Creating When You Can’t Find Anything

We get a lot of praise in our society for being organized. A clean desk offers itself as supposed proof that the inhabitant is clear-headed, organized, and somehow in control. In contrast, people sometimes view a messy desk or a messy room as some failure in the person who is hosting that desk or room. There are two types of chaos: a chaos that people can happily fill, work in quite well, and still know where the locations are of the things they want to find. But the second kind of chaos is all-encompassing and not a positive. I know because I lived it. I lived with some neurological problems where the disorganization of both my brain and my physical environment meant creating was exquisitely difficult. I tried all sorts of tricks to be able to progress to creative time like leaving my tools in decorative boxes or finding ways to label every pile of papers in my house. Whatever it was, it was mildly effective but it didn’t create a space where I felt clear-headed or connected to my creativity. What do you do when your life is like this and there is little about it that you can control? The best advice I can give you is to choose one thing only to be your creative outlet and to find a place outside your normal environment to do that creating.