Instead smash, bash, and throw those lemons out. Who needs them? 

You bloody punk! Actually, I do like lemonade! 

I think that when life gets crappy use your frustration in your creative projects.  

Take that frustrated energy, all pent up and ready to burst, and spray it all over, in and under, and throughout a creative project.   

Give your creative projects an injection of frustrated energy. 

I have a day job.  I am a parent. I have a home. I pay bills. I vote. I shop. A lot of this is mundane and boring and can be so very frustrating when it comes to being creative.  

Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful I have the mundane parts of my life but at times when I crave writing a story or shooting a film, it is very frustrating to have to complete the boring parts.   

And the longer that frustration goes on, the more my creative kettle bubbles and boils, wanting to be released.  

The irony of being creative, is that I need to let the steam out first so that I can get creative but also frustration can give birth to new creations.  

The two lessons I have learnt from frustration have changed my process of being creative.  

Firstly, you need a routine that can cause frustration but allows you to be creative.  

When my wife and I had our second baby we created a creativity routine.  Disclaimer: we had to get past the goo-goo stage and onto the poo-poo stage, the sleepless nights, making the same pasta meal every night, and the cleaning the same thing over and over nights.  But once we were through all that we carved out regular time where each of us could nourish our creative beings.  

Tanya would go out for the same amount of time on Saturday afternoons and visit a local art gallery, have a coffee, see a movie by herself or do a mosaic class. 

For me it meant going to the local library on a Saturday morning and spending three hours writing. However, because life is full on and in no way perfect, there were times I sat there and didn’t get much writing done.  But there were other times I wrote nonstop. Over the course of 12 months I wrote my first feature script.   

The important part was the routine - I did it EVERY week.  

Secondly, take the frustration and put it into the creative project.   

Write angrily, take photos whilst pissed off, or film yourself moshing to hardcore metal music.  

It may take your work to an interesting place or it may just unleash a voice that was in your head that you didn’t know existed. I know because I wrote a story about a serial killer when I was extremely pissed off.  

If you don’t like what you have created just chuck it out but I know you will feel good about creating.  Even more special than that, is the project you created came from your inner artist, your voice, your special uniqueness.  You will be happy that you gave it a chance to speak.  

When I have been frustrated from life giving me lemons, I have learnt to use that frustration to create new projects and afterwards I have felt fantastic.    

What project will you create out of your frustration?