Watercolor Notes:
Resistance with a capital R
Hi Reader,
Here’s a very random analogy for you, so stick with me…growing up on a ranch, there were always a couple of cow magnets in my dad’s animal-medical kit. I played with them as a kid and no matter how you tried to push the opposing sides together, they just wouldn’t go. There was this invisible force field of resistance between them, and I could feel the push against my hands.
(In case you’re wondering, cow magnets are a real thing ranchers give to cattle to prevent “hardware disease” from any stray nails or wire they’ve accidentally eaten.)
That feeling of magnetic resistance came back to me recently when I visited a painter friend who had run into her own creative force field.
She’d landed a commission she was excited about. Good client. Good project. Good pay. But after stepping away from it for a few days, she couldn’t make herself start again.
At first she stalled and became oddly enthralled with cleaning out her garage. A few more days went by with that commission clock still ticking. So she came up with a plan.
First, she cut off her escape routes. No TV. No phone scrolling. No popping out to visit a friend. Not as punishment, just an agreement with herself: nothing else until she spent some time painting.
Then she found the smallest possible next thing. Not “finish the background and paint the trees”, just the next small step.
She said it this way: “I don’t have to figure out how to finish the piece, just what the next step is.”
One easy entry point. And that’s what did it. She ended up painting for hours.
Resistance in creative work is much like magnetic resistance. Sometimes all it takes is one small shift before the work starts pulling you back in. (No phone scrolling helps too.)
What’s worked for you when creative resistance shows up?
I’d love to know.
-Vinita
