CreativeLee Musings

Lockdown can be hard socially, so I grew my own friends.

So, maybe it’s not quite as dramatic as the title, but ever since the #StayHomeStaySafe rules have been imposed (for good reason), people, including myself, have begun to feel the affects of that social isolation.

There’s been many ways to combat this. Video-calling, letters, or distracting yourself by means of reading, exercising, cooking, or online classes. If you have the resources to do as such, I highly encourage it. These are trying times for us all.

That being said, my own experiences in this turbulent times, one aspect that I’m missing in these summer days is the freedom to go outside at leisure.

Which is why, for my part, my means at combating the social isolation is to stick to a routine and grow my own herb garden.

Image of Grow Your Own Herb Garden — [**Source**]

Online delivery has become tantamount to getting goods, due to high street retailers temporarily shutting down.

One such website that I gravitated towards is Bunches.co.uk, an online florist website that offers an array of hampers, houseplants and bouquets.

On such an occasion, they also offer a chance to grow your own herb garden (£27 Grow your own herb garden with free UK delivery), which is something I decided to try out as a means to pass the time during the lock down.

The kit itself comes with 7 sets of seeds – in this case, coriander, oregano, parsley, basil, chives, mint, and thyme – as well as 7 pastel planting pots and potting soil, which makes for a very neat, picturesque set-up.

It also came with a guide on when the growing cycles of each plant would happen, estimating an average of 8-12 weeks of being ready to fully harvest.

Bunches is particularly good at keying in the detail of watering cycles and how fast one plant may grow compared to another.

Having something to keep your mind off of the lock down can be trying when confined to four walls and a roof for a majority of the good weather, however I found that having even something small like keeping a herb garden can be good to keep your mind off of it.

Even planning recipes to use your future fresh herbs in can be fun if you also plant vegetables alongside it, or keeping a book of different ingredients to try.

And even after a few days, I must not be doing a bad job of letting these seeds grow…

…because day 4 is here, and there’s already a little bit of life. 🙂

A Paw-sitively thrilling throwback

Hidden deep within Bristol’s city center is a gem of an experience: You&Meow is a cat cafe found on Denmark St. that boasts a “zen-like” experience full of relaxation, a chance to unwind…

…and maybe a furry friend or two.

I took a visit there last year with my partner just to see if this Japanese zen garden-inspired cafe really was all it was cracked up to be.

Needless to say, I was not disappointed.

Video moment showing my visit to the @youandmeowcafe last year! 🙂 Blog post to follow! pic.twitter.com/U7BCCj6GQi
— CreativeLeeMuse (@CreativeLeeMus1) April 9, 2020

Whilst many of the cats were perfectly content to slumber on, they weren’t shy in letting you pet them, play with them, or enjoy their company.

With a wonderful selection of treats on the menu, including decadent vegan chocolate brownies, it was the perfect place to just generally embrace the feline lifestyle and lay back in contentment and watch the world go by.

an introvert’s guide to searching fellow humans for creative inspiration

We’ve all seen the stereotypical writer/artist, haven’t we?

You know the one. You’re probably picturing the fellow right now.

A shut-in, intellectual mind who slaves at their laptop/typewriter/notebook/chalkboard (or however he chooses to write. Maybe someone out there uses blood and bone), claiming it to be his latest masterpiece, and accepts no criticism, citing that “logic” has no place in their “creative vision”.

A writer is a perfectionist. Shackled to their creative vision. Or Hollywood would have us believe in the stereotype.

In actuality, at least with my experience, writers are amongst the biggest procrastinators going. And most of that can be chalked down to one universal issue across any medium with writers, though especially those who work in the creative medium.

Writer’s block.

From my own experience writing for 10+ years, writer’s block can make or break a deadline. It’s so much easier to bypass forcing a piece out when you just stare at the screen, not letting the words flow.

Motivation can be hard to come by with any job, let alone one that requires you to create rather than abide by a certain set of specifications.

So, I’ve comprised a list of 3 things that I do to combat writer’s block and seek out inspiration, but from the viewpoint of an absolute introvert who drains easily around social people.

Call it “an introvert’s guide to searching fellow humans for inspiration”.

1) People-watch.

Sit in any crowded place. There’s always someone that draws your attention, right?

When you’re stuck in a rut for inspiration, take a moment to get outside and disconnect form the words on a page. Writing is all about describing something or someone, but there’s little use in it if you forget that writing creatively is about observational description.

So even taking 10 minutes out of your day to sit down in a library of a coffee shop and enjoying the ambiance can strike you with inspiration: maybe your main character’s favourite hobby came from overhearing those two baristas talking about how they’re beginning their venture into independent terrarium making. Who knows.

