The Struggle to Be Creative | Neurospicy Black Girl

Don't you hate when you try to be creative but then things like having no time, no energy, and your brain simply hating you, get in your way? Try living that every day.

Follow Alani as she explains the things that impact her ability to be creative and learn how you can work around these hurdles.

SOURCES:

• Spoon theory: https://butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/
• Revenge bedtime procrastination: https://www.sleepfoundation.org/sleep-hygiene/revenge-bedtime-procrastination
• Waiting mode: https://www.healthline.com/health/adhd/adhd-waiting-mode
• Find out if you qualify for Medicaid: https://www.usa.gov/benefits
• The Trevor Project: https://www.thetrevorproject.org/get-help/
• Find a counselor: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us
• National Alliance on Mental Illness: https://www.nami.org/
• Manifest House, a virtual wellbeing space: https://www.manifesthouse.com/

Follow me on Instagram!: https://www.instagram.com/neurospicyblackgirlpodcast/

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Support the place that helped me produce the podcast!: https://bricartsmedia.org/

Music: https://pixabay.com/users/bodleasons-28047609/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=223103

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Tags:
#neurodivergent #neurodiversity #neurospicy #podcast #adhdpodcast #adhdproblems #neurospicyblackgirl #blackneurodivergent

Transcript

0:00

Artists, artists everywhere and all creatives, do you wish you could just have one week, hell, even a day where you can just create art? I mean, one day, where you don't worry about having to pay bills or worry about putting food on the table, where you don't gotta listen to your parent or a nosy roommate ask about your job as if that's the only thing that means you're worthy of a human being, where you don't have to take any job that either drains your energy due to it being a depressing workplace or is the only job that will actually give you a chance even though it's not in your field, you just want to create. I just want to create. The weird thing is that my brain agrees and at the same time it doesn't. That is the truly artistic experience of a Neurospicy Black Girl. Hi, I'm Alani. I'm black, female and neurodivergent, aka I lost the genetic lottery. The only thing I could do is pull myself up by my bootstraps and live whatever life takes me. If anyone deserves to profit from my trauma, it's me. That's the life of a Neurospicy Black Girl. Welcome to Neurospicy Black Girl, the show where you learn that writing scripts during your non busy hours at retail is a perfect place to be productive and perfect time too because hey, at least the pay is not commission based. I'm Alani and today we're going to talk about being a creative as a Neurospicy Black Girl. As I said earlier, I just want to create. I would say that despite the mental trauma that my parents put me through that I'll get into a future episode, I would say that my parents have not discouraged me from pursuing my creative possessions. But a sidenote to remember just because you have positive memories with an abusive person does not negate the abuse they put you through. Keep that in mind. Anyway, I know how to draw, to paint, and to do creative writing. I love writing, especially if it's stories. Writing and art in general have been the outlets that I could best express myself in. Being creative is the area of my life where I can be my most authentic self at. Too bad that there are things in my body and my brain that prevent me from being able to really fully invest into my creativity. There are a buttload of things, but I'm going to simplify them into three categories. Time, energy, and self-esteem. Let's start with time because I think that's easy to explain. My schedule has been all over the place. I used to work a 9 to 5 depressing ass office job and then I had to take an hour commute to and from work at my former place in a far away neighborhood. There's 24 hours of the day, so 10 of my hours would be dedicated to a job that made me kill my happiness and at a place where I honestly did not feel connected to. Now, after I was let go, I was able to move to a closer neighborhood in Brooklyn where my commute was cut to 20 minutes. And I'm working at a job that is 5 hours a day about, and it's a low-paced job as well. I still feel that I can't really budget time to work on creative projects. There's this thing called the waiting mode. The waiting mode is the time period between now and the time where you have plans. Where you feel essentially stuck and in a period of rumination where you don't know what to do or you feel like you can't do anything because you're waiting for the plans you have. The best way to think about it or to visualize it is imagine you're playing a fight game like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken, Super Smash Bros. whatever. Now you get to the character select screen and you choose a character. But instead of going on to choose your opponent and the stage you're going to fight, you just leave the character there. The chosen character is just left idle, maybe it's just standing still doing their fighting stance or it's just a cool PNG file of the character. They're not doing anything, they need an external factor for them to do something or else it is stuck waiting for the player to do something. That's what the waiting mode is like for me as a Neurospicy