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Busy Being Busy

by | Sep 30, 2025 | Working Week

Commissions have for the most part, been keeping me busy. Focused. Productive. Can’t complain. And yet…

Actually, let me just state, for the record, before I continue with this.
I am very aware how very fortunate I am to be:

1. Doing what I love.
2. Being paid for it.

 

This has not come easy. It has been due to consistent hard work over many, many years. (Read my blog post here about my journey to full time illustration).  A continual pushing forward during the good and bad. It has challenged me, but it has been worth it.

 

And perhaps it is because of this, that the very act of downing my inky tools, pausing rather than painting, taking some time to look up and around to re-evaluate how I feel within the contest of work feels both unnatural and uncomfortable. After all, it’s taken a hell of a lot to get here. Somewhere within all these thoughts and feelings, there is for me, an overriding niggle that perhaps it is best to ‘just to keep going’ as this is well worn, familiar path, has for the most past, served me well.

Recently however, my relentless busy mode has not felt like the solution for right now. I’ve been attempting to think above and beyond the daily.  I’ve been thinking about the grander scheme of those still undefined (but definitely brewing) long term goals and dreams. What does five years from now look like?  What investments now will have a direct correlation to where I aim towards in the future. But where is that…?

This is not the first time these kind of questions have surfaced.  Let’s face it, the very nature of being human (let alone a creative) is at certain moments we all question the status quo. Mixed into the everyday moments, the routine  the inevitable thought  “Wait… what on earth am I doing…?” will cause us to pause. Perhaps then followed by ”What do I want to do…?”

For some, it might happen in those quieter moments between jobs. For me, this time, it was when I was handed a skateboard to paint, and no brief.

 

Let me explain. Earlier this month I was invited to take part in a group exhibition with @theymadethis in their latest space in Kings Cross, London. Each participating artist was given a blank wooden skateboard and asked to decorate it however they wanted. Admittedly – as is often the case – time crept away with me, as I said I have been busy.  But also if I’m totally honest many moments were filled with looking at this skateboard and seriously over thinking it.

I realised without a brief, I was stumped.  The juggling of various paced jobs, has kept me paying my bills and my mind focused on work. I haven’t really stopped and looked up, nor given thought beyond the next thing on my ‘to-do-list” . To put it bluntly, I’ve been cracking on.

So much time and energy has been invested in being busy. Somewhere along the way I lost focus on what I truly wanted to create. What felt good to create, the new, the next layer being revealed.  Isn’t this the point…?  Obviously I can only speak for myself, but as a creative, this niggle of “what do I want to do now” is a complex and humbling feeling. For me it is a blend of general anxiety (what’s new) plus a dose of frustration, a good portion of over thinking (again, nothing new)  then a side of some procrastinating. Self doubt invariably joins that toxic mix.

 

Hence some big questions being stirred up. I was in a pickle.

 

As I have gotten older, I have attempted (with varying degrees of success), to use these opportunities, when things aren’t ideal to work out what the lesson is, hidden within all the murky stuff. I look for the little glinting hook that can fish me out and guide me towards a space that’s less stagnant. Where there is a new path towards a solution.  In this scenario the lesson was clear. Rather than ask “What’s the brief” I needed to ask – “What do I want to create?”  Now, despite no brief, I knew in this instance there was a very real deadline.  Yes, thanks to my mini meltdown, the timing was now a little tight. The whirling self doubt had really been a fruitless waste of time. I didn’t have the time to reinvent the wheel.  So as a starting point I gave myself some grace and approached it from how I had been working on recent jobs. I’d been loving the flow of line and colours, whilst working on various floral related projects. Working this way had made me happy. I asked myself is this enough? This can’t that be enough…? Isn’t that too easy…?
Actually, it really was more than enough, especially in this instance. I did some research, which in itself felt like a luxury (some recent projects have been 24 hour turn around) I read about flowers, British flowers in this instance.  I discovered a little white flower called Stephanotis (it looks a lot like Jasmine) it’s modern symbolism represents ‘good fortune’ and ‘the longing to travel’. It instantly felt like the ideal fit for me and as this is what I craved in challenging times.

Like many, I am prone to long walks when I need to clear my head and have a good think, this is far more economical journey of sorts compared to my past. Where the art of avoidance has costed me dearly. I have frequently tricked myself into thinking I need to leave for some far flung location in order to think things through during some of life’s more sticky patches.

