Episode 63: Creativeness and Curveballs

A candid, bite-sized conversation on how creativity bends—without breaking—when life throws a curveball. Alessandra shares how a crushed hand sidelined her clarinet but didn’t stop her from contributing through inventive percussion, plus her plan to heal with a top hand team. Greg talks opposite action and showing up, Devin on creativity as both showstopper and coping tool, Bobby B on threat triage to avoid freeze, and Shadows on how context decides whether creativity pauses or powers you through.

Greg
00:00 - 00:23
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Creative Workout Podcast. This is episode 63 and it is August 30th, 2025. In the room today I have myself, Greg, we have Alessandra, Bobby B, Shadows and Devon. We were talking earlier about curveballs and practicing and all things of that nature.

Greg
00:23 - 00:44
And today's question is actually dedicated to Alessandra, who not only broke her hand, but broke it in three places. But I'll let her tell you a little bit more about that story. She's holding up a big cast on her hand. Today's question is, what happens to your creativity when life throws you a curveball?

Greg
00:44 - 00:50
What's your first reaction? And how do you adapt to that? Bobby D will go to you. What do you think?

Bobby. B
00:50 - 01:01
Thank you, Greg. My old project manager head jumps right in and says, is this fight or flight? What's the level of threat? Where could this go?

Bobby. B
01:02 - 01:35
When it comes to creativity, do I need to park all that and find the appropriate place for this to settle before I consider going back to creativity? And other times, of course, it's not that big a deal. Just flow with it. And don't pour too much energy into it because I used to really fret over things and think that it was up to me and only me and without any assistance to assess and all that.

Bobby. B
01:35 - 01:47
And of course, that just puts me into brain freeze. So no, at this point now, it's more often than not, not that big a deal. Thank you, Bobby. Alessandra?

Alessandra
01:48 - 02:13
Yeah, if I'm not a classic example, I'm a dire warning. Yeah, so, you know, 2025 has been just a really remarkable year. It's been a year of dreams coming true, because last year, 2024, I really spent the year focused on dreaming. Like what's the next level thing?

Alessandra
02:14 - 02:31
What would be a dream level experience of being a creative work hour founder? What would be a dreamy experience of participating on the Hive blockchain? What would be the dreamy experience of? So that was 2024.

Alessandra
02:31 - 03:03
So 2025 has been living those dreams. One of those dreams is becoming a member of the preeminent clarinet ensemble in the English-speaking world, which is the British Clarinet Ensemble. And being the new kid on the block, I have worked and fretted and stayed connected with the group, even though it made me just kind of a nervous wreck. But I played my first recordings, my first concert abroad.

Alessandra
03:03 - 03:33
The British Clarinet Ensemble actually hosted a recording studio created inside of the Cockford Parish Church. And for four days, the recording studio was built inside of that small church. Remarkable place. The oldest church paintings, not paintings that are that are hung, but paintings that are in the actual walls of the church, the oldest in the English speaking world.

Alessandra
03:33 - 04:00
So we're sitting in this 1100 year old church for four straight days of recording. And the night before, this only happened last week, the night before it's time to take the train down to record this album, I trip in the garden in our Leeds apartment on the sidewalk. Now, you throw your hands out in front of you to catch yourself, right? And that works really perfectly on the right side of my body.

Alessandra
04:00 - 04:29
On the left side of my body, however, my hand turns and basically what was my very delicate left clarinet playing hand becomes a crushed taco shell. So as I talk to you, I can tell you that that was my fricking curve ball, right? And when it happened, I've been hit by a car as a pedestrian before. It did not come close to the level of shock and pain.

Alessandra
04:30 - 04:52
And as a result, going into those four days of recording, it was impossible to play the clarinet. So there was my curve ball. In my own head, it was, that's it, I'm out. In my fear and maybe a bit of drama sinking, the thought occurred to me, I may never play again.

Alessandra
04:52 - 05:05
And when I caught myself thinking that, I'm like, stop that right now. You stop that because we're going to play. Oh, we're going to play. So connecting with you, my friends here.

Alessandra
05:07 - 05:16
I'm like, I'm going to do this crazy thing. I don't know how, but I'm still going to go to those recording sessions. Eight hours a day for four straight days. We recorded.

Alessandra
05:17 - 05:36
Now, could I play clarinet? Not per se, but one of those pieces required percussion. The percussive instrument was not a timpani, or a bass drum, or a snare, or a glockenspiel, or any of that. No.

Alessandra
05:37 - 06:03
It was clapping, as a percussionist claps. But that takes two hands, unless it doesn't. I worked out different kinds of sounds, and I just kind of went to the conductor and I said, Are you looking for a sound that sounds like this, and he put his hands together and I'm said, Okay, that's the sound to match. So you, you show me, you keep playing that, and I came up with a sound that I could make.

Alessandra
06:04 - 06:24
using my right hand on the side of my right knee. And that matched the sound he was after. So no, I wasn't principal clarinet. I wasn't clarinet at all on these recordings, but I was the percussive lead on those two pages of the score that required.