Black Girl. I feel stuck with what to do at the time period. Let me give a real life hypothetical. Let's say I have a shift at 2.30 and I end up getting up at 10am. I may finish getting ready and being presentable enough for my job at maybe 11am depending on how tired I am. There's now like a 2-3 hour black void of time I have until work. My brain is telling me that I need to be prepared for the event, which is work, so my decisions feel stuck at focusing on getting ready for work. Yeah I could draw or work on writing in that 2 hour period, but my mind will be more focused on being ready for work. And trust me, I don't want work to totally influence my creative ideas. Boundaries people! Although ironically I get best motivation to write and draw during my job, no hate to my job, it's just during the slow hours my mind's imagination goes overdrive. And I need to put that imagination into good use. At least I'm being productive, even if it's not related to my job. Anyway, I find the best time to be my most and fully creative is at the worst time for my health. The late night period. I think this is a good time to segue to my next point which is having energy. Now, energy and time have a symbiotic relationship with one another, especially if you are neurodivergent. Especially if you are an introverted neurodivergent. Oh wow, an introverted and neurospicy person, how original. Well actually, if you ever look at common depictions of Black women in media, being an introverted and neurospicy Black girl is little to non-existent. Introverted and neurospicy Black girls are cryptids. I'm essentially the Bigfoot or Mothman of the Black community. Now that I think about it, that comparison is accurate because people in my life barely see me, not even my roommates. You would only see me when I post on social media, which I cut down to barely occasionally, for mental health and to focus on building my video editing portfolio. Or you would see me cameoing briefly on brands' social media for when I'm able to attend pop-up events. I also happen to have feet that are larger than the average women's shoe size in the US. The average size being 8.5 to 9 and mine is 10. If I get famous enough to do an episode of the PBS show Finding Your Roots, I would love to have Henry Louis Gates Jr. go into depth about how I'm actually a descendant of Bigfoot. Wait, what was I talking about? Oh, having energy. Yeah, the Bigfoot cryptic comparison makes sense because I'm barely seen in the daytime because I am mainly active at night. Nighttime is the time where I can recharge my battery and recharge my spoons. Now for those wondering how can you recharge a spoon, there are probably electrical spoons for something. People are inventing new things every day. But the spoons I'm talking about are mental spoons. The spoon theory was developed by award-winning writer, blogger, speaker, and lupus patient advocate Christine Miserandino as a way of describing the impact of her lupus to her friends. So, how the explanation went is that Christine gathered some spoons and handed them to her friend, explaining that while most people wake up with an unlimited supply of spoons, for the exercise or scenario, the friend would have just 12. She then asked her friend to walk through her daily routine, taking away a spoon for each activity like waking up, showering, or getting dressed. Through this metaphor, Christine illustrated that she starts each day with a limited number of spoons, which represents energy. She must carefully consider each action she takes, as living with a chronic condition requires constant awareness of how much energy she has, and she will spend her spoons throughout the day. I will leave the link to the original blog post in the description, and be sure to check out her blog, butyoudontlooksick.com for more information and, to me, validation of experiences with a chronic illness and/or invisible disability. And also to share to someone who actually cares about how you feel and want to understand you so you don't have to waste a spoon trying to have to justify your existence in a neurotypical world. But I digress. I would say that I'm halfway through my 12 spoons by the time I even get to work. I'm surprised that even writing my script for this podcast, does not really take away a spoon, but I guess it's because I'm doing something that I'm passionate about. But after I close down for my shift and commute back to my apartment, I am making a beeline to my bedroom. I have zero spoons. I do not want to socialize with anyone, and for some reason my roommates are only concerned about talking about work, like my job is not me, you know? But that's another conversation for another day. Anyway, I go into my bedroom and I recharge. I don't have to put on a neurotypical extroverted mask for my job or watch out for my protection in the train. I can be truly energized. The catch to that. The time is about to be midnight. Now here's a term that you may be familiar with. Revenge bedtime procrastination. Now of course there's article by The Sleep Foundation. Revenge bedtime occurs when individuals sacrifice sleep for personal time. Yeah, I'm supposed to get up around 10am, but I'm going to spend half of the time I should be getting to sleep by watching cool YouTube videos, catch it up with drama or pop culture on Reddit, or playing my cozy games until I'm tired. Yeah, I may be contributing more to my sleep deprivation and decline in physical and mental health, but goddamn it, at