Day: October 18, 2009

For the last three days my brain has been running at high speed. It is like the creative fountain burst its bounds and flooded me with thoughts and ideas that I can turn into essays or blog posts. The ideas keep flying at me hard and fast. I’ve written multiple essays/blog entries per day on each of these days. I can only process so much before my brain frizzles out. So for the other ideas, I scribble notes. I’ve accumulated many pages of notes in a short span of time. This overflow has been exciting and invigorating, but also exhausting. I can’t make my brain stop. Insomnia has plagued me and I’ll find myself scribbling notes at 2 am because an idea struck me and I can’t sleep until I write it down.

I wear out during the day as well. There are times I desparately want my brain to shut up, to stop throwing ideas at me. So I turn to the computer game Plants Versus Zombies. It is a fun little game from Popcap.com where cute little zombies try to cross my lawn to invade my house. I must defend my lawn by planting a variety of defensive and offensive plants. There is quite a bit of strategy involved and it engages my whole brain. After 30 minutes or so of lawn defense I emerge feeling more relaxed and rested. Or perhaps it is just that I’ve used my brain in a different way, kind of like stretching after sitting in one position for awhile. Whichever it is, I stand up ready to tackle the non-writing tasks of the day.

This weekend has been heavy on house cleaning because we planned to host a social event on Sunday evening. The event itself got canceled due to Gleek spiking a fever, but I didn’t know that was going to happen prior to late last night. So I was cleaning vigorously to make the house fit for company. The thing about the house cleaning is that it kept my hands busy, but left my mind free. The thoughts began to flow again. Then I’d find myself with note book in hand scribbling notes again, or at the computer typing vigorously. Then my brain was frazzled again, which led me back to defending my little electronic lawn from zombies. I don’t know how often I looped that loop, but it continued for two days.

This kind of high creative energy state is familiar to me. It has happened before. It will happen again. It is not always writing focused. Sometimes I’m consumed with a sewing project, or a gardening project, or a book layout project. Other times the energy doesn’t have a specific focus and my brain begins to plan big new projects for me to take on, whether or not I have time to complete them.

I can feel the creative energy tapering off today. This is also expected. If I were to stay that creatively buzzed all the time, I would go crazy. I need my brain to be quiet and calm sometimes. And I will. I fully expect to find myself mired in some low creative energy days. It may not happen this week, but the inevitable biorythmic cost of energy expenditure is that I’ll have to lay idle and rebuild my resources.

I’m glad that I’ve been through the cycle enough times that I recognize it. I’ve learned tactics to prevent complete burnout (Hello zombie game) I’ve also learned how to replenish my resources more quickly. These days I can track the biorythmic sine wave and know that a low will follow the high. I can also find comfort in knowing that the low will end as well. This same pattern is repeated within each day. I have high creative energy times of day and low energy times.

Knowing that my creative energy comes in cycles gives me the ability to structure my life so that things get done. When I feel the drive, as I did this weekend, I scramble to write and take notes. When I have lower energy, I will still have those notes. They are like a breadcrumb trail I can follow. On a low creative energy day I can still get myself to follow one crumb after another so that work still gets done. Howard calls this tactic “Smart Howard and Dumb Howard.” He organizes his days and his weeks around his creative biorhythms. Scripting and penciling have to be done by Smart Howard in the morning because Smart Howard is the one with the flashes of insight about how things need to go. The inking can be done by Dumb Howard because all he has to do is follow the pencil lines. (This whole concept was told to us by our friend Chalain who understands these cycles very well.)

Hmm. Not so sure I’m on the down swing from this particular creative peak right now. Not considering how quickly this whole blog post leaped from my brain through my fingers and on to the screen. I’ve been typing furiously almost without stopping until just now when I achieved brain frazzle. Must be time to go garden the undead.