AUGUST 2025
- devashreelmarathe
- Aug 28
- 9 min read
Updated: Aug 29
HELLO!!! Its been a MADDDD few months so far ...
but I'm pleased to be back here! <3 :')
I'll talk your ear off about the madness in just a bit.
First I want to thank someone, don't know who - somewhere around March I was trying to figure out a 'duck' shape that would fit well into the meadowland world of my sketchbooks. While scrolling through photos of ducks on the internet (what a day!), I bumped into a poster that says "I don't have ducks or a row, I have squirrels and they're everywhere". I would cry if I wasn't also thoroughly amused by how uncannily it held up a mirror to my life at the time. It described what I couldn't in a neat little sentence and i was relieved i could identify with the words.
Finding words that do justice to an experience almost become stepping stones for me to be able to solve my reality. It lets me see clearly what i'm up against.
Its also a fantastic aftereffect of writing here sometimes. And I've missed this for 8 long months.
The year so far has been less ducks in a row, more squirrels, bunnies, frogs (some quite literally :|) jumping at me all at once as i walk through quicksand swinging the machete in my hand at clouds i see approaching, slowly beginning to lose memory of where it is i was trying to go. So tonight, I want to unpack a bit the intrinsic tendencies that drive my creative practice during this chaos season of life!
UNCHARTED TERRITORY
I'm familiar with internal conditions slowing me down. Resistance coming from within. I'm also familiar with creative blocks. But these past months were a 'refreshing' new combination - of no resistance from within, and steady supply of resistance from without! My poor muse alive and awake dancing away at my shoulder, planting so many ideas in my head ready to be workshopped ;but constantly being asked to hush up, sit down and wait its turn, till i first attend to about a 100 things that would keep popping up.
(I cannot even call these 'obstacles', that's too respectful or meaningful a term)
And through these months i learnt first hand that having a lot of ideas in a non-conducive time, feels just as suffocating as a creative block. And that this version is much less solvable by me alone with anything other than meticulous notes, quick sketches, and a truck load of patience. I also learnt how to navigate warranted anger - it was a new emotion to me, and i'm understanding that the only sane way forward is to do the 'let it go' process whenever the echoes show up.
I feel bad picking on these months too much though, they've brought some wonderful things too ->
✨The book finally came out in March. ✨June brought momentum to a deep-rooted personal quest - and this one's been a slow burn which I trust better. It's an exciting moment in my life & a scary moment too. It's also a moment filled with sooo much uncertainty. Don't make any sudden movements!!
Now, I don't know if its owing to all these many moods having to exist together, or an age milestone, or the 2 months I've spent battling fevers, I have really started to dial in on the little glimmers of quiet moments, and brighter days I find. Bask in them fully. I also have been picking up some new tricks at the kitchen that i'm definitely carrying further into the simpler days! ...they're coming right? they have to right?!...
The only thought i don't add a '?' to this year is :
Something's shifting in the recent 8 months, maybe only for me personally, or maybe for everyone. And it is prompting the most intentional internal reorganisation I've ever done. And i suppose until the dust settles, i'm going to keep lifting and shifting for a bit here. Onward & upward!
In the game of 'the day vs devashree' im pleased to report I'M STILL IN THE LEAD!✨
I may not have collected these points very gracefully or always very rationally this year - drawing till 3 am on a week night because work ran late was a stupid decision - which became clear to me very quickly the morning after. But let's be real, that wouldn't stop me from doing it again. I cannot describe to satisfaction the specific joy of not surrendering to a chaotic day, and booking time with my sketchbook amidst it. I can however tell you what it sounds like in my head at the end of such days - 'life brought all the crazy in it, but I WON THIS ONE! MOAAHHAhahaha!'
Looking through old sketches i tend to envy that time, thinking life was less messy then. But if i engage my memory, i quickly see it's not even slightly true. Its almost never been 'ample time to do my drawings calmly, not a 100 other things calling for my attention.' Putting down a rhythm with drawing has been a repeated decision more so despite the reality than owing to it. Something like Parkinson's Law - i over-schedule drawing time into the already full day, and everything gets done anyway!
✨ 'The work shrinks to fit the time you allow it' and what not.
<p.s. : he didn't say to over-schedule btw. :P thats a special addition by yours truly. experiment at own risk!>
You're not going crazy - today's post IS total mayhem!
But it does have another purpose, than only giving you a migraine -
The creative force, the 'muse' is a fascinating entity. I've rolled my eyes at 'chaos' plenty here, but i don't want to discount that the muse feeds off of this network of varied aspects of life lighting up in unthinkable ways. BUT - it also needs a certain amount of order to actually let the ideas come to life.
I spent a lot of days this year feeling restless that i wasn't able to stop the pandemonium around me, i didn't even know where to begin to shut it down! too big a mess to wrap my head around..
Overtime i realised that i didn't need to tame the entire chaos, only some of it!
For a '0 or 100' person, this was not an obvious solution, or a comfortable one.
