Uncreative

 People hardly hear moments of uncreativity. Let's face it; they're unglamorous moments. People tend to see the result of creativity after a series of steps --and sometimes mis-steps. There is hardly any account of the mis-steps or even the dry spells, where things aren't coming together at all. It's a little bit like when I was trying to teach Percy Shelley's Ozymandias to the Junior class today. The statue looks pristine, but how do we explain the desert wasteland that laid claim to that slender beauty?
   Two events I am thinking about: the arduous process of lesson planning for one, and the task of doing a thesis project for another (in particular, the pilot study). Lesson plans often come across, for me, as dry affairs. It's not easy to know when creativity will strike a teacher and they will make connections between the material of a book being studied and something that is precious or important to students. Metaphorical thinking, parallel thinking, and imaginative improvisation are often collectively needed. But even in these moments, sometimes one cannot stretch far enough. The soul is blocked: it needs some nourishment, yet doesn't know how to seek or attain that nourishment. And there is no technique to get it. Well, then time for a break or a walk.
   Pilot projects can be even scarier, because they seek to gain better understandings about something that is not really well known.  A pilot project tests the robustness of an idea--and in the process, renders both the idea and the creator of the idea vulnerable. People clearly are addicted to projects that "work out"--that are somehow transformative, or provide valuable information through which people's lives are changed. But what is a "failed" experiment but a very ripe bit of information waiting to be mined? I am wondering if, after all, the problem is not "creative block" so much as it is the inhibiting desire for a rather limited view of success, one that does not tolerate the "failing" effort let alone see the fertility of all efforts as a whole.
   I think it's important not to see dryness or stuckness in a bad way---maybe there is something in there that is growing but hasn't emerged from the dirt yet. Give it a bit of time and tomorrow we might start to see buds growing. But like meditation itself, the key is to stay in dryness rather than trying to escape from it. It is indeed part of the process.