The show must go on. That old chestnut, which seems to have crept beyond performance industries and into most contexts of our modern lives. The show must go on, no matter what. It is a social badge of honour to defend how busy and desperately tired we are. The glory of the grind.
What if we genuinely noticed how unsustainable maintaining the grind is? Not only is such drill sergeant thinking unhelpful for our mental health, an over-worked or overwhelmed brain will likely struggle to be creative.
That’s where our hero comes in… rest. The antidote to the grind. The harbinger of creativity.
I recently had the pleasure of talking to Christine Long from ArtsHub about the benefits of rest for psychological and creative wellbeing.
We mused about how rest can be more than tending to our sleep debts or stopping everything to lie down. And the close ties that rest can have with flow and play states.
An added bonus of this article is that I’m quoted alongside my dear friend (and creative powerhouse) Petra Kalive. Our names haven’t appeared on the same project for near on 20 years… so this was a little bit of a special one.
Why rest is good for you and your creativity by Christine Long.