It was Saturday. So I had to hustle. I had to get some work done.

I was recently accepted into Merch by Amazon, a program Amazon offers that will print and ship your T-shirts for you. So I was really trying to come up with some awesome T-shirt designs.

And it totally wasn’t happening.

I sat there for an hour fiddling, and the only thing I had to show for it was a grandiose a pile of excrement I was trying to turn into a T-shirt design on my monitor.

My mind was racing.

I couldn’t get anything done. I know this phenomenon.

I can only call it a constipated vexing of my creative soul. There’s only one thing you can do when you’ve tried to force it and it’s just not happening.

Nothing.

You do nothing.

You back away from your computer and go do something else. Something not even directly related to making art.

In my case I went and sat on the couch. I fell asleep while watching two hours of Thundarr the Barbarian.

It was amazing.

I woke up about 35 minutes later, drank a cup of tea, and then went outside and proceeded to do a chalk drawing of the Fisher-Price X-Ray man action figure on my driveway with my kids.

So this was my time of restoration.

I spent time with my family, and shared some moments with my kids, drew with chalk, watched cartoons and napped.

By 10 PM the empty bucket at the bottom of my soul had begun to refill itself. Later that night I would go on to produce three T-shirt designs which totally ruled.

There truly is an art to rest.

You could ask my wife and she would tell you I’m not very good at it. Rest is just as crucial to the creative process as sitting down and sketching.

Rest is necessary to be creative.

Try it, it works.