But once i saw what it could do for me, the mathematical brain took over, and i was back in the mode of 'i am the experiment and the experimenter' - my favorite kind! something so intimate about discovering things that are specific to me. Its still an ongoing process, but i did find some ways so far of keeping the creative projects going in the disorderly seasons.
There's 2 pieces of reality that help me in creating this illusion of 'order' for myself -
my experience of time & my freedom in space.
There's this giddy joy in waking up when its still dark, making a cup of coffee and sitting with the sketchbook when the rest of the world around me still sleeps. It almost feels like i sneaked in 2 additional hours when no one was watching. I like the stealth that hour offers! (which is also why i like to swim at this hour :P)
I also like the raw mind this hour offers. And it is also the time I know none of the chaos makers are awake yet :P so it's a win win win!
I had mastered the art of planning various projects for an orderly season, so in the chaos one - i was thrown off. I had no idea how to do everything i wanted to if my attention was constantly diverted at unpredictable intervals. Then I found this idea of a 'task menu'. And luckily, i already knew how much time it takes me to do specific type of creative task.
But being able to list it out as 'quick grabs', or 'deep dives' has been a game changer - because its also cut down on the time it would take me to make the decision of what task to take up, especially when time becomes unexpectedly available! Now - Some appointment is cancelled? I know exactly what i can finish off in that new 1 hour i have!
Its very tricky convincing myself to take time away, when so much of it has been stolen from me in the year by meaningless things, by illnesses, what have you :/. But it became clear i needed to do it anyway, as I hadn't had a break for the mind from the constant 'go go go'.
So i elongated a long weekend, and paused all the lists, and it was wonderful.* <3
Its almost like a circuit breaker - that intentional pause from the 'shoulds'.
But i am still learning to bucket this time off in with the 'time well used' instead of the 'time i threw away'. One step at a time.
*On the last day, i also understood why i shouldn't do this - because apparently i still react like a school kid when its time to go back to school after vacation :P
I've been told that my house looks nothing like an artist or, i quote "ANYBODY lives in it full time!". And i understand thats perception. It is all blank walls, zero decorations, no pictures anywhere, no posters, not much colour other than the brown table and chairs. I just think freer in my blank roomy empty space. I do believe I'm able to do the 'quick creative' hours owing to these empty spaces and blank walls - they offer just enough constants, but not enough to get bored of or worse - get distracted by.
i also LOOVEEE moving furtniture around! Fixed furtniture is almost like a pet peeve for me.
(theres other factors to that than not being able to move it - the idea that i can never clean behind or under it makes me uncomfortable even writing it so im going to stop) Moving these things around is cathartic, and lets me wake up to a fresh view from the desk, break out of some pattern, prevent ruts! nothing but upsides.
Some bonus mad detail -> I also move my garden and desk to a different side of the house after the fall equinox :) so that i can work from the newly sunlit space alongside the plants. :)
Humor me. Often times when im too overwhelmed, i find relief in imagining myself floating alongside these gentle giants out there. Their slow rotation would make this woodeny globe like sound which i'll totally be able to hear because i determine the laws here. I'll also not be in any space suit, just normally breathe as i fly around them, so tiny next to them, just roaming about wide-eyed looking closely at every passer-by as i float out there no end in sight, no epic story happening.
Imagining this pulls me out of the ego's clutches, and lets me think more freely and more authentic to myself.
Which helps cut down the time it takes to enter a creative 'flow' state exponentially.
Sitting on steps/ stairways seems to center me. I can think clearer here - the older the stairway the better! Dustier the better! Empty is mission critical!
I've had some of the best ideas here, the most relieving cries...and interestingly enough, i found drawings that liberated my mind - reading Shaun Tan's 'Arrival' in the stairway at my mum's house takes top billing.
I don't know why the muse lights up in this structure - but all i can say is I'm glad it's stairways because they're literally EVERYWHERE! So I'm okay with it picking this!
& a magical magical mix:
Coming to my desk at a specific hour every day seems to imprint this creative flow into the space itself!
And it holds that for me, so next time when i return, it takes me lesser effort to connect to the mood of the project and lets me play more freely with my ideas, the drawings, everything!
I also think there's something here to unpack, about 'touch'.
But i know nothing concrete about this, and am only speculating now!
Truth is - when something like this works, i'm really okay not ever knowing the 'how' of it.
I appreciate that it does work and hopefully with time, use well what i know now. ✨
A thought on 'wasted time' - The anger is very real!
A final note on stolen and wasted time : theres this anecdote about Queen Elizabeth 1st on her deathbed saying "all my possessions for a moment of time". Whether accurate to history or not, its helped me in the last months. It's got me to open my mind and consider that perhaps nobody is immune.
Perhaps time never feels enough, or rightly used always. Not to anyone.
🎁And so I wish, for me and for you - while we may not get to pick how much time, that howmuchever there is of it - may less and less of it be pulled into something meaningless, and may more and more and more of it go into things we find meaningful and delightful and wonderful!
Ciao :) and I'll see you next time!
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