14 Comments
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Krishana Davis's avatar

It can be hard to ask family to watch your kids, but those are your villagers — your community. And I know they enjoy the time with your child.

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L'Oreal Thompson Payton's avatar

Yes, I really need to learn how to get out of my own way!

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Mich's avatar

Sometimes I ask hubs to keep the kids out of my sewing area for a certain chunk of time so I can create in peace. Every time I go in that space, the kids and even the dog slowly drift there too and then I'm stepping over and around folks trying to think about pattern pieces and what not.

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L'Oreal Thompson Payton's avatar

Yes, friend! Reclaim your space (and your sanity!!) 🫶🏾

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Christina M. Tapper's avatar

Great post, LT! Reminds me of something I read last year: "It turns out, not doing their art was costing them time, was draining it away, little by little, like a slow but steady leak. They had assumed, wrongly, that there wasn’t enough time in the day to do their art, because they assumed (because we’re conditioned to assume) that every thing we do costs time. But that math doesn’t take energy into account, doesn’t grok that doing things that energize you gives you time back. By doing their art, a whole lot of time suddenly returned. Their art didn’t need more time; their time needed their art."

https://everythingchanges.us/blog/energy-makes-time/

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L'Oreal Thompson Payton's avatar

Omg, YES! I love this!! I started this morning by working on my memoir instead of client work and the energy shift is palpable!! Thank you for sharing 🫶🏾

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My Themed, Entertaining Life's avatar

“Self-care sustains me. But creativity restores me.” This resonates so much. Thank you for writing this and sharing. I’ve discovered this myself in pivoting to full-time writing at the start of the year. I tried to give myself a two week “break” a few weeks ago to write less but I needed the writing to restore. Thank you. Sometimes we have great plans, but then we learn in practice what’s really best. I am grateful for the lessons and discovery and thanks for sharing yours.

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L'Oreal Thompson Payton's avatar

Yes, yes and more yes! I pray that your writing practice continues to restore you 🙏🏾

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Nicole Langford's avatar

ALSO- I think award for “family with the best smiles” goes to y’all!

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L'Oreal Thompson Payton's avatar

Haha aww thank you! Now only time will tell if she actually smiled for Picture Day earlier this week 😂

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Nicole Langford's avatar

I love the idea of creativity being restorative. I want to tap into that. I think for so long I’ve had anxiety around creativity needing to be masterpiece level good, or lucrative for that matter! (Thanks capitalism). But thinking about it as something that helps to restore me is deep. Thank you for this! And I’m so happy you loved Wahala. I put that book down mouth agape. Haha ❤️

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L'Oreal Thompson Payton's avatar

The restorative energy is SO necessary! And I NEED the Wahala miniseries...like yesterday!!

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Susan Robbins's avatar

This is such a relatable post.

I've recently been working to carve out more time in my day/week/life for writing and reading, two outlets I let languish over the last 15 years. It's hard when so much of life is 'carving out.'

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L'Oreal Thompson Payton's avatar

So much carving!! 😩

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