Challenge #8: Labor. The word labor evokes a sense of dedication and focus that is integral to creative endeavors. This week, transition from summer to fall with a meditation on your own creative labors, as well as a celebration of your creative achievements.
In this final 2011 Summer Challenge, use this week to set goals for creative projects this fall, or even examine ways that you can integrate time to “labor” over creative projects into your daily routine. Also some points to contemplate: What are projects that you feel you labored over? What was the experience of laboring for you? Did you experience a state of flow? What could you recreate or change from that experience to create a better environment for dedicated work on creative endeavors? (Which no matter how frustrating should always be a “labor of love.”)
With the concept of labor as your touchpoint, whatever ideas you choose to explore, make sure to record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts—then share here on The Paper Compass.
Labor Day arrives and with it, signs that these are the final days of summer. The holiday marks the last hurrah of summer with a long weekend, filled with final beach days and last barbecues. It is also a time when the newsstands suddenly sprout magazines about Halloween, and our thoughts turn to the new school year or the final months of work ahead.
I find it fitting that Labor Day is the US holiday that marks the transition from summer to fall. While the holiday has many political connotations, at its heart, it is a celebration of work and achievement. What better way to move from the care-free and casual mindset of summer, to the productive and focused thinking of fall, than with a day to meditation on your own creative labor—and, even more importantly, to take a moment to appreciate and celebrate your own creative achievements?
Labor Day became an official federal holiday during the heart of the Industrial Revolution in 1894, allowing members of labor unions to march together without having to take a day without pay. The federal holiday was a political concession after the violence of the Pullman Strike, but it originated out of the labor movement to eliminate the dangerous working conditions at the height of the Industrial Revolution. At this time the work day was twelve hours long—seven days a week—and many factories employed children because they were small enough to work inside the machines, they were quick, and could be paid less than an adult. More than a hundred years later, we are the recipients of the positive changes to our working conditions—and a structured work week—that is a result of the strife and violence that was part of the long battle that ultimately brought about this lazy summer holiday.
While labor means, on a basic level, to work hard, to be engaged in a productive physical or mental activity, it also means to toil, to strive towards a goal—which I think reflects the changes the laborers worked towards and advocated at the turn of the century—and also what we each experience in our own personal work and creative endeavors.
Labor, by itself, is an infinitely interesting word, especially where creative thinking is concerned. The word labor expresses a state of dedication and action towards an end result. To say that something is a labor of love means that even though the work is hard, it’s end result brings you pleasure. Or, if the work is strenuous, the word labor provides a sense of pace, of forward momentum, even if slow and plodding.
There are many other words for labor, especially in the language of the creative, but the bottom line is that no creative can escape the hard work of bringing an idea into reality. (So it is also fitting that the word labor also means the act of bringing a child into the world.)
Creativity is associated with joy and the free flow of ideas (similar to summertime). Labor is much more serious and somber (like fall). Yet, when you are in a good place with your work, labor transforms into something sublime that renowned academic Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow”, a state of mind of completely focus motivation, when both sides of your brain are working in harmony. When you are in a state of flow, you lose track of time, the work comes easily, you are engaged, progress is made. When you are not in a state of flow, you could literally say you feel like you are laboring (in all of its negative connotations).
We know though, that labor must come before flow and as Julia Cameron emphasizes, the most important part of creativity is “showing up at the page.” Or as the last stanza of Longfellow’s famous poem “Psalm of Life” tells us:
Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
All of this is inspiration for the eighth summer challenge: Labor. The word labor evokes a sense of dedication and focus that is integral to creative endeavors. This week, transition from summer to fall with a meditation on your own creative labors, as well as a celebration of your creative achievements.
In this final 2011 Summer Challenge, use this week to set goals for creative projects this fall, or even examine ways that you can integrate time to “labor” over creative projects into your daily routine. Also some points to contemplate: What are projects that you feel you labored over? What was the experience of laboring for you? Did you experience a state of flow? What could you recreate or change from that experience to create a better environment for dedicated work on creative endeavors? (Which no matter how frustrating should always be a “labor of love.”)
With the concept of labor as your touchpoint, whatever ideas you choose to explore, make sure to record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts—then share here on The Paper Compass.
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