Creative Blocks Are Avoidance in Disguise?

In my experience, a creative block usually isn’t necessarily a lack of ideas. It's what happens when you make contact with something uncomfortable, unclear, or unfinished. The yucky feeling that comes up is the inner instinct to step away from it.

In creative journaling, this sneaks up on you. A spread starts to feel awkward, even though its in a similar style that you always have done. Suddenly, a familiar collage choice feels “wrong.” So you stop. This just means you reached the part where something real was starting to emerge.

What We Call a Creative Block Is Often a Threshold

Most people experience creative blocks as something external that feels like an absence of inspiration, motivation, or direction. But in practice, the “block” appears after creativity has already begun.

Think about it, like when was the last time you got excited about making something? And when you did it felt amazing because of the rush of energy you get from being inspired. The blocks usually start to appear when you try to replicate or make more.

In creative journaling (and honestly in all creative work) this is exactly the moment starts asking for your presence.

And coincidentally, that’s the moment many people drop the creative lifestyle all together.

It has nothing to do whether they don't have time for it, if they’re lazy or think of themselves as uncreative, the reality is because staying feels vulnerable.

Unfinished things don’t give you reassurance and certainty.

So we run—and reasonably so, and often without realizing it.

There's a possibility that the reaction it is showing you is something you don’t want to see yet.

Whenever you participate in any kind of journaling, it brings these moments forward. And that’s why it can feel harder than following a tutorial or copying a spread.

What “Taking Action” Actually Looks Like Here

When people say you have to “take action” to be creative and get past all the "yucky" feelings, it often sounds like effort, discipline, or pushing through. Part of it is, I've had a lot breakthroughs pushing through, but it doesn't always have to be. Alignment is so much more important.

The action is staying. Staying with the page when it feels awkward. Staying when the urge to start over hits. Staying when nothing looks the way you imagined it would.

At the same time, another truth is you don’t need to finish the spread or understand why its just not "feeling exciting"

You just need to not leave.

The Next Step Is Not "Fixing"

The next step is anything that keeps you present without asking the page to make sense.

That might look like:

• Adding one mark without explaining it
• Taping something down loosely, without commitment
• Writing one honest sentence in the margin
• Sitting with the spread for a full minute without changing anything

These aren’t meant to be productivity techniques or a race to compete. What will benefit you is acts of contact with the journal or the blank page in front of you.

The tiny steps keep you in the zone long enough for something else to surface. And you will know when that happens.

Creativity Grows In the Places You Don’t Run From

If you want a more expansive creative voice, you'll likely need a slightly higher discomfort tolerance for the moment right before clarity arrives. For me its from a spiritual place, I like to think about it like you receive a message from the Creator.

That’s where creativity actually lives. In your willingness to remain present after the spark of inspiration fades.

Journal Prompt

What am I trying to skip past in this spread?

And if you want to go a little further:

What’s the smallest way I can stay here a bit longer?

You just need to stay for one more moment than you planned to. That’s the action.
And most of the time, it’s enough to draw you closer into more days of energy and creative spirit.

If this post helped you stay with your creativity a little longer, you’re welcome to support my work here.

Leaving a tip helps me continue writing and sharing these reflections.

The degree that someone can grow is directly proportional to the amount of truth they can accept about themselves without running away.

— Leland Val Van De Wall (Goodreads)