Go With the Flow

Posted on October 1, 2019 Posted in Artist SoapboxTagged artist, bands, coldcreamband, confidence, creativeflow, creativity, flowstate, music, plan, practice, punkrock, running, schedule, support, theater, writer, writingLeave a comment

Originally published on Artist Soapbox on 30 September 2019

Greetings, Soapboxers!

Brass tacks, y’all: I am FIRED UP. Motivated. Here to work. Ready to roll up my sleeves and get into it. Can you feel it? This electric pulse of inspiration and creativity? That’s the current state of affairs in this corner of ASBX-land. We’re on a whole new thing now, kids, and the message is: “I’ve been in the corral, waiting for race time. You gonna let me run? Because I’m ready.” Mara Thomas, reporting for duty.

Quite a 180 from this summer’s more subdued topics — the Creative Vacuum and the Gifts of Loneliness. How did I get here from there? Sometimes things come along that shake up your day-to-day to such a degree that you find yourself on new ground. For me, what flipped the table on my navel-gazing were some recent experiences that connected me with flow, the zen-like state where time stops and you’re completely immersed in the task at hand. I have been having a hard time connecting to flow with my writing. However, you know where I almost always feel connected to flow? Playing music.

Have you experienced creative flow? Where you are so into what you’re doing that you don’t realize several hours have flown by? Where the project is so engrossing that you don’t even think to stop and eat or take a break? That’s flow, my friends. Flow researcher and psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi popularized the term and identified ten factors that accompany a flow state, including:

Concentration and focus
Losing feelings of self-consciousness
Losing track of time
Complete focus on the activity itself
Participating in an intrinsically rewarding activity

Let’s look at that last one more closely. An “intrinsically rewarding activity” sounds to me like the “Make Pots” theory we’ve talked about before on this blog — that the pursuit is valuable for its own sake. That there is value in the doing of the thing, regardless of any outcome. Plus, the more you do the thing, the better you will become at doing the thing and the more fun you can have playing around with the thing as your skill level and confidence grow. In other words, immersing yourself in a task you enjoy can lead to flow. I have felt flow with running, with gardening, with cleaning, and I invariably feel flow when I practice and perform with my band Cold Cream.

Cold Cream rocking out at Hopscotch 2019. Photo by Cory Rayborn.

Cold Cream is my first experience as a band’s dedicated vocalist. In previous bands, I always played an instrument in addition to singing and frequently felt like I wasn’t performing optimally at either. Now, though, I can focus all my efforts on the vocals, connecting with the message of the songs, tuning into what my bandmates are doing, and fire-hosing that energy out into the crowd. I can tap into something deep inside of me — this is rage, let’s be real — and channel it to serve the music. It’s incredibly cathartic and I feel completely removed from my self-critical nemeses, perfectionism and comparison. The focus and energy it takes to perform don’t leave room for anything else.

Have I mentioned it is also incredibly fun? It is! Once we start playing, it’s all I want to do. What’s more, I can feel the residual effects of these flow states for several days and it’s giving me more confidence with song-writing, something that has been a major creative roadblock for me for nearly 15 years. That confidence is spilling over into rewrites for my play, YEAR OF THE MONKEY, a process that has been dogged with perfectionism. My attitude in this moment is, “Go for it. Give it all you’ve got and don’t look back.”

Creativity is at my doorstep. It’s making its presence known in a big way. Were I not buoyed by these recent flow experiences, I might feel overwhelmed or unsure or make some excuse not to answer the call. Having such a potent source of flow in my life truly makes me feel like so many things are possible. I’m ready to grab the reins and hold on.

We’d love to hear about your experiences with flow! Drop us a line at artistsoapbox@gmail.com. It’s always great to hear from you.

‘Til next time,
MT

P.S. See and hear Cold Cream in this video by Dave Schwentker from Hopscotch 2019.

Readers Write: “Endurance”

Posted on August 19, 2019August 19, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged artist, confidence, creativity, dedication, emotionalabuse, endurance, enduring, exercise, goals, marathon, marathonrunning, overcoming, reader, relationships, resources, running, sunmagazine, writer, writingLeave a comment

☀️Good News Alert!☀️ A piece I submitted is included in The Sun magazine’s Readers Write section (Sept issue)! Readers Write is perhaps my favorite feature in The Sun. This year I challenged myself to submit something every month and had to chuckle at the cosmic timing: I received word about being included on the topic “Endurance” just days after I ran my latest marathon.

