Sitting With the Struggle: When Creativity Feels Stuck

I have a confession to make.... I’ve been finding it really hard to make art lately.

There’s a project I’m supposed to be working on, my sketchbook collaboration with artist Sam Waters, which I am working on live in my course Creative Soulscapes. I'm meant to be using the cvourse materials to develop the work from the collaboration sketchbooks Sam and I started in 2023. This is something I felt very excited about at the beginning, but I’m struggling to get started and keep the momentum. Time feels tight, life has been full with a new puppy, and when I finally make it into the studio, I end up circling around, tidying, staring at half-finished things, and then leaving again. When I do manage to start something, it often feels flat and 'bad'.. I don’t like what I’m making. I don’t feel connected to it. And then, inevitably, I feel frustrated with myself.

This isn’t new. I know these patterns.

I see them in my own work, and I see them in my students too—especially in Creative Soulscapes, the course where we dig into the deeper rhythms and blocks of the creative process as we explore what we love in our art and slowly scale up to finished pieces. We talk openly there about the messy middle of making. The part where perfectionism tightens its grip, where procrastination masquerades as busyness, and where overwhelm whispers that we should probably give up.

I’m in that place now. I'm walking the talk and it's hard.

The strange thing is: the pressure I’m feeling is entirely self-imposed. No one is waiting on this work, although I'm sure my students and Sam are excited to see what comes. There’s no deadline other than the one I’ve imagined. But it still weighs heavily. That internal voice that says: You should be further along by now. You should know what you’re doing. You should be producing more.

And yet, here I am, not doing those things—and feeling stuck.

What helps (a little) is reminding myself that this is part of the process. The stuckness, the self-doubt, the resistance—they show up for nearly everyone who creates. It doesn’t mean I’m failing. It means I’m human.

In Creative Soulscapes, we talk about how important it is to meet these blocks not with shame or criticism, but with self-compassion. To notice what’s present, to be curious rather than judgmental. Sometimes just naming the struggle aloud helps loosen its hold.

So here I am, naming it:

✨ I’m not making the art I want to make right now.

✨ I’m finding it hard to start, and even harder to keep going.

✨ I’m trying to be patient, but I’m also feeling frustrated.

✨ I’m wondering what’s really underneath the resistance.

Maybe I’m tired.

Maybe I’m afraid of making “bad” work.

Maybe I’m in a season where rest needs to come before blooming.

Maybe I need to stop trying to push forward and instead pause, listen, and be still.

I’m trying to sit with the not knowing. To let go of the pressure to force progress. To trust that something is still happening beneath the surface, even if I can’t see it yet. Creativity isn’t linear. It’s cyclical, like the seasons. Sometimes, things go quiet before they begin to grow again.

So if you’re here too—in the middle of a project that isn’t flowing, or facing a blank page with nothing to give—know that you’re not alone. This part is hard, but it’s also important. It’s where we learn how to stay, gently, with ourselves. To soften instead of striving. To listen instead of forcing.

I’ll keep showing up, even if it’s just to sit in the studio and breathe.

And I’ll keep trusting that something will eventually shift.

Maybe not today. But soon.