How to Sit Down—Kate Gaston
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How to Sit Down
After I sat down to write, but before I wrote this sentence, I got up four times.
It all started with tea. There’s something about tea, isn’t there? How many great minds have been soothed and inspired by a timely cup of tea? By nature, I’m a coffee drinker, but for years I’ve been trying to convince myself to drink tea. Today proved no different. I brewed a mug and sat down to write.
I opened my laptop and pulled up the article I’d been futzing with. I stared at all those not-quite-right words. I picked up my mug of tea and took a sip. Instantly, I was aware of two things. First, the tea was magma, destroying the epithelial layer of my tongue. Second, tea is for the birds.
I got up, dumped my tea into the kitchen sink, and made myself a pot of coffee. I sat down. Took a sip of my coffee. I’m sure it tasted delicious but I couldn’t tell thanks to the tea. I opened my laptop again. After a few moments of pensive gazing out the window, I remembered the load of clothes I’d started this morning, now blithely mildewing in the washer. I closed my laptop. I lumped the wet clothes into the dryer, then I sat down.
I opened my laptop again and stared intently at the words. Should it be a comma? No, semi-colon, I think. While I was making this critical punctuation decision, our dog—Ozymandias—began pacing the floor with that mild urgency which signifies a full bladder. I ignored her, but her pacing didn’t stop. Her little claws on the hardwood floor clicked back and forth, like tiny pickaxes, like dwarves delving too deeply into Khazad-Dum. I rose from the couch and marched her out the back door.
Again, I sat down. I took a sip of my coffee, now lukewarm. I opened my laptop. No, I decided, it definitely needs to be a comma. By this point, the window of time I’d allotted for writing—previously a buxom, full-bodied hour—was now a wizened, shrunken thing. Closing my laptop, I gave a sigh. Somedays, this is what progress looks like.
Recently, I watched live footage of astronauts on the International Space Station. There they were, doing the same mundane tasks I’m doing here on earth. One astronaut—with only a carabiner or two between her and certain, infinite, suffocating doom—worked at unscrewing some bolts on the exterior of the station. The job wasn’t hard. But with her tools floating around her face, not to mention those giant space gloves, the astronaut labored two hours on the chore. Did I begrudge the astronaut the time it took her to complete her job? No, I didn’t. Because she was in outer space.
Doing creative work often feels like it occurs in a zero-gravity environment. My resolve, my time, and my words go floating around my head, making me clumsy at even the simplest task. If I could just get my hands on them, all would go smoothly. Much has been written on that wily devil, Resistance. If you haven’t yet read The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, go ahead and do it right now. I’ll wait.
Resistance is that counterforce lying in wait for you at the beginning of every artistic endeavor you begin. It’s also waiting in the middle of your endeavor. And at every step until you finish. For me, resistance often masquerades as a perfectly legitimate use of time. On the other hand, resistance can also look like 38 minutes of uninterrupted cat videos. Resistance can smell like chocolate chip cookies. It can sound like eggs cracking, and scruffy British people baking. It is the itch in my fingertips as I scroll.
It’s hard to create. Any creative work is like bushwhacking a trail to God knows where in search of God knows what. You certainly won’t. Not until you get there. And though the making is amazing, it’s fraught with the highest highs and the lowest lows.
Since I was a kid, I’ve loved painting. I was among the throng who discovered The Joy of Painting alongside Bob Ross when his show aired on PBS a thousand years ago. I continued painting right up until I began college. Then, I didn’t pick up a brush for twenty years.
Chalk it up to a mid-life crisis or casual curiosity, but in my late 30s, I picked up Betty Frieden’s book The Feminine Mystique from my local library. It’s the book credited with kicking off second-wave feminism, telling women to ditch the high heels and pearls and to stop waiting around for their husbands to get home from work.
As a woman who has chosen to homeschool my child, I disagreed with Betty’s summary that women who are homemakers exist in a “comfortable concentration camp”. But something else she wrote hit me square between the eyes. Stop dabbling, she wrote, take your work seriously.
She had me there. I am a master dabbler. I’d paint a picture, and give it to mom and dad. I’d write a poem, and tuck it away in a secret notebook. I’d crochet a hideous scarf, and gift it to my husband. I did this because I considered my creative work to be of no value. Granted, the crocheting was truly abominable. But the painting, the poetry? It hadn’t crossed my mind that it might be of value until Betty told me to take myself seriously.
