What To Do When You Sit Down and Feel Nothing
Some days I sit down at my studio table and my brain just... leaves.
Not in a spiritual, I am one with the universe kind of way. More like the spinning wheel on a laptop that's given up trying. You know what I mean?
The supplies are all there. Too many of them, honestly, which is its own kind of problem. Do I want bright and bold today or muted and quiet? Do I have the energy to make the kind of mess that requires actual cleanup afterward? Do I have the energy for anything at all? And underneath all of the questions shouting in my head, a quieter and a little mean voice whispers: how could I possibly teach this if I can't even start?
Maybe you know that feeling. The flatness, the low-grade lost-ness that doesn't have a clean name. The sense that the creative version of you has slipped out the back door and left no forwarding address. Here's what actually happened the other day.
I sat down. I felt nothing. I looked around for something, anything to make, and what I found was my mug. Just sitting there. A fun bright coral flower on the side, tea going lukewarm the way it always does because I forget about it approximately seventeen times a day.
So I drew it; with my non-dominant hand, loose and free with a little watercolor wash. Nothing that belongs in a gallery. Nothing that belongs anywhere except the sketchbook that was open in front of me.
That's when something in my chest unclenched.
Not because it was good but because it was something. My hands remembered before my brain caught up.
I don't always draw the mug. But I've learned there's always a mug version of something; the lowest stakes, right-in-front-of-you thing that asks nothing except that you show up for it. And most days, that's enough to get the rest of me to follow.
So when you sit down and feel nothing - here's what I actually do:
Sometimes I walk away. Tea, sunshine, staring at the backyard like a golden retriever. No shame. Creativity is not a performance and there's no audience keeping score. Sometimes the most productive thing is ten minutes on the porch doing absolutely nothing.
Sometimes I do the smallest possible thing. Color swatches. A loose sketch of whatever is literally in front of me. A few stitches on a pin flag. One layer of gesso over whatever yesterday left behind. Not a project. Not a plan. Just hands moving, which is somehow always enough to remind my brain that we do this because we love it.
Sometimes I write the feeling instead of painting it. I open my journal and I just scribble it all: I feel flat. I feel stuck. I feel like a fraud who has no business telling anyone else to pick up a brush. And somehow, seeing it written down takes all the air out of it. It stops being this big looming thing and turns into just words on a page. Feelings that came, and will go.
The goal isn't a masterpiece, its to stay in the room. The blank page isn't asking you to perform. It's just waiting, the same way a good friend waits, without judgment, without a timer running. Just know, your creative self isn't gone, she's just gone quiet for a minute. She does that sometimes and she'll come back. She always does.
Pick up the lowest-stakes thing in front of you. The pencil, not the paint. The mug on your table, not the vision in your head.
Notice what's right there and make that.
Even if it's imperfect.
Especially if it's imperfect.
XO, Amy