Moments of Creativity
I still remember when I’ve first noticed that creative thoughts do not occur randomly, but they follow a pattern.
It was spring of 2018 and it was still early in my PhD studies. We had just started to analyse the data that we had so painstakingly collected over the last year. The scientific questions behind these analyses were clear. But turning the neurobiological questions into mathematically precise formulations and then coming up with methods for statistical testing was often challenging. And sometimes these steps seemed straightforward, but the results just made no sense. We could be stuck on these problems for days or weeks, even.
To me, these periods were frustrating, but more importantly, also very exhausting.
I like the challenge offered by these problems. And I enjoy to dance and to pounce with problems, like tigers in a fight. But this dance is all-consuming and the problems always top of mind.
The problems would be there when shopping for groceries, when riding my bicycle, and when brushing my teeth. They would be there when talking to my friends. But most frustratingly, the problems would also be there at night, in bed, when desperately trying to fall asleep (and to escape into dreams).
But then there are these moments of clarity! It’s in these moments of decompression, when the stress relaxes just a bit, but just enough, that creativity — finally! — hits.
These moments would happen in the subway on the way home, after a long day of brooding over a problem. Or they would occur in the endorphine-fueled high after an intense run. But most frequently, they would happen in the morning under the shower, in the twilight between sleep and coffee-ignited wakefulness. In these moments, the excitement, joy and relieve amount to one of the best feelings I know. And I am addicted to it.
In summary, my experience of creativity is, unfortunately, not one of idly waiting for the muses. Instead, it’s one of struggle and exhaustion, one of flooding the conscious mind with thoughts, until they have nowhere else to go but to overflow into the unconscious, where they will crystallise, slowly and by force of intense pressure, into an insight that reveals itself when I am least looking for it.
So, why am I writing this now?
Earlier this week I was sick and in pain. But when the pain and the physical and mental exhaustions finally wore off, there was this moment of decompression — a moment of creativity. That’s what’s stirred up all these thoughts and moved me to write them down. (There is at least one more reason that creativity is at the top of my mind these days, but that’s a topic for another post.)