Getting From Now to Someday

The secret is to work with what you have, and find your someday in your now.

We are told that if we want to change our lives, we have to be future-oriented: visualize what we want, then go for it. How is that working for you? Maybe it works great, and you have the life of your dreams. If so, no need to read on. But if you’re still not happy, still can’t figure out how to generate actual change that makes your life appreciably better, I have some thoughts to share.

When you are future-oriented, you inevitably run into one of two problems. Either you have a clear vision of what you want but the steps to get there are unclear or so long term that life is guaranteed to get in the way, or you’re not exactly sure what you want your life to look like, you only know you don’t want it to feel like it does now and you hope someday it will be better.

You know what happens when people find themselves in this sticky morass of twilight clarity? They get stuck. They can’t figure out what they need to do to create the right kind of movement in their life, or they start taking one of the steps they’ve mapped out and soon realize it’s not going to be as easy as they thought: things aren’t as linear as expected, they take longer, unexpected complications occur. And so they fall off and things go back to the way they were.

Being stuck like this can last for years, decades, a lifetime, especially if it’s how you always approach problems. But the way to change this cycle isn’t what you’d think. Seeking more clarity, finding the right steps to achievement, getting it “right” next time, none of those will help you when you’re dealing with the gap between now and someday. You’ll get lost in that gap every time, because it’s actually quicksand. Trying to force your way out only gets you sucked in deeper. The only solution is to go back to where you started and try a different way.

The way I finally got past that quicksand was by realizing that I had to work with what already existed in my life. That stuff is the only real stuff. All those visualizations you’ve been doing that are supposed to help you get from here to there, they’re only nominally useful. You can’t wish your way into a better life, you really can’t. And while you can possibly create steps to get you to this dreamed-up future, you’ll find yourself back in that quicksand more often than not. What future-oriented visualizations mostly do is highlight your present dissatisfaction. The way to happiness and achieving dreams is to learn how to work with what you have.

Does this mean you can’t have dreams? Absolutely not. What it means is you make your dreams out of the stuff you find lying around already. You don’t go out and buy shiny new dream-parts, you take stock of what you already have and build on that. Because the truth is that you already have everything you require to get from here to someday. It just needs to be polished up a bit, looked at creatively, valued. Your current life is full of untapped riches. You don’t have to reach for anything; it’s already here.

What does this process look like? It’s fairly simple. The hard part is refocusing yourself from the nonexistent future to what already exists. Learning to value things for what they are, rather than where they might take you or what they might get you, is difficult. You do this through paying attention to your feelings about things in the here-and-now. I know! Scandalous! Figure out what makes you feel good, and do more of that. Try to do less of what makes you feel bad. This will lead you in the direction you need to go.

What if nothing makes you feel good? I get it, I was in that place in my own life. Don’t worry, you still have everything you need to get unstuck, it’s just buried. You’ll need to think back to your childhood, probably. What brought you joy, what were the activities you could spend hours on and not notice the time passing? For me it was living inside the imaginative worlds in my own head, reading, letting my natural curiosity lead me toward learning. These were the activities I began to incorporate back into my life little by little when I was trying to get to a better place. It took several years, but now my life is totally different. Not because I achieved some dream, but because I feel good on a daily basis. I feel that I’m living with purpose.

It turns out that my someday doesn’t look at all like I’d imagined, expected, or hoped for. My someday looks like right now. I’ve learned how to trust myself and let my intuitive wisdom lead. It can feel scary to live this way, like taking off the training wheels, but it’s better than feeling despair because your life isn’t what you want it to be and you continue to fail to get from now to someday.     

What the Intuitive Process of Writing a Novel Looks Like

If you keep going, you’ll make it through.

Now that I’m rounding the bend on revisions of my novel, The Gentle History, I’m able to see the whole process of writing it from the vantage point of finished (which is still some months in the future, but I feel it coming). Everyone’s process is different, but I thought I’d outline mine as a reference for intuitive writers starting their own novel-writing journey or who are struggling along the way.

Intuitive writers often fail to finish projects, because we need a different kind of process than the rational one that dominates most writing advice. Any kind of conceptual approach, such as outlining, coming up with plot points, doing extensive character sheets, etc. can stymie us. For intuitive writers, form is an emergent property of content. We have to write without much idea of where we’re headed, charting our own path through, and it can be frustrating and lonely. But if you keep working and trusting, you’ll get there. Here’s how it happened for me.

The Spark

It was 2018, and I was coming off a two-year period of burnout in which I couldn’t write at all. It was so bad I’d resigned myself to not being a writer anymore—in fact, I was beginning to doubt I’d ever been one. Then one day I was reading a book and a passage reminded me of an incident in my childhood where I passed out in a kiddie pool and almost drowned. I idly wondered if perhaps I had drowned, and my entire life after that has been a dream. It would certainly explain why I was so miserable all the time! Instantly, I knew this would be my next writing project: a novel about a woman who discovers she drowned as a child.

The Start

I knew at this point that I was an intuitive writer, so I didn’t waste much time planning. I opened up a Scrivener file and started writing. Along with the spark had come some basic ideas about story direction. My main character, Mara, was and American living in Australia with her husband, who was pursuing a master’s degree there (something I did in my own life). Mara, trying to find something for herself while her husband spends long hours on campus, becomes obsessed with finding the Australian lifeguard who saved her life at summer camp when she was a child.

Guess what my finished novel doesn’t include? Australia, the husband, a master’s degree. Yep, all that stuff ended up being trashed along the way as I continued to write and the story emerged along the way. The intuitive writing style is not efficient, but it’s inspