I have an overactive C-head

I do have a bit of a problem…

The symptoms are that I can often feel like a bit of a manic-depressive person: swinging rapidly between extreme highs of excitement, enthusiasm and energy, then down to negative, depressiveness, frustration and fatigue. I have problems making decisions and choices. I feel anxious and stressed when I have a rare bit of time to myself. I often feel overloaded and overwhelmed.

Last year, in a particularly exhausted part of my life my doctor suspected an overactive thyroid could be the problem. It wasn’t: my thyroid was functioning normally,however more tests revealed I had very low iron levels instead. Now my iron levels are normal again, and I am attempting to be more balanced with my life: look after my body with healthy eating, exercise and sleep… But I have realised that I DO have a problem, which most doctors (and any regular people for that matter) would probably laugh at.

I have an OVERACTIVE CREATIVE HEAD! I can’t walk down the street, pick up a magazine, watch a show on television without noticing a detail which triggers something in my brain that is a completely new creative idea of something I could make, draw, sew, print, paint, write, etc.

Help me!!

Yeah, yeah – you non-creative people are probably just rolling your eyes wondering how on earth that could be a problem. Lucky you, you probably think: it would be fabulous to be creatively talented… How much fun it would be to be an artist and designer and design and make things all day, to be doing what you love. What could be hard about that?

But you. YOU, hopefully the one reading this! Are you creative too? DO you understand?? Do you get me? Can you comprehend the torture that it is to just have too many ideas, so many possibilities, a zillion and one creative desires and no possible way of being able to DO many of them in the amount of hours that are available in the day!!!

Maybe you have a full-time job (in a non-creative career) that obviously pays the bills, and allows you to buy food to eat… so the amount of time you can spend doing your creative-desires is limited to the few hours outside of that…

Maybe you are a mum, like me, and thus way too many hours are taken up doing mum things for those little people that constantly need you, and that slightly irritating big-person who seems to need you a bit too much too… So somehow you have to snatch little tiny snippets of creative-time, and try to not feel guilty that you are not cleaning the kitchen, vacuuming the floors, or out earning money in a ‘real job’…

Or maybe, (Lucky YOU! – as most people would imagine) you are making money from your art and designs – and living the ‘dream’. But I know the truth: you have worked DARN-BLOODY HARD to get where you are and actually earn some sort of ‘income’ from your work. And the reality is that the money you earn rarely equates to the amount of hours you have put in, or of course the years of earning sub-zero that led you to this point… You (Lucky You) now still have the same problem, that the creative ideas still cannot be achieved within that 24 hours of daytime available.

SO what do you do?

I don’t know. Tell me if you know.

The over-active Creative-head can seem like a problem… but I am trying to recognise it as the gift that it is, and just learn better ways of taming and controlling the crazy-wild beast that lives within!

I am trying to ignore feeling frustrated. I try to put the blinkers over my eyes a little bit – and at least filter out a little bit of the ideas and visual overload that bombards me every day.

I am trying to do little bits of ‘Me-Art’ (NOT work, or products, or things with a particular outcome in mind) every day or so - just sketching, drawing, writing, collaging… and allow a bit of what I see and think and feel to come out – and perhaps be built on in the future…

I am trying to have some sort of ‘discipline’ with my goals and ideas. I am thinking more about what I choose to work on, and making sure I am putting my energy towards things I REALLY want to do! – Rather than just something I could do, is fashionable, would be fun… etc.

I am trying to be patient, be realistic with my expectations, and be proud of all that I do achieve.

I am trying hard to lead a healthy and happy life, despite having an overactive Creative-head.

If you too have an overactive C-head feel free to share your stories and remedies! There is always strength in numbers, and having a support-group for this sort of affliction ;)