Creative February 2024

As a father of two children (one in high school and another in college), a full time science educator, and as an increasingly busy nature photographer it’s very difficult to find the time for creativity. Finding a few moments here and there is a constant struggle for me and one that I wrestle with on a weekly basis. My situation is not unique, I have many colleagues who struggle with this in their own lives. The proverbial work / creative life balance. Not that this does not happen to full time artists, the struggle to find balance and time for creativity there can be even more acute.

This topic is the subject of many books, blogs, and podcasts. “How do I find the time for creativity in such a busy work schedule?” I won’t even come close to suggesting I have solved this dilemma for myself nor that I have a solution for you. Rather, I have found some strategies that have worked for me and I’d like to share them with you on the chance they could help you in your own life.

One of the best strategies I have found for myself is scheduling a self-imposed time for creativity on a daily or weekly basis. A good example of this if the Creative February project that I have participated in over the past two years. I’ve found it hard to stay consistent with this schedule outside the month of February due to the numerous other time requirements I have, but for February it’s definitely an achievable goal. February is a slow month in my schedule anyway, so this is a good fit. You could do this any month in full honesty.

The idea here is to take a chunk of time every day for the month of February to focus on something creative. It can take on all sorts of permutations, it certainly does not have to be photography as it is in my case. Other ideas include reading art books, studying paintings, sketching, carving, clay work, and even writing and creating music.

I’ll spare you the history of the project as I cannot speak to it well this morning with insufficient amounts of coffee coursing through my body. It is, however, described excellently by Takeyce Walter on the A Creative Affair Podcast! I’d highly recommend a listen here: “Creative February with Takeyce Walter.” You can see the work of others this year on Instagram at @creativefebruary.

My self-imposed constraints for the past two years has been to create a new photograph every day for the whole month. Pushing myself further, each photograph is a 1:1 square monochrome image photographed and processed on the iPhone 13 Pro. Each is also a scene from nature from the trails wherever I travel over the month. By restricting myself this way I found it really pushed my creative thinking in significant ways. I rarely shoot in 1:1 so it’s a real mind-bender for me and it really pushes me to focus on composition much more than normal.

Do I really photograph every day for 28 days straight? Well, there are some days where it’s just not feasible given the time constraints. On such days I go back to an image I may have taken the day or two before and then process it on that day when I cannot get out. This allows me to still keep with the overall goal. Over the month I’ve found this can happen a couple times, but you will see you get pretty adept at finding subjects quickly given time constraints.

This may sound easy. It may sound hard. In practice what I have found is that the first week is a bit exhausting. Maybe even the firs two weeks. Particularly in the first year. That exhaustion definitely fades and by the end of the month you feel as though you’re on a roll. A long term flow state begins to set in, if you will. Last year I actually wanted to keep going and missed it as I faded into March — a nagging back injury put an end to that however. Health issue aside, pushing further may have defeated the point of the constraint, and possibly diminished the overall therapeutic effect of the project.

I would highly recommend giving this a try! Even if it’s every other day or three times a week, you’ll find that the process of consistent, deliberate focus on something could be truly meaningful. Check out Takeyce Walter’s site and her episode on the A Creative Affair Podcast. I will be sharing my progress on this year’s project on my blog, so definitely come back and see how things are going. I hope to update things daily to the best of my ability. You can also see the images on my Facebook account, my Instagram account, and on my nascent Threads account.

Good luck to you on your creative journey in February! I’d love to hear your thoughts on all this and updates on how it’s going / went for you in the comments below!

One last note, my images from last year can be seen in my Recent work gallery.