2) Listen to ambient tracks.

Whether you buy into the relevant discourse of music being a distraction or an inspiration, we’ve all had moments where we imagine our characters dramatically confessing to a romantic piano solo, or kicking ass to hard-core rock lyrics. That’s why so many AMV’s exist on YouTube in their pixelated, 2007-quality clip glory.

However, when it comes to original writing inspiration, I personally find that setting your environment with ambient nature tracks – such as long videos of thunderstorms, really helps to distract from overstimulating your brain without the need for venturing outside of the office.

My personal recommendation is Coffivity. It has a plethora of backing music to choose from.

3) Turn off social media and read a memoir.

I can already feel the horror – but hear me out on this.

It’s easy to find inspiration through our social media feeds. Be it through artistic photography or that odd shitpost-quote that somehow ended up delivering profound dialogue.

But it’s just as easy to slip into the rhythm of procrastination of, “just 5 more minutes”. To overstimulate your brain with comparisons to other works, to other pieces of fiction. Which is why when I hit writer’s block hard, I uninstall all my apps and instead go to read a personalised memoir.

Books are different than blog posts. You may argue there’s less authenticity in how edited they are, but I would argue there is more passion in making sure the right representation of their words come across, and if you are introverted, it’s almost like sitting down and listening to someone tell their story to you.

Perhaps the best memoir I have read is Carrie Fisher’s The Princess Diarist. There’s a wit and humour that makes me feel like I return to an old friend every time I read it. Her words encourage and inspire me to take myself less seriously every time.

These tips won’t work for everyone, and that’s okay.

The great part about overcoming writer’s block is structuring a routine that works for you. Whilst I need to disconnect from social media, your greatest source of inspiration may be from someone’s offhand tweet about the summer of ’69.

Overcoming writer’s block can be a story in of itself. And who knows?

Maybe that’ll be the focus of your next piece.

5 Tips For Overcoming Procrastination, Even When You Don’t Feel Like It

As someone who has been in education for over 75% of my life, I am no stranger to wanting to put things off to the last minute. There’s a guilty pleasure in watching that clock go down and justifying, “oh, if I do it at such and such a time, then I’ll have plenty of time to do it later.” I’ve done it, you’ve done it, and now the million-dollar question, “how do you combat it?”

This isn’t necessarily a fix-it for everyone. You may even be procrastinating on working on your own projects/work/assignments by thinking you’re researching how not to. But if you can take away something from things I’ve learned over the years, maybe you can edge your way one step closer into combating it.

1 – Friendly Judgement.

Tell someone you have a deadline. To me, nothing works more from getting a project done than someone I trust checking in on me, going “oh, how are you doing?” The shame creeps up on you if you lie to them. Their encouragement emboldens you if you tell them the truth.

2 – Get outside of your normal space.

There’s a reason so many of us find they can’t work in our bedrooms, or even our houses – it’s so easy to feel relaxed and safe there. And whilst the pressure of the final hours of a deadline can make it so we bypass the usual tranquility of swathing ourselves in blankets and watching Netflix whilst ignoring copious amounts of work, removing yourself from that environment and working in a public place really can help to put your mind in focus. The library, for example, is free! Use it!

Woman Sitting in Front of Macbook — *[Image source]*

3 – Treat Yourself!

Who says working hard has to be “all work, no play?” Most of us do these projects because they’re attached to something we’re pursuing – education, careers, or even a side-project we independently began. Sure, it may be tedious, but even rewarding yourself with something small can brighten up any day of work, and you don’t need to suffer during these days.

“If I write 900 words, I will reward myself with a take-out.” Worked a treat on assignment deadline day for me.

4 – Space your work out!

Now, I know the temptations of leaving it all to the last minute. Sometimes it’s just easier to get on with daily life and then grind through deadlines in the last hours of a Sunday morning, finally feeling like the walking dead at 4 in the morning. And whilst that is feasibly possible, space out your work. Doing even a small amount every other day helps tremendously if you do find yourself in that last-minute grind.

If you’re like me and love cute stationary, buy a planner and organise your time. You’ll be amazed at how a little effort each day shaves off the big looming look of that deadline.

Flat Lay Photography of Unfold Book Beside Macbook — *[Image Source]*

5 – Finally… find a playlist and listen to it on repeat.

Some may argue that music actually helps distract you from doing work – and to a degree, I can understand that. But with the rising popularity of “lo-fi 24 hour” streams on YouTube dedicating to helping people study, as well as my own personal experience of finding my concentration improving if I listen to nature sounds such as the rain, there’s a certain adrenaline that really helps you speed through those deadlines!

Overcoming procrastination is different for everyone, but hopefully these tips of mine provided at least a little nugget of wisdom. 🙂