Anticipation, anticipation/ Is makin’ me late/Is keepin’ me waitin’ ~ Carly Simon
Do you remember being a child excitedly counting down the days until Christmas or some other special holiday?
Do you remember the fluttery feeling in your tummy the first time you went out on a date with a new person? Or waited to hear back about a job interview?
Anticipation is the act of expecting or looking forward to something, often with pleasure or excitement, and other times with anxiety.
As children, anticipation makes days long and months take forever between summer vacations, holidays, and birthdays. It can turn the most poorly wrapped gift into a treasure chest.
As adults, anticipation is both a bane and a blessing.
As a blessing, anticipation is a critical element in sexual arousal when making love, increasing tension and therefore the release that comes with climax.
As a bane, anticipation when accompanied by worry and fear can have you running to the bathroom, second-guessing yourself, and even have you backing away from what you want to do because of imagined or anticipated outcomes.
Ironically, the imagination that fuels anticipation also fuels creativity.
If you perform or if you submit work for publication, presentation or prizes, then you know the anxiety-ridden form of anticipation. Will the work be accepted? Will it be a success? Anticipation of success has you giddy. Anticipation of failure ties your stomach in knots.
But even before arriving at those moments of anticipation, there are many others in the creative process.
- Inspiration. Your mind is as empty and waiting as the canvas or page. Excitement and fear sit hand in hand waiting for the Muse. Will She come? Will She whisper a dream or discovery or vision in your ears? Anticipation…waiting…listening.
- Creation. Every time you enter your creative work space, anticipation walks with you. This anticipation is the most challenging. Again, will the Muse be present? Or, having given you the inspired idea, will She leave you to flounder on your own? No wonder so many artists and creatives through the years turned to drink and drugs. Through beginnings and middles, living with the anticipation of what’s next. Regardless of rough drafts or outlines or sketches or models, everything can change depending on what’s next. Anticipation breathes down your neck, raising your hackles and the urge is to flee.
- Fruition. Here, anticipation is a taskmaster asking when. When will you finish… and finish well? Will the finished work in any way approach the imagined idea? Smooth and polish, revise and edit, adjust and tweak before delivering it to the world. Is it ready? Is it? Now? When?
Then, finally, there is the anticipation of reception and acceptance for the finished work.
Doing your creative work while living daily with anticipation is not easy. It is a sharp-edged state of being. A constant balancing act excitement and trepidation. The challenge is to be able to do a kind of two-step with it, sometimes leading, sometimes following, and always being present in each moment of creativity.
Creatives need the energy of anticipation. Without it, what would seduce you into the studio or workspace? Or induce that state of tension that only creating can relieve? What would build to that ecstatic sense of accomplishment when it all works?
Remember, anticipation requires imagination. So make it work for you instead of against you. Use the energy. Use the power of the imagination that creates anticipation…
And keeps you waiting… What are you waiting for? And anticipating?