Why It's So Important to Create Time and Space for Yourself During Difficult Times

At the end of 2021 when I was starting to plan for 2022, one of my goals was to take an art sabbatical at some point during the year.

I brainstormed ways to make it happen, weighing different options — from unplugging entirely including closing my shop, to a hybrid approach where I’d assign one day a week to business tasks while leaving the rest for art-making.

I looked at all the projects I wanted to complete during the year and considered how to balance them with time to play and experiment and make art with no specific goal in mind.

My initial thought was to schedule my break during March, usually a slower time for me. But too many other projects needed attention during the month and I pushed thoughts of a sabbatical into the nebulous realm of “sometime later in the year”.

As an artist who runs a multi-faceted business around my art, I’m constantly juggling and balancing business tasks with art-making. As an artist who’s also a gardener and whose garden provides direct inspiration for my art, some of the year a big chunk of my time is spent digging in the dirt. It’s a beautiful, wonderful life. I’m privileged to be able to live it. I’m grateful every day. But it’s not without its challenges.

It’s important to me to spread joy and shine a light in the darkness. I have a note beside my computer desk that captures my intention for my art and my business:

Create Beauty. Spread Joy. Encourage others to embrace creativity and joyful living.

But sometimes I don’t feel joyful. Sometimes the darkness feels too heavy.

These past two years have been stressful beyond anything I could have imagined and, sadly, the stress and anxiety keep coming.

One of the things that’s hardest for me is how divided we’ve become and continue to become. In the face of a worldwide crisis, instead of coming together to help one another and care for each other, we fight. Anger seems to win again and again.

I’m angry. I try not to be, but anger simmers beneath the surface. It bubbles up to protect me from more vulnerable feelings.

There are no easy answers. No clear path to fixing what’s broken. Healing what’s ailing. So many people seem to declare their opinions as fact, their solutions as the only way forward.

If I’ve learned anything these past two years it’s that each of us has to find our own way forward. Each of us has to tend to ourselves first.

We can’t show up for others if we don’t first show up for ourselves.

It’s ok to step away for a while and it’s important, no necessary, for us to create time and space to feel and think, to grieve and rage, to rest and heal.

I can’t create beauty or spread joy if I’m burned out and stressed out and overwhelmed with anger and sorrow and fear.

As I spent time this week planning out my month, I realized that although I’m not going to take a full-scale sabbatical this month, I need to create more time and space for myself. For my art. For experimentation. For play. For quiet. For rest. I need to remind myself what it means to seek beauty and joy, how it feels to find comfort in creativity. I need to make my own way through the darkness.

So I’m taking a blogging break. Over the past two years, I’ve only taken four days off from my blog and they were all over the holidays. I think it’s time.

There’s no right or wrong way to navigate these times. You don’t need me to declare how you must live. My only wish for you is that you find something that works for you. Take good care, dear friend.

I’ll be back in April. Until then I hope you can find and celebrate a bit of beauty and joy in each day.