I put the book down. Before allowing myself time to truly consider what I was doing, I looked up the number for a local art gallery. It was a mom-and-pop shop, nothing fancy. I dialed the number. The owner answered, and I asked what it took to display paintings in her gallery. She told me to send some samples of my work, she’d take a look, and get back to me.
I hung up the phone and called my parents since they had all the paintings I’d ever done, bless their hearts. They snapped some pictures of my meager work, and I forwarded them to the gallery. Easy enough. Then I waited.
The gallery owner finally called. She said they’d be willing to give me a showcase, scheduled for the following spring. Hanging up the phone, I realized with sudden clarity that I had just agreed to fill a gallery with paintings which didn’t yet exist.
My heart was galloping with excitement, my brain buzzing with ideas. I’d better get to the art supply store, I thought, so much painting to be done! But instead of grabbing my keys and walking out the front door, I went to the kitchen and baked French patisserie. Then I folded some clothes. I cleaned the bathroom, organized my sock drawer, wiped the dust from all the ceiling fan blades, and learned how to solve a Rubik’s cube.
Resistance kicked my tail from one end of the house to the other for a full week. My floors have never been so clean, my cabinets and drawers never so organized. At long last, I made it to the art store to buy paint and canvas. Then, every afternoon for the next ten months, I’d paint. Occasionally, when the painting would get hard—which was often—I’d power walk the streets of my neighborhood, mumbling to myself. Prayers, expletives, negative self-talk, positive self-talk, crazy talk, all of it vented, voiced, and left in my wake.
Leading up to my show, I set this goal: if I could sell one painting—and not to my mom—the experience would have been worth it. Maybe that’s my first piece of useful advice. Set goals so low you can meet them by breathing.
Turns out, I sold a lot of paintings at the show. This still blows my mind: strangers gave me money for my work. This was a pivotal moment for me, and it wasn’t just about selling my paintings. The gift was that people had taken my word for it that I was a painter. They believed me. Subsequently, I believed them.
The creative process can look drastically different for all of us, so I offer the following advice not as prescriptions, but as suggestions. These are the liturgies which beckoned, wooed, and lured me onward. They were the bumpers that kept me rolling, albeit haphazardly, toward those metaphysical pins.
First, I identified when I was at the height of my creative energy during the day. Next, within that window, I identified free time. And here’s the rub: I didn’t have free time during that window. I had to make free time, prying it out of the hungry maw of a margin-less calendar.
Once you’ve identified and safeguarded your creative window, consecrate it with a name. Work time, writing time, even a terribly unoriginal name will do. If you’re writing with kids in the house, naming your time allows them to hear that name, spoken with reverence, every day. If you respect that time, your kids can learn to do the same. Even if it’s a scant half hour, if nurtured, this time will be the kernel from which your productivity grows.
Here’s a weird tip, but trust me on this one. As soon as the clock strikes work time, allow yourself five minutes to sit down, stand up again, make coffee, check your email, move the clothes to the dryer, and sit down again. Set a timer. At the end of five minutes, you’ll have run the gamut of distractions resistance can throw at you. Pay attention. Name the distractions for what they are. Then get to work.
Next, woo yourself to the physical space. Find the right chair, sofa, desk, bed, beanbag, hammock, treehouse, or bench. Make it tidy and peaceful. Light the candle. Buy the fresh flowers. Keep your coffee mug within easy reach. Sit near an outlet because your old laptop can’t hold a charge. Have good lumbar support because being old is real. These considerations will lend themselves to the act of sitting down.
Find all the things that trigger your brain toward creativity, and then unapologetically do them. Teach yourself to recognize the cues, follow the cues, and come to love the cues which encourage you to enter the creative space. Creation is an act of great vulnerability, so be gracious toward yourself as you learn to do it. Continue to follow those breadcrumbs, dropped from the hand of the first and greatest creator. They will undoubtedly lead you somewhere surprising.
An Alabama native, Kate was homeschooled before it was even remotely considered normal. She completed her undergraduate degree at Bryan College and went on to graduate school at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. For eight years, Kate worked as a PA in a trauma and burn ICU before ping-ponging across the nation for her husband’s medical training. She and her family are currently putting down roots in Nashville, Tennessee. Today, Kate enjoys homeschooling her daughter and tutoring in her local classical homeschool community. She also finds deep satisfaction in long, meandering conversations at coffee shops, oil painting, writing, and gazing pensively into the middle distance. You can read more of her work at her Substack: That Middle Distance.
Photo by Mor Shani on Unsplash
Thank you for the humor, encouragement, and practical advice!
Haha definitely relatable! And definitely great advice. You kinda inspire me to call up an art gallery myself! Maybe I really should...