Running has taught me a lot about myself. I can see directly how early experiences of confidence in running have catapulted me to where I am now, personally, physically and creatively. Here are the medals I’ve received from running full and half marathons (and one ultra marathon!), and, perhaps most special of all, the one from the first 5K I ever ran in 2013. Never dreamed I would be this person, but here we are.

More so than endurance running, this piece describes the dynamics I endured in my last relationship — one with a verbally and emotionally abusive man. Most of my friends had no idea the degree to which this was happening, mostly because I was embarrassed to tell them (file under: signs you’re in a toxic relationship). The piece describes merely the quaint tip of the iceberg of what it was like to be with him. I remember viscerally the internal conflict I felt between my self-worth wanting me to stand up to his bullying and the inherited lifetimes of conditioning telling me to stay quiet and small. These days I am stronger and have more tools but this is still a work in progress for me.

Pain that is not transformed is transmitted. No one is immune from this. Today I am speaking directly to my cis male friends: Men who have not healed their own trauma cause harm to others. FULL STOP. That harm has a daily impact on womxn, children, folks with marginalized identities. Harm takes MANY forms. Even good guys cause harm. Men, if someone tells you that you are causing harm, literally the least you can do is listen. If you had any idea of the infinite ways womxn twist and bend themselves to prioritize your comfort, it would/should make your heads explode. Centering men’s comfort has been a survival skill for generations. We need your help to disrupt this.

Here is the piece. Thank you for reading!

Running Toward Creativity

Posted on January 28, 2019January 28, 2019 Posted in Artist SoapboxTagged artist, comparison, compassion, confidence, creativity, exercise, mud, music, physical, resources, running, stepbystep, trailrunning, writingLeave a comment

Originally published on Artist Soapbox on 28 January 2019

Greetings, Soapboxers!

This morning I ran a 14-mile trail race at Little River Regional Park in Durham. Running is one of the primary ways I connect with my body and is a huge resource for me. Trail running, though, requires an entirely different set of tactics. Sure, running is the common denominator, but you use different shoes, different muscles, a different gait, and a different mindset as you’re constantly negotiating rocks and tree roots and mud. These obstacles are often cleverly hidden under a carpet of leaves and pine needles. There are switchbacks and river crossings. You might fall. You probably will fall. You will most certainly get dirty.

Which brings me here. To how I’m feeling about creativity at this point in 2019. I’m on the trail. And I’m loving it.

When I’m running I don’t compare. I run my own race. Simply showing up and finishing is a victory. If other people ran faster or slower, that’s irrelevant to me. I’m also not comparing present-moment me with any other version of me. Am I in better or worse shape than I was last year? Irrelevant. I’m here today and I’m doing this thing. This serves as a good reminder for my creativity when I notice other people putting their work out into the world. Art is not a competition. Other people’s success is not my failure. I can cheer them on — and I can cheer myself on — without comparison.

About halfway through today’s race, the crowd had thinned so much that I couldn’t see any runners in front of me or behind me. I’m not a seasoned trail runner, and at times the path was very difficult to discern. In those moments, a voice came into my head. It said, “Slow down. Take the next obvious step.” In my creative pursuits, I often feel out of my depth with no clear path forward. Then Anxious Brain shows up and wants to skip to the inevitable embarrassing disaster at the end (not inevitable, but Anxious Brain hasn’t learned that). Today though, I was in the middle of the literal woods with absolutely no idea where I was. But I didn’t panic. I wasn’t lost. There was a path. Faint as it may have been. All it took was a moment of shifting my awareness… and I was back at it. Taking the next obvious step and the step after that and on and on until the finish line. I’ll remember that when I’m feeling overwhelmed by the task in front of me. Break it down and just focus on the next step.

Those miles spent running by myself also made me think of the solitary nature of creativity. Whether it’s writing, doing research, practicing music, or learning lines, much of my creative work is done in solitude. Even though I am often by myself, I know I’m never alone. We’re fortunate to have such a supportive creative community here in the Triangle. If I need some encouragement, it’s always close at hand. Just like the person on the trail today who emanated seemingly from nowhere to play music on a plastic recorder as a way of supporting the runners. He gave me a boost when I needed one. Bonus points for being random and delightfully weird.

A few months ago, I shared my latest battle with my creative frenemy, perfectionism. At that time, my approach to writing felt like using tweezers to build a sandcastle when I thought I should be slopping around buckets of sand. At that time, that’s what I was working with and my only way forward was to accept it and keep showing up anyway.

Today, I drove home covered in actual mud with a smile on my face. This is the energy I want to carry into my creative pursuits this year. So many things are coming up that I look forward to sharing with you over the next few months. I can honestly say I have no idea how any of it will go, but I’m embracing that. I’m on the trail.

‘Til next time!