least I don't have to pretend to be something I'm not, which drains the energy outta of me every single day of my life. Plus, the late night hours are the best hours in my apartment. I'm the only one awake, which means that no one else is using the internet. So the wifi is faster. Although I seriously need to invest in a router and ethernet cord so there is more access to my room. My room is low key a dead zone. Why do I have to leave the comfort of my own room to just be able to use the internet or have good access to it at least? Or lose sleep on it? Literally. Anyway, I think I became an unintentional night owl. Unintentionally because my day schedule does not typically give me enough time to be myself or be creative. Thus depleting my energy and having to wait till ungodly hours in order to be creative. But what if there is the once in a blue moon circumstance where I have both enough time and energy to be creative? Well, there is one more sneaky thing that is stopping me. It's me. Well, to be more specific, it's my self-esteem. Or at least parts of it. Now I'll say that over the years that my self-esteem has improved mainly due to therapy and holistic healing and being part of spaces that are welcoming and inclusive, especially for neurospicy Black girls like myself. This is not a sponsored episode, but if they want to, I'm more than happy to accept it. But shout out to Manifest House. This community has been so beneficial to my healing journey and it openly accepts neurodiverse women of color like me. I feel like a lot of mental health spaces are not open or inclusive as they claim that they are, but that's another episode for another day. While my mental health has improved, it is not totally fully positive. One of my biggest enemies is my self-doubt, especially if I try a new creative hobby or if I'm getting back into an interest that I love doing, such as drawing for example. My mind is constantly giving me reasons to reconsider. I tend to doubt whether the final result is going to turn out well. I doubt that my writing is going to make any sense. There's also the fear of being vulnerable, especially if you are sharing your creativity for other people to see. There's this condition called rejection-sensitive dysphoria, which is common if you have ADHD. It is essentially that you feel this sort of pain. You feel when you feel that you have failed or have been rejected. Now I want to stress that I know everyone has experienced some form of disappointment. That is not rejection-sensitive dysphoria. Rejection-sensitive dysphoria is feeling a stab or punch in the chest when you get rejected for an opportunity. You feel that you have to withdraw from others or not even attend social events again because you don't want to have to deal with the possibility of being rejected again. You don't want to even start on your artwork or any type of art because you are afraid of being ridiculed and you don't want those thoughts or rejections to be constantly repeating and replaying your head like a broken record. Wow, I literally got chills just thinking about it. Rejection-sensitive dysphoria is in an unfortunate side effect of my ADHD, but it does not define me and it does not define you. Okay so I just spoke about the main factors that inhibit me from being able to be creative. I now want to talk about ways to get around these factors. I want to preface this by saying that while I may be a neurospicy Black girl, I am not a neurospicy professional. Please seek a professional for any medical advice. Additionally, my tips won't totally resolve the issues, but at least it will be a good cushion for making your life easier so you will have time and energy and a mindset to be able to do what you are passionate about, especially if it's a creative passion. Now, here's a tip for the time factor, particularly waiting mode. Tip 1- Start with an activity that requires little effort for you to do. Don't overexert yourself, especially if you believe a task is going to require a lot of energy from you. If you know a task is going to cost you some energy, it's going to make you not want to do it, right? For example, the dreaded laundry. Putting away clothes can be a pain in the ass for real. Cut the task in half by just hanging up the clothes that need to be put on hangers, or your "going out clothes" essentially. It decreases the amount of time and energy for a task and it keeps you busy while you're waiting for the event you have to go to. Additionally, utilize timers or alarms. Timers are good for the short term rewards ADHD brains are seeking. Plus, if you're someone like me who works better if you have a sense of urgency like a deadline, timers and alarms are your best friend. Additionally, timers and alarms are a great way to keep track of time as time blindness is a common symptom of ADHD. For example, let's say you're working at or doing a task at a job where you were rather not be. You're standing on your feet in 90 degree Fahrenheit weather, handing out flyers, you know only like two people who sympathize or really pity you will actually grab while people stare at you and look down on you like they're better than you, Minimum Wage Employee. Ooh, I want to get into that in a later episode. Timers are such a great way to keep track of how much time has passed or how close you are to the end of your shift. Now the low energy thing can be difficult to manage, especially if you're going through burnout. As someone who has dealt with and is low key still going through it, I had to find a time where I'm not being treated or intentionally treating myself as a robot. Coming from experience, this may be an initially difficult tip if you are someone who feels that if they are not being productive, they're doing something wrong. But it's not you. It's an unaccommodating society. My next tip is to utilize self care days as much as possible. Use your day offs and PTOs while you still got them. Take those days to do whatever makes you feel energized or relaxed. Do your creative hobby, walk around the park or keep yourself updated in the latest YouTube drama. Do things that make you feel like the human you are. Now, probably the toughest thing to battle is low or negative self esteem, especially when it comes to creativity. As earlier stated, while I am neurospicy, I am not a licensed professional. So I recommend speaking to one so they can help tailor treatment to help you. I also recognize that many people are unable to access therapy. Whether it be due to lack of financial resources, lack of cultural competent providers, or you're a minor whose parents refuse to believe that you need professional help. Been there, done that. There are ways to get around this so I'll split this into two parts. Therapy and alternatives to therapy. So the therapy options. The following is for when you're in need of immediate help. First, if you are in a crisis or emotional distress, call or text 988. This lifeline provides 24 hour confidential support to anyone in a mostly distressing circumstance. Additionally, you can reach a LGBTQ+ affirming counselor by texting Q to 988 or by calling 988 and pressing 3. If you're part of the LGBTQ+ community, I also recommend the Trevor Project, the leading suicide prevention and crisis intervention nonprofit for LGBTQ+ young people. Go to thetrevorproject.org/get-help to chat online with a crisis counselor. You can also text "START" to 678-678 or call them at 1-866-488-7386. I also recommend going to the National Alliance on Mental Illness website, NAMI.org to find more resources that are local to your area, if possible. Additionally, based on states, see if you're eligible for Medicaid. Medicaid is a program that provides access to medical services for people who can't afford to pay for medical care. Depending on your eligibility, you can access care for free or low costs or have low co-payments. Go to usa.gov/benefits to see if you could qualify to apply. Another option is to find counselors that accept sliding scale payment. Community health centers usually have these providers, but to save you the trouble of googling for hours, here's a quick tip. Go to psychologytoday.com and go to the search bar and type your city or zip code. You can go through the filters to find a therapist that best fits your preferences, but scroll all the way down and check off the box that says "offers a sliding scale." Be sure to message the counselor/provider or their office to confirm that information is still accurate. If you are currently a college student, take advantage of the free counseling services that the school provides. Shoot, the amount of tuition that you have to be paying nowadays is stress inducing. So take advantage of all the free services your college provides. Now, let's say therapy is not an option with reasons that I mentioned earlier, especially if cost is a major reason. You really need support and sometimes there are barriers to getting therapy, which is a form of support. However, there are cost-friendly alternatives. Let's start with the world wide web. Going on Eventbrite or Meetup can help you find in-person or online groups to have meetings or sessions based on peer support or if you just want an accountability buddy for creative or non-creative purposes. I appreciate virtual options because there are times where I just don't have the energy to go out. I hate having to put on my going out clothes, walk in the crowded ass subway that you don't know if it's going to be boiling or freezing, and then you gotta walk to the destination which you gotta rely on your maps app which can mess up your direction depending on how you hold your phone. And then you gotta restart your social skills training when meeting new people. Man, I'm just tired of thinking about it. Finally, if you're especially a homebody and you're a person who has a lot of thoughts but don't have a trusted person to vent to, I recommend journaling. The best thing about journaling is that you don't have to do it consecutively. You can do it whenever you need to vent about something. You don't even have to write out your feelings per se. You can just do it or draw your feelings if you want to. The best thing about journaling or any creative expression for that matter is that you can do anything you want to, when you want to, and how you want to. It's all up to you. Wow, this episode has got me thinking about how I want to prioritize time for creativity. Creativity is the important part of my life. I would consider it my best friend in the whole universe. I sometimes feel I neglect it sometimes to be a workhorse for things that I'm not passionate about. I really want to nurture my relationship with creativity. And for those who are going through the same thing, maybe this episode can be a helpful nudge for you to nurture your creativity too. Thank you for listening and remember, it's okay to be human. Do what feels right to you. Do it next time where something new happens and it won't be boring. Bye.[music]