There’s a huge problem in society, a massively disastrous problem.

I know this because I’m experiencing it first-hand…

Many of us are creatively destitute because of the dull, repetitive, uninspiring jobs we have to do in order to pay the bills; the rent, the electricity, the gym membership, the barely-functioning car that we have to drive just to get to the job that doesn’t pay nearly enough for the sweat and tears that we pour into it…

I’m trying hard to be a writer – I’m trying to write a book about my first ever trip to India, seven years ago, where I met Alex Ali, who’s now my husband.  I’m trying hard and for a while there it was going really well.  But now that I’m back in the west looking for work and back to running markets too, it’s suddenly become really difficult to tap into that creative sphere that I spent the past five months in India cultivating.

During that period, there was all this space and freedom around my days and no soul-crushing job taking up 80% of my precious time.  No uninspiring endless work that sucked the life and energy out of me.  No hectic schedule to stick to, no constant, exhausting time-table…

Before this particular trip, I spent nearly four years waitressing full-time (in a sometimes ridiculously hectic restaurant) and the last two years of that simultaneously trying to run a new business selling jewellery at markets with my husband.  I guess I got pretty tired.  So tired, in fact, I needed a five month holiday from it!  It was heaven.

My routine, especially when I was up in the snow-peaked, majestic Himalayas, consisted of 8 am wake-up, thirty minutes of yoga, a shower, two hours to relax over tasty porridge or muesli and coffee in a homely cafe with dogs, a cat and a luscious garden.  At 11 am I would go to my Hindi lesson for an hour, after which I had the entire day to myself where I would amble to the nearby town and hand-wash my clothes with a bar of soap and eat brownies with terrible Indian coffee and philosophise with other tourists (as only you can in India!) and read piles of books and, of course, write and write and write…  And it was heaven.

I would write elegantly-worded poems when I felt the urge; I wrote daily in my journal; but most importantly, I wrote my book.  I wrote and scribbled and typed and in nearly six months, completed more than two thirds of the entire story, with two 160-page notebooks full by the end of it and a transcript of over half that on the lap-top, edited and polished and nearly ready for public viewing!  And it was heaven.

But given that I wasn’t being paid for this trip and had limited savings, there came a point when both my visa and my money ran out.  And I sadly had to come home.  And search for a job.  And return to the world of “busy” once again.  And it is not heaven!

I wake early and barely squeeze in my yoga before I have to start hurriedly showering, dressing, gulping down a cup of mint tea and driving off without a proper breakfast (or worse, eating some toast or croissant while on the go!).  And money that used to last me for days in India is now disappearing faster than that peaceful calm and relaxed vibe I brought back from my trip.  My constantly tense shoulders are creeping up around my ears, my creativity feels as though it’s marooned on a far-away island, weeping inconsolably because I seem to have abandoned her, while my mind has jumped into a McClaren Formula 1 car and taken off without my permission, driving chaotically with a deafening roar through the sanctuary that was once my inner landscape.

So how do I now create?  With organized time-management, the hours in which to do it could in fact be found.  But what of the calm, open channel that inspiration requires in order to pay you a visit?  Having lost my little slice of heaven and landed with a smack on my bum in reality, how do I transfer some of that creative fuel to my writing these days?  Especially when I have to empty so much of my precious time and energy into an uninspiring job instead of my writing…

I don’t have the answer yet, besides running off to India again for six months and living the life of a vegan, sandal-wearing, dread-locked hippie (well, maybe just the sandal bit since I love cheese and my hair’s closer to those L’Oreal adverts).  But as I already mentioned, I’ve no more money for jet-setting half-way across the world at the moment.

So it’s something I’m going to have to learn.  Otherwise, so long as our reality dictates that I need to earn money, that book is going to take another seven years to finish.  Besides there must be a way to organize your time and your mind to bring in some of that calm, some of that peace and creative inspiration, even when you’re leaving the workplace with a broken mind/body that’s ready to collapse in exhaustion… right?

I will find my heaven again before the Grim Reaper comes to bring me there.  And when I do – when I find a way to get there again, I will let you know.  To all of you beauties out there working endless hours in a boring, tedious, exhausting job because life is not providing you with the chance to breathe freely, I salute you and I say; don’t give up!  Find a way through!  If it’s at all possible, grab your savings and take-off to Asia for a while and allow yourself some time to be you once again.  To enjoy what you enjoy, to have time for YOU, to breathe easily and find your heaven.

Where there’s a will there’s a way and there must be a way.  Forge ahead and let’s find ways to get out of this soulless rat-race our society has created around us.  Let’s find ways to be calm, relaxed and peaceful and creatively productive.  (And, you know, maybe not completely broke like my sorry ass is right now!).

Love,

Ellie