There is an important distinction between thinking and creating. This is important to recognize, or at least it has been for me. Each of these are two completely different modes that I can be in, and when I have been in one for too long, I need to transition to the other before I get overstimulated. The most important one is that of rumination; this one especially needs to get interrupted, or I should say disrupted.
Rumination is repetitive thinking that often returns to the same unresolved concerns. You can spend hours considering a difficult situation without getting any closer to resolving it. Creation works differently. When you are constructing a new idea, writing, designing, or solving a technical problem, your attention becomes engaged with a task that requires active decisions.
When you find yourself engaged in a creative activity, then you are pulled away from this self-absorbed state and instead become focused on a meaningful activity where you have some control. During such periods, self-consciousness and awareness of unrelated worries can diminish. This is why two hours of creative effort can sometimes leave you more refreshed than two hours of passive entertainment. It is not necessarily rest in the conventional sense. It is relief from unproductive mental activity.
I live in a neighborhood where Halloween is a major attraction. Kids come from all over the place to walk these streets and do their Trick or Treat routine. As a consequence, I have always felt persuaded to put on a show, so I always come up with a theme and put on a bit of fun display with interactive characters as part of it. This requires me to spend almost a week ahead of time to assemble everything and come up with some creative ideas.
Next week, Halloween falls on a Saturday, which means this neighborhood will be full. We are expecting to hand out candy to well over 1,000 children this year. So I have already started putting everything together. So all day today I have been out in the front yard, building, measuring, decorating, and running sound and lights. Now that I am sitting down to write this, I realized that I have not once thought about all my problems today.
My rumination cycle got interrupted. I am tired, not the mental exhaustion that I normally feel, but the type of tired that comes from spending the day in the sun, climbing ladders, hammering nails, trying to dress a plastic skeleton in a coat and top hat. Somehow, I just feel a little better, like my mind and body needed a day off from the constant bombardment from all my mental ruminations.
