Feed the Creative Wolf

The only “normal” job I’ve ever had was decidedly not normal:

From the ages of 16-23, I worked at a wildlife rehabilitation centre, spending time hands-on with orphaned and injured wildlife who had been dealt a crummy hand at life. I’m a zoologist by training, and my early animal years were filled with lessons, along with the glorious experience of being bitten by sharks, sprayed by skunks, and nibbled on by baby foxes.

It was exhausting, rewarding, and incredibly messy work, but the reaction that people often had whenever they learned of my day job was always the same. “That sounds so glamorous!”

They didn’t mean glamorous like being a supermodel, of course. Moreso that it was exciting, unusual, and maybe a bit adrenaline-y.

I knew what they were picturing. They thought I spent my days standing atop a mountain, while majestically releasing an eagle onto the wind. Maybe with a soundtrack composed by Hans Zimmer playing in the background, with a ray of sunbursts beaming down on me. (If only!)

In reality, it was hard. It was one of the most deeply rewarding chapters of my life, and also one of the toughest.

95% of the time was filled with those quiet, daily consistencies. Endless boring tasks, feedings, cleanings, and the sheer exhaustion of seeing grief play out everyday.

The other 5%? That was the releases — where we got to open a cage and watch our hard work bound, fly, or swim away into freedom again.

What’s that got to do with your creative practice?

Keeping something alive is often quiet, mundane, and even tedious.

Keeping your creativity alive is no different.

Some creative tasks get all the glory.

The book deal. The big launch. The milestone. The release into the world, where it can live out its creative destiny (which, let’s be real, you usually can’t control.)

If you’re lucky, you’ll get a handful of glorious days like this, where the fruits of your creative work get out there, and result in something beautiful that exist beyond your day-to-day life. You’ll put a big star on your Google calendar to remember those days, and they will be locked in time forever.

But the other 95% of the time spent in your creative life will be this — the quiet, steadying drumbeat of your creative heart, as you chip away at your craft.

Writing.

Painting.

Researching.

Poking around with a word doc nobody's seen but you.

Whatever that looks like for you, it will probably look like there’s nothing but the ordinary going on.

Because… there’s not.

Factor in social media, where the extraordinary moments are over-represented in our feeds, and it’s easy to think you’ve somehow messed up for not having the extraordinary all the time.

I’ve seen some people advise that we ought to embrace the ordinary, because that’s where we create the extraordinary. But to me, that’s sidestepping the point.

What if the ordinary is wonderful because it’s the majority of your life? And that alone, by default, makes it worth celebrating?

What if faithfully feeding your creative wolf is worth it, because it — and you — get to live another day?

Like my time working with wild things, it wasn’t necessarily the tasks that made life interesting — it was the company. Getting to have breakfast with a baby bear or teach a swan to swim again after an injury was a dream, and being in the environment to do so felt like a privilege.

I feel the same about my creative work. It’s the company I get to keep — just me and the creative process, showing up day after day, to hang out together and tend the craft, with the hopes that one day, the ordinary will stretch its wings and something fresh will be set free on the world once more.

You don’t have two wolves inside of you — you have one — and it’s asking for your quiet, devoted attention.

Tend the ordinary.

Feed the creative wolf.

With that, some things for you to noodle on:

• Where do you need to stop living in the future extraordinary moments (therefore, in your head), and start settling into the ordinary — in your actual body?
• How are you feeding your creative wolf? What are the ordinary tasks of your creative practice? Make a list. What have you committed to doing — and (more importantly), are you doing it? Can you make it any easier for yourself to show up?
• What’s your ‘eagle on the mountaintop’ moment that’s calling you? What extraordinary outcome are you hoping to create with your creativity? How does it feel to your nervous system to just… let it exist in the future right now, without forcing things?
• Where are you letting social media impact how you feel about your creative practice? If it’s clouding your view of ordinary, do you need to step away for awhile or create more boundaries?

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