This morning I had the pleasure of getting up a tad earlier than I normally do, and heading into Soho to hear Liz Danzico of Bobulate speak at SwissMiss’s Creative Mornings. I think a lot of the audience was thinking that she would be talking about her field of Interaction Design. I myself was worried that perhaps I might not understand a word she was saying if she talked too much tech. But I did not have to worry as her talk was not only non-technical, it was something I could understand fully without having had my necessary two cups of coffee for my brain to percolate properly. And it pertains to everyone I think, creative or not.

She in essence highlighted the important of “pauses” in our lives. How the brain needs time to absorb things and that the “pause” provides that time. That just like music, without the occasional silence between movements, and without the white spaces in visual design, there is no build up of tension and crescendo. That in fact, the longer the “pause”, the longer time there is for the brain to make sense or things and come to a new conclusion, the greater the “reward” and bigger the insight will be.

This was music to my ears, since it seems my career is currently on “pause” mode. Although as I continue to tell people, “It’s not like I’m not DO-ing anything!” I am “actively pausing” so to speak. I am learning new programs, and rethinking the design of my website, how to progress further creatively and in my career with the current economy, and more generally, evaluating my entire life! I think many people have succumbed to the “linear” notion of time where one is supposed to “progress” non-stop and without any white spaces in between. The notion of accepting that there are pauses in our life, whether in the organic growth of relationships or work, is so antithetical to the Puritan/Protestant Work Ethic that most Americans are indoctrinated with, that I think in fact we become less productive by not allowing a “creative pause” in our lives to give more meaning to it than before. Without the creative thinking that pauses provide, I think corporations become sterile and unimaginative and people actually start to resemble characters in “The Office.”

I especially liked how Liz’s talk relates SO well to the Venus Retrograde we’re currently experiencing! She mentioned how the absence and removal of something can bring so much potential that then comes with the next creative burst and I couldn’t agree more that this is what retrogrades, and especially Venus retrogrades in regards to creativity, are all about.

As one of my favourite Studio Art professors in college used to ask when critiquing a painting, “Is it resting?” Where is the pause in your life now?