My caveman took over my life!

Growing up in the 1980’s, I thought the world was invincible.   

I survived the 1987 stock market crash, war in Iraq, long fringes over our faces trend, The Matrix revealing we were batteries for computers, Y2K, My Space popularity and Tony Abbott as Prime Minister of Australia. I genuinely felt like the world was damn invincible.   

Then a virus spreads throughout the world in 2020.  

That time the world had to deal with a pandemic and the effect on our society was rapid and massive.  I felt the negative effects immediately with my job, relationships, money, mental and physical health and wondered what would be the long-term effects on my mind.  

It reminded me of the hang-ups that my Dad has from being born during World War Two. His childhood was a weird mix of government rations, violence, death, breeding and racing pigeons (and eating them) and genuine lack. This had a profound impact on how he viewed the world and affected his decisions to do with relationships, jobs, money, food and housing throughout his life. 

I never thought I would live through such a terrible global event. But here we are in the middle of COVID-19 with a horrible death toll and negative societal and financial burden that I believe will have a generational effect on us all.  

As the pandemic unleashed, my survival instinct kicked into full throttle.  My caveman took the reins and Mr Creativity was sent to the naughty corner.  This caveman attitude was primal – it was protection for my wife, family, supplies, home and health.  

My creativity was sent to the back seat of an old Holden Kingswood rusting in a farmer's paddock. 

Realising my creativity was gone was deeply depressing.  I called out for my creativity, but the caveman part of my brain did not let creativity back in. This world was too unpredictable and too unsafe to worry about taking photos, writing a script or shooting a film.  

Things went from bad to worse as the pandemic created weeks of crazy self-isolation with three little kids, increasing fear of the unknown, not being able to buy toilet paper and a tonne of zoom meetings for my teaching job.   

My creative mind wandered deeper into the abyss.  I felt like I might have lost his voice for good.  I sent out a search party, but I soon realised that you can't be all anxious and worked up about the world ending and then be like let's write a script about aliens landing.  

REALISATION = My brain needs to feel safe enough to create.   

What the pandemic taught me is you need to create your safe space so creativity can flourish. So that’s what I did.    

I followed the practice of Julia Cameron’s morning pages (just write non-stop for three A4 pages.  You only need about 20 minutes, a pen and some paper).   

What this simple creativity exercise did was alleviate the anxiety which in turn relaxes the caveman guarding the brain, which further allows the creative brain to come back out into the sunshine, which in turn alleviates the anxiety.  And so on.   

It is a beautiful swirling vortex of creativity coming back out like bear exiting their cave after winter hibernation.  

If you do that, creativity will come back and the caveman survivalist Bear Grylls-style brain won't be able to send Mr. Creativity away again.  

Trust me – it's worth it.  In fact it’s essential especially in a global pandemic.  Not only do you need to be creative for your own sanity, the world also needs your art – to ease anxiety and feel safe.   

And even more so in this current pandemic world, we need more art, photos, film and stories.  

So, allow yourself to create, even if the world is turned upside down and the caveman wants to run the show.