I went on a retreat and took all my baggage with me.

My wife sent me on a retreat earlier this week.

After a long year I’d become something of a cranky bear.
So I was sent to the other side of the peninsula to hibernate, to contemplate and to return refreshed and more at ease with the world.

It worked in a sense.

My capacity for patience and going with the flow has been markedly restored. Enough that I chatted merrily with a spam caller for 15 minutes or so the first day back.

But it also drew into sharp relief my inability to focus even more.

You see, I took all my art materials. All that could fit into my car.

Watercolours, acrylics, paper, canvas, pens, sketchbook, charcoal, graphite, my laptop and a host of other little things.

The only thing I left was my easel.

I took it all, just in case the muse struck and demanded a particular medium.

But on the second day, having written a short story draft, sketched briefly and started a watercolour painting I realised just how ridiculous this situation was.

Sitting amongst all this artistic accoutrement, not knowing what to do next.

If I had chosen a single medium, I could have taken multiple steps towards mastery in that specific area. But because I, as I often do, took everything I got almost nowhere in all the myriad spheres of creative expression.

The trip was meant to be restorative.
Part of that for me is being creative for creativity sake.
Actively resting my empty my always spinning mind onto a canvas of some king. But productivity obsession is something I need to drop.

However, having all these elements around me showed me just how cluttered my mind can be.

How it flails about trying to do too many things at once in order to do more. To catch up or race ahead. Of who I don’t really know.

Maybe to catch up with the Ideal Me, the one that’s achieved so much he’s at peace. That fictitious soul finally at one with the universe.

I’ve realised I need to constrain myself to increase my own creativity.

That simple nugget made the whole trip worthwhile.

I cannot escape the biggest reason for my own distraction.

Me.

Not my family, not my kids nor my wife. Not my home nor my job.

Me.

My mind, it seems, needs a little rewiring.