Dancing with Distractions
Vincent van Gogh on How to Really Be an Artist
Distractions are creative fuel.
But in order to improve at your craft, you do need to actually focus, study, practice, and cut out distractions. It’s a painful paradox. Doing this takes time and attention away from everything else, but it’s necessary. And yet, you also need to know when to draw a line.
Recognizing these two truths often leaves me feeling existentially anxious. I don’t always know the best thing to do: hunker down and get to work, or dance with my distractions? Advice is rarely helpful. But sometimes, I do serendipitously find what I need to hear, whether it was intended for me or not.
Like when I found myself once again knee-deep in Vincent van Gogh’s labyrinth of letters, procrastinating, when I felt like I should have been working on my writing.
But his advice in letter #574, to his little sister, Wil, struck me. I reread the entire letter like ten times and then sat with his words.
“Be this as it may, to write a book, to perform a deed, to make a painting with life in it, one must be a living person oneself. And so for you, unless you never want to progress, studying is very much a side issue.
Enjoy yourself as much as you can and have as many distractions as you can, and be aware that what people want in art nowadays has to be very lively, with strong colour, very intense.
So intensify your own health and strength and life a little, that’s the best study.”
I admire the way he encourages his little sister to pursue being an artist through an invitation to be a living person instead of pushing her to spend hours locked away writing. Van Gogh didn’t see enjoying yourself and taking care of yourself as a distraction away from the pursuit of a craft, or as some lack of discipline, and laziness; it's the opposite. It’s a means of pursuing that craft with intensity because it fuels it. Whatever you do outside your craft, the joy you feel, the fun you have, is an experience that can inspire you, give you perspective, new ideas, and inform what you create! Your distractions can fulfill you and be your creative catalyst.
Because you can’t tend to your creative work if you aren’t properly nourished, or rather, intensified in the right ways. I’ve experienced this firsthand. I can’t show up for anything I care about, especially writing, if I don’t intensify my life in the way Van Gogh describes. I need time to dilly-dally. Play. Have long-winding random conversations with friends. Meander around for hours on foot. Rest. Sleep. Get lost in books that pull me in. Turn my brain off and watch a movie. And often, just enjoy silence and be still.
For myself, I like to think I know when I’m prioritizing the wrong things. But it’s really only in hindsight when it truly hits me, and I’m forced to confront consequences and make changes, the same way I think it hits everyone. We all know it, but we don’t get it. Not really, anyway.
In our hyper-distracted world, I think it only gets harder and harder to see what’s worth tending to. We’re too busy. We’re bombarded with information overload. We’re drowning in the advice and noise of the loudest voices who don’t actually know what we need. We intensify the wrong things.
It’s important maybe now more than ever to take Van Gogh’s words to heart. Clearly, we live in a time where what’s most important is most easily neglected and forgotten. Friends. Family. Fun. Health.
And so, in revisiting Van Gogh’s letter, I’m reminded to ask myself: What are the right “distractions,” the worthwhile ones that need to be intensified? What do I need to fill up on so I can create with stronger color? What are the things that I actually need to be accountable to?
I’m not afraid to zig-zag into life’s diversions. I’m realizing they’re not my enemy. Instead, I’ll intensify my life. Be a living person. And I’ll dance with my distractions. Because they’re my creative fuel.
How about you?
Hi friend! Thank you for reading Dancing with Distractions. If anything resonated with you, let me know! You can leave a like, and a comment. I’d love to hear whatever is on your mind.
I realize we're dancing around the same topic, kind of complementary?
Loved this advice, it's freeing, and so on-point. Giving yourself permission to live, and then that informing your creations is very wise (and kind of a meta-loop that you found it while being distracted / living). The moment I removed guilt from reading while sipping coffee at 10am on a weekday just because I could, and wanted to, I became instantly happier, and hadn't noticed that it in turn informed what I created.
That's the first step. And, have you developed any strategies to know when there's *too much* dancing with distractions or just playing it by ear?
(I also realize you might be in your "D" period, since all the words in both titles of your essays start with a D)
I agree with all of this, and so feel the need of dilly-dallying and just being a person, exploring, living richly. But at the same time to try and make a living as an entrepreneur seems to require a tremendous amount of focus, productivity, and direction. I wonder if I am making this up, and if I'm just making entrepreneurial life hard when it could be easier. So in the meantime I flip-flop back and forth between bearing down on focused work and opening my attention to the passing whimsies of life. I like both modes for different reasons, but sometimes its hard to know which one to "focus" on.