 

When it comes to buying a flight, I have deployed this tactic numerous times in my life, yes sometimes travel can work wonders. But it is not always the solution. The long to travel has be a constant. In this instance what I truly needed was to sit with the uncomfortable questions and be still. Static. And most importantly left alone in my studio. I needed to focus on allowing myself to create, to feel a little lost in it. And then, do more of this, and see what happened – accept it in whatever form it came.
It was sluggish and laboured. The first finished outcome left me feeling pure indifference. I looked at it, a little baffled. It was “fine”  and yet it was also fundamentally wrong. It’s lacking something,  it lacked me. This was annoying. But inevitable, after all my head wasn’t clear.

Above : My work in progress for my first attempt
Below: The final first attempt. it was finished. But it wasn’t me.

So, I kept it local. I started painting.

 

 So I hit reset and I brought an electric sander. I sanded off the first attempt and went back to the drawing (skate) board (ha!) and began again. Only this time without a “rough” to recreate. All I had was the reference images for the Stephanotis flower, and a far clearer sense of what I didn’t want the outcome to be or most importantly feel like, whilst creating it. I’ll admit I find this very challenging – as in recent times it has become harder and harder not to be fixated on the final outcome. To use the cliché – it’s all about the journey and not the destination was what I was attempting to focus on. In today’s mindset this is tricky to keep at the forefront. Sharing ourselves and our work on the numerous platforms available to us, with all the number metrics can feel like a judgement – it can easily confused us in terms of how we measure our own and others creative output/success.

 

 

Above : Sanded back the first attempt
Below: Starting again. This time with little versions to experiment on and test colour ways.

As Rick Rubin says in his brilliant book  “The Creative Act”

“The making of art is not a competitive act. Our work is representative of the self”

And yet despite knowing this, it can at times, feel easier to stick to what’s working algorithm wise, as opposed to what is truly working for ourselves and our next chapter. As when it is “liked” by others surely that’s “good” that’s “the correct answer” . An undeniable validation comes from that. Who doesn’t want that..? It is as addictive as being busy. But for me, in this instance, that was not the solution . Actually what my creative heart desired was the process of no clear destination, and instead, to give priority to it feeling right in the creating. Second time painting the skateboard I spent a little more time enjoying the freedom of what I was doing, rather than aiming for an end goal. I reasoned that there is no wasting of time if you are present in the process regardless of the outcome.

After all, being busy for the sake of being busy and getting things done if your heart isn’t always in it, is a little like being on auto pilot whilst trying to reach an unknown magical location.

It’s not going to happen. If you have set your course, and know what to expect, in both the journey and the destination. It’s already predetermined. It’s comfortable. It’s known. It’s not bad per se – but it is not going to be magic.

 

David Bowie summed it up perfectly with his frequently repeated swimming analogy :

“Always go a little further  into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth, and when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting”.

Bowie highlight’s the importance of moving away from our comfort zone and the discomfort in doing so as being the whole point. For me, this time round it meant stopping and sitting with it. Looking. Thinking. Painting. Reflecting. Sanding. Re painting. It was slow. It was uncomfortable. It was needed.
In the end, my skateboard was finished, exhibited, and thankfully I didn’t feel indifference to it. It wasn’t magic, but it moved me far closer to a feeling I had missed whilst being busy which is a creative output just for the love of it. I became aware I needed more of that in order to move forward and think clearer about the future. For too long I have felt that the busier I am the quicker I will get there.. but what and where is this “there” And once there is that it…? Then what..? These last few weeks were good for me, I recognised these past behaviours and thought patterns of mine, had been limiting my personal creativity journey.
It is impossible to predict, whilst in a true creative flow what will work and what won’t or what may be ‘waste of time’. One of my worst traits is impatience, the notion of wasting time gives me anxiety (read here about my convoluted path to  get to where I currently am, which perhaps highlights why I am this way) but its actually somewhere in the getting lost that is important. In the lack of a clear destination. In the fails. Or in this instance when I reached for the electric sander – that was where progress was made.  The lesson was as vital and needed as the final piece.

The connection you feel to yourself in the doing. It’s a selfish act. Not for others. Yes we all want and crave an audience, and clients. We need that. We all love to be busy.  But that can’t be the focal point all the time. Otherwise whilst stuck in ‘busy mode’ we might risk losing the love of it.  And I’ve worked too hard for too long to lose my love for what I do.

 

Above and Below: Private view of ‘Decked’