Alessandra
06:24 - 06:56
So the curve ball is the crushed hand. The adaptation we'll talk about in a second, but how I got through those first few days and all of those 36 hours of recording that album was thinking outside the box. And who knew that you could clap on the side of your knee on anything other than a little kid's school song and still be able to participate in this professional recording. So I'm grateful that I stopped myself.

Alessandra
06:57 - 07:06
when my head started to go into drama. Blah, blah, blah. No, that's not what's happening here. Because I get to write the story.

Alessandra
07:07 - 07:18
I get to write the story. So we'll come back to what happens next. But I really want to hear from you, Greg. and the

Greg
07:34 - 08:09
but you know this isn't scripted oh my goodness well you know if you've got a background of trauma sometimes the first reaction could be oh no depends what that curveball could be it could be a physical injury it could be your circumstances changing an illness you know I've got a friend who has Parkinson's he's part of our chronic pain group he loves to paint buildings and he can no longer paint he's adapting by pencils I think you've got to try and keep on keeping on and try and show up That will get you some traction. It can put you in front. Sometimes it's opposite action.

Greg
08:09 - 08:26
Whatever you want to do, do the opposite. Whatever you think you're doing, do the opposite. And you'll probably get it right. So when you don't want to do the work, when you don't want to be creative, Try anyway, I think, if you're into journaling or something like that, or you want to try journaling.

Greg
08:26 - 09:04
This is a great tip for you. Set the timer for 30 minutes and sit with a pencil and a piece of paper, and just write what comes to mind. And if it gets to 29 minutes and 30 seconds and you think, this is stupid, I have Practice is something that you were not able to do with the injury. At a time when you absolutely needed to, pretty big deal by all accounts, you weren't able to practice.

Greg
09:05 - 09:16
I'm going to knock the curveball back to you because you weren't able to practice and we were talking about practicing and showing up but how did the inability to practice, the adaption, do you want to continue that story?

Alessandra
09:17 - 09:25
Well, so that I answered the right question, Greg, that the practice before the recordings or during the recordings,

Greg
09:25 - 09:27
you have the floor choice.

Alessandra
09:28 - 10:00
Well, actually, before the recordings, I've been dealing with some really just distressing kinds of things at a personal level and. Being somebody who brings the PTSD is just part of my wiring. So if I'm going to show up authentically in my creative life, PTSD is that suitcase that always ends up with me, whether I think I packed it or not.

Greg
10:00 - 10:01
Unwilling passenger, right?

Alessandra
10:02 - 10:05
Yeah. Yes. The unwilling passenger. Yes.

Alessandra
10:05 - 10:41
So part of doing the practice not perfect, there are times when the trauma alarm goes off and the trauma alarm can tell you to evacuate the building or it can tell you to hide. And sometimes for me, Part of how I hide is I stop writing or I stop practicing. And being able to identify, ah, that's the hiding behavior. I'm hiding because I feel a threat.

Alessandra
10:42 - 11:05
And that does affect the creative life. So the first thing that I do is I tell somebody, I tell somebody. And oftentimes that's Devin and shadows. And I can just say, even though it feels really vulnerable, I can just say, yeah, I'm not playing because I don't feel safe.

Alessandra
11:06 - 11:38
And learning how to work with that is part of not so much the curveball, but the long tail of the curveball. And that's okay, too. And what I found happened during one of the evenings that we were doing those four days of recordings, is I sat at a table with three other professional musicians, and one of them said to me, when I had my two children, I just couldn't cope with anything other than that, and I stopped playing.

Alessandra
11:38 - 12:01
And I just swiveled toward her. And looked her in the face, and I looked at the other players that were at the table, and I said, and I think because I need to say this to myself, there is no shame in taking a pause. There is no shame in taking a pause. And even today, I need to hear that for myself.

Alessandra
12:01 - 12:04
There's no shame in taking a pause.

Greg
12:04 - 12:13
You were talking a little bit earlier about that too. But yeah, we'll pass it around the room a little bit more. We're talking about creativity. What happens when life throws you a curveball?

Greg
12:13 - 12:17
How you adapt to that? What your first reaction is? Shadows, how about you?

Shadows Pub
12:17 - 12:34
Depends on the curveball. You know, if the power goes out for a day or two or five, I'm not going to be doing much creativity. But if it's another issue and, you know, all my tools are available, I might even just do the creativity to avoid the other issue. Who never knows?

Greg
12:34 - 12:57
there's always No but I watched a Mythbusters episode the other day where they were trying to herd cats on Mythbusters.

Shadows Pub
12:57 - 12:58
Yeah that worked well didn't it?

Greg
12:59 - 13:06
Yeah not well not really but yeah absolutely. Thanks Shadows. Devon how about yourself? Creativity when life throws you a curveball what's your first reaction?

Greg
13:07 - 13:09
How does it affect your creativity? First reaction and

Devin
13:09 - 13:29
First of all, I can't believe I'm participating in a podcast using a sports metaphor. So, you know, curveball, I don't know much about hockey, but I think we're talking about, like, something disruptive. And I tend to just stop. My creativity, rather, it just stops while I try to deal with it.

