else instead.
It almost feels like an addiction, this contentment, to the point that I am reminded of my heavy partying days, when I couldn’t get enough of many things. This time, at least, my addictions are pure and good. Instead of writing:
I am kicking my way through autumn leaves, inhaling the crisp air with the same level of anticipated euphoria as a drug used to give me.
I am gobbling up books like a meal eaten after a long fast, my appetite for knowledge seemingly insatiable.
I am attending lectures on the cultural history of the moon, joining book clubs, and sweating in saunas with friends and strangers.
I am tromping up hills in the South Downs at weekends, the sea glittering blue-grey in the distance, thankful beyond belief that I get to live here.
I am relistening to the artists whose music was most influential to me in my youth, lying in bed with my eyes closed, letting the feelings of wonder, beauty, and belonging wash over me like they did back then.
I am hanging out with my 17-year-old son when he gets home from college, talking about his day, the world, his future, mine.
And in my new favourite pasttime, I am using a tiny paintbrush to laboriously colour in tiny shapes on a paint-by-numbers canvas while listening to history podcasts, bringing me a middle-aged joy that I am not even embarrassed of.
When I put it all down like that, it suddenly becomes clear to me that I am creating, actually. It may not be in the form I am accustomed to, with words written on pages, but it is artistry all the same.
In creating peace for myself, perhaps I am creating the conditions in which, when the time is right, I will pick up a pen or poise my fingers over the keyboard and it will all flow through and out of me. When might that be though?, impatience has been whispering in my ear. I guess I expected that when the pain and darkness ebbed away, creativity would come rushing straight back in, like the tide returning to the shore. But it doesn’t work like that, I know.
In the short transitional period between the tide turning and the current beginning to flow, the sea pauses. Whether its mistress, the moon, commands it, or it does this of its own volition, I don’t know, but in that pause it gathers the most immense power - the power to change direction. It might only be for a few minutes or it might take several hours, but this period of ‘slack tide’ is a necessary form of rest and recalibration, influenced by a gravitational force that our human minds can barely comprehend.
Despite my conditioned need to rushrushrush into the next thing, the sea is trying to share its secrets with me, if only I’d listen. It’s telling me that the walks and the books and the painting aren’t tools of distraction but forms of nourishment, that my contentment isn’t killing my creativity, it’s feeding it, ensuring it is healthy and well.
This, then, must be my slack tide era, an opportunity to take a breath before changing course.
The boat of ideas that I’ve built is sturdy and pointed at a new horizon, ready to set sail when I am. But there is no rush, no race, no reason to fret. Productivity and progress can wait; the tide will take me when it’s time.
I don’t currently have a subscription tier for this newsletter, but if you enjoyed this post and want to show your appreciation by buying me a coffee, you’d be supporting my ability to show up here and keep writing. If you can’t make a monetary donation but want to show your thanks by liking, sharing, or commenting, that would be really cool too. Thanks for reading!
✍️
💌 Like this? Subscribe to get future posts straight to your inbox.
🔁 Know someone who’d relate? Share this post with them.
💬 Got thoughts? Join the conversation in the comments.
This is all a long time coming and well deserved. So happy to read this!!!
Reading this it sounds to me like you do still have some creative writing in you Amity! It was another beautiful read. I've been reflecting lots on how creative I actually am (which turns out, is very, after years of assuming I no longer was!) since Scotland, and more so recently as I look back to a year ago... it comes in many forms, I agree. Not just pen on paper, or as I had always assumed for me, drawings on paper! So pleased to hear you are in a grace period - long may it continue!