The discipline of Rest.

If you want to be an artist, you need a relentless commitment to doing nothing.

It is so challenging being back home after my book launch and tour.

And I fucking knew it would be. I knew that I was going to need far more discipline in the few weeks after I got home, than I had needed for the launch of the book. But I’m living the hard right now, and I feel the need to share it with you.

I have spent two months travelling for my new book We Need Your Art. I have been all over this world speaking to artists, creating, making, sharing and connecting. It was fucking unbelievably beautiful. It was also really hard! I can’t believe I was able to do it. I am very introverted and am someone with a low amount of energy. But I did it! I did it joyfully, and my body held her shit together, and at some points, one might say - I thrived.

I didn’t want the tour to end but I was simultaneously excited to go home. I was deeply tired. I wanted routine. I wanted to rest. I wanted to be a writer.

I got home ten days ago…

The drop in cortisol, this drop in adrenaline; it has revealed a very tired and inflamed body. Of course. Of course, sweet body, you held your shit together, and now you are safe to lose it. Of course this has happened.

I have been glued, and I fucking mean this, GLUED, to my couch. If you were to stop at any minute of the day and think, I wonder what Amie McNee is doing now? I can guarantee you, I am on the couch, watching tv. That is all I am doing. Surely, a nice walk might help you feel better Amie - no - I do not want a nice little walk for my mental health, I want to sit still. What about reading a book? Fuck off, I do not want to read a book, I will watch The Office or I will lose it.

My body is in freeze state. Just processing the last few months. She has been so brave, now she wants safety, she wants stillness.

Creatives do so many brave, terrifying things and this must, always, at some point be repaid in safety and stillness.

In so many ways, this period is far harder for me than the book tour.

I know how to push my body to her limits, to test her and challenge her. I am used to getting my body’s signals that she is uncomfortable and blasting past them in the name of art. I am less acquainted with giving into comfort, of TRUSTING my body. To follow her lead when she wakes up each day, takes me downstairs, and sits back down on the couch. It is so hard for me to trust that she knows best, that she is not lazy, or betraying me, that she is recovering. That her demand for stillness is to be taken seriously … it goes against old, deeply entrenched programming.

It is challenging for my brain. Writing books is challenging for my brain, promoting my books is challenging, taking up space is challenging, but it stimulating too and exciting. This period of rest is not stimulating, and consequently, it feels even more challenging.

I want to keep fighting for We Need Your Art, to write new books, to get on top of the emails, to plan new and rebellious and wonderful things. I want that. What I am capable of is two or maybe three coherent thoughts per day. The gap between what I want to do and what I am capable of - HURTS.

My brain both longs for creativity and has absolutely no capacity for creativity. So she must rest, under stimulated, and irritable.

It’s just so easy to be proud of myself for doing a tedx talk infront of 2000 people, it’s harder to be proud of myself for listening to my body and completely yeeting out of existence for days on end. But both things are important for me, both things take discipline for me, both things are hard for me, both things are things to be proud of.

People are always talking about the discipline it takes to make it as an author, artist, creative. They seem to only ever be referring to the active work of creating, sharing, being brave. But no one talks about the discipline of leaning back into safety, softness, quietness. No one talks about the discipline it takes to just sit the fuck down and do nothing. Truly nothing.

Things I am reminding myself as I continue to ROT / be reborn.

• We Need Your Art is working for herself at the moment. You promoted her so well, she's going to take the reigns for a while as you rest. She is being read, she is promoting herself, she is out there impacting people. Let her do the work for you for a little while.

• Your desire to create is beautiful, your body and mind will recover if you give it time. The gap between what you want to do and what you are capable of doing, will close slowly but surely.

• This ‘slobbery’ is an act of rebellion.

• This season of nothing is a huge reason why you are building a succesful, wild, beautiful career for yourself. It is because of rest that you are succesful. You are not succesful despite of rest.

• You are not on pause. You are not waiting to reboot. You are not waiting for life to begin again. This is another beautiful, hard part of life. Life happens, even on the seventh time you’ve pressed the “I’m still watching” button.

Can’t believe I wrote this substack,

Back to watching the office (joking I never stopped watching it, it was going this whole time I wrote this.)

I love you.

Amie.