Devin
13:29 - 14:03
But if the curveball continues, Then sometimes the creativity sneaks back in as a way of coping with it. And that's often a good thing if it if the curveball is just going to be there and I'm going to have to continue to work around it, then oftentimes creativity gives me an outlet, gives me a way of, you know, self care that I can sort of get my head into a different space and. shift my state, as Tony Robbins would say, for a bit.

Devin
14:03 - 14:09
So yeah, it can be both things. It can be both a showstopper, but then it can be sometimes a facilitator.

Greg
14:09 - 14:29
Thank you, Devon. Alessandro, this is an interesting conversation, but I want to take just a pause for a moment because we did touch on the topic of trauma and things like that, trauma and crisis. You know, if you're in crisis, if you're in the United States, you can dial 988. It's a crisis number.

Greg
14:29 - 14:39
Add that to mine just in case it's touched on something. And if you're in crisis, share that number with someone who could save a life. But Alessandra, great conversation. Great episode.

Greg
14:39 - 14:40
Thoughts?

Alessandra
14:40 - 15:39
Yes, and the episode goes so fast because we're committed to keeping these episodes in bite-sized pieces so that you can both start and finish them before another squirrel runs along to grab your attention. But what I did want to say is just to drive, just to drive the point home with sports analogies. There was something that Shatters and I were talking about just a couple of weeks ago, and it was about, and I think this will be a podcast topic for us, the concept of living a five-star life is not about money. It's about getting dialed in what you really want, so that if you were giving yourself experience stars, that what you're doing with your life's energy and resources is five star, highly recommend.

Alessandra
15:40 - 16:22
That's what we mean by five star life experience. And so pulling that idea over into seeking treatment for this hand injury because, oh, it turns out that this thing is not just broken in three places, it's crushed in two. So I wouldn't have known that if I just left it in the cast that was given to me right after I took the fall. But playing clarinet, or maybe for you it's sports, or maybe for you it's yoga, maybe for you it's being able to type like a fiend as fast as you can with two hands.

Alessandra
16:23 - 17:09
If your five-star life experience involves having two working hands, then you do want to absolutely pull a five-star team into the fix. So I just sent the word around, like, I'm flying back to Boston, and I know there's a lot of sports teams in Boston. Does anybody have any leads into whom I could see that is a specialist for hand injuries for musicians or sports people or artists or what have you. And I walked into the building of Mass General Brigham yesterday to the ortho, the department is called the Hand and Arm Service.

Alessandra
17:10 - 17:42
So everybody in that building is just working on getting people back in the game, literally. So I walk in and here are the logos for the Boston Red Sox and the New England Patriots and the New England Revolution. And I'm like, these people know what they're doing. So now as the adaptation continues to get better and to return to music or clarinet or whatever being dexterous is all about.

Alessandra
17:43 - 18:08
Yeah, that surgery is on Tuesday. And I think it's gonna be kind of a bionic ham for a little bit, but we'll see what happens. So literally this curve ball is being treated by therapists and physicians and surgeons who do nothing but keep people, get people back on their feet, back into the game. it by one of life's curveballs.

Alessandra
18:09 - 18:29
So we hope that this topic gives you something to think about of how to, one, when the curveball hits and that first reaction rises is recognize which ones are helpful. Like when that thought of mine was, I'll never play again. Boo hoo. I was like, no, stop.

Alessandra
18:29 - 18:43
I get to write this story. I don't know how I will adapt, but I know that I will. And that's something that we can all do. We can figure something out because that's creative and it's what the brain wants to do.

Alessandra
18:44 - 19:27
And I really do feel like I've been training for this right now because being able to plug in a phone or comb my damn hair or figure out how to get some lipstick on my face, All of these things are incredible challenges right now, but if we're following. the beauty of neuroscience and plasticity of the brain. Like literally the best thing that is happening for my brain right now is that I have a bum wing because I can literally feel my brain adapting in different ways to see things, different ways to try things, establishing what things are necessary and which ones I can set aside because it's just not important right now.

Alessandra
19:28 - 19:33
So I don't know. I may not wear makeup for six weeks. It's fine. Nobody cares.

Alessandra
19:34 - 19:48
There's a lot of things that are perfectly fine and nobody cares. But what we want to do is just open up to the possibilities of how can we adapt and who's to say what happens next is not better than what we had before.

Greg
19:48 - 19:50
That's very true. Do you want to chime in again?

Alessandra
19:50 - 19:54
I don't know. I had to take my watch off my left wrist.

Greg
19:55 - 20:08
I think it is. It's that time again when you've wasted some perfectly good time listening to the Creative Work Hour podcast when you could have been doing something else, but no, you tuned in anyway. How about you? What happens to your creativity when life throws

Alessandra
20:08 - 20:08
you

Greg
20:08 - 20:16
a curveball? What's the first reaction that you have and how do you adapt to that? Let us know. You can visit us at creativeworkhour.com.