Sit and do Nothing

Except draw if you want to... featuring the rose Archduc Joseph

I sit in the sunshine watching the bumblebees dip in and out of the old rose Archduc Joseph. I have my workbook on my lap, pencils, watercolours and no agenda to day anything at all. Nothing to complete and hours of time to do this nothing in. It’s the hardest thing i have done this week.

It is a week where I have completed my tax returns, and that was hard. It is a week where I had a huge battle with my inbox, no fun at all. But I did it.

Yet sitting here is harder, harder by far.

I am surprised by how extreme the battle with those internal voices telling me not to do this has been. My mind is telling me that updating my neglected archive is definitely more vital to my art success than simply drawing things.

I hadn’t realised quite how much I have been leaning on always working on specific, well defined , purposeful art projects to defeat that resistance.

So it seems only by turning up to these ‘pointless’ workbook sessions I am going to be able to dismantle resistance more thoroughly.

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Why am I sitting here anyway?

A terrible year for my health was followed by a bad year for my health. So I am making a very deliberate decision to take a very long rest.

There is a bit more to it, too. I can’t think of anything I would like to work on. I am flat and unmotivated. I can’t come up with a project that interests or excites me.

But resting is surprisingly painful. Resting is hard work, fighting against a very strong pull to feel worthwhile. At this stage, I have quite a lot my self-worth and self-identity built up on being someone who gets to the studio regularly and makes some art.

So in this re-think that my body and my life are forcing on me, I hold myself to go out with my sketchbook to paint and draw somewhere beautiful every single Wednesday. To just relax into it, and not try to turn it into ‘work’ art.

And these old roses are growing in a quiet old graveyard close to my house, it’s Wednesday, so here I am, week after week, struggling to stay here.

The rose Archduc Joseph is a tea rose, bred in France in 1892 by Gilbert Nabonnard

Trying too hard to rest

I notice that I am forcing myself to constantly draw, to work with determination through sets of exercises: a blind drawing, followed by a negative space drawing, etc etc. And my resistance and tiredness is increasing not decreasing.

I don’t think I have quite got it right yet.

So I take on the advice made famous by Neil Gaiman (I have heard this advice many times before, but most people giving it make it sound like torture. Gaiman makes it sound relaxing, and I think there is a key in that). I am allowed to sit here and not work. I can write in my journal if too many thoughts come up, and I can draw only if I want to draw more than I want to sit there and do nothing. (I do have one teeny rule to get out my pencil and do a scribble drawing on a page first. This breaking of the ice seems to be a critical stage to help a drawing session flow out if it wants to). No phone, of course.

It turns out, this is the perfect advice.

I sit and watch the insects for an hour. I watch the leaves blow in the wind. I follow the shapes of trees and buildings slowly, just looking. Quite often I draw. Quite often I don’t.

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The moral of this story does not match my intent

Now, this story asks to be ended with a moral point in line with my intention. It asks to be ended with me finding peace in drawing simply for the sake of drawing, to realise that being here, in the moment is the only thing I really need.

But I get a different ending to the story, a different moral.

One day while I am sitting here a new project floats together in the sunlight. Quickly, peacefully, the various art ideas that had been separate, itchy, irritating parts melded together to create a new form.

I know I can work again.

Why does sit and do nothing work?

It turns out there is a dopamine hack to this sitting and doing nothing - except draw (or write) protocol .

To Do Nothing increases your sensitivity to dopamine. Most of our day is spent seeking out dopamine, the motivational drug our brains serve up. All that scrolling jacks your dopamine, giving you constant hits. But even when we are not on our phones, we will seek out dopamine hits from completing defined tasks. I was getting a dopamine hit from the satisfaction of completing my tax return. From clearing out my inbox.

You know that time you tidied the house instead of doing the thing? That wee bit of satisfaction from folding a pair of socks and putting them away - that was a dopamine hit.

The trouble is getting our dopamine hit from our creative work is not as straight forward as it is from folding socks. We know we will make crappy drawings, get stuck in difficult passages, not know what to do next. And there is zero dopamine in that.

And for most of us, the feedback of approval from others is SO distant or weak that I for one certainly can’t rely on it for any sort of a dopamine rush.

Doing Nothing gives us no dopamine at all. So we are withdrawing from our intense dopamine addiction, and that is painful.

Eventually it actually works! Sitting and doing nothing breaks the pattern of over-stimulated dopamine cycles, takes us into dopamine cold turkey. And that withdrawal means we tune in more carefully to the delicate reward we get from doing our work. To becoming much more sensitive to the gentle delight of putting marks on paper, of becoming more in tune with our world and the creation of something new beneath our hands.