Saturday, January 22, 2011

Insult to Injury

I think I may have found an explanation for my recent lack of creativity (or at least extreme struggle with being creative).

This little chart here of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (thank you wiki!) seems to break it down pretty well.  Creativity is at the top of the pyramid, to be reached when there are supports underneath it.  My supports under the top level have been playing a high stakes game of Jenga for too long.

I was moving along pretty well for a while there, things were looking up, and then they weren't again.  Still, even path, no biggie, keep walking.  Keep working.  Keep trying.

It's been a bad week.  I can take a lot of bad news and disappointment.  But this week it's just seemed like too much.  I can't seem to be productive and get any reasonable amount of work done.  It's hard to focus or organize my thoughts.  Old wounds that I thought had finally healed feel ripped open again.  Old fears and unhealthy thought patterns that I believed defeated are rising up.  And I can't talk to the people that I think it would be most helpful to talk to, because this REALLY isn't the time.

I think if it weren't for all the empty holes on the lower levels of the pyramid, this week would not have prompted such a response, it would have still been upsetting, but not to this degree of feeling crazy.  And I feel crazy, and it's not in the "oh, how funny, isn't she crazy?" kind of way.  It's more in the paranoid, in need of a padded room kind of crazy. 

But here's the really unfortunate thing:  I depend on the things in the top level (creativity, problem solving, acceptance of the facts) to secure the things at the lower levels (employment, resources, property, food, water...).  The current crazy is just scrambling the esteem and love/belonging sections entirely.  It's like juggling chainsaws at the best of times, but right now at least one has been dropped and is spinning around slicing up what remains.  And I can't do anything to fix it because you can't fix it from the top down.

I feel betrayed by my own life.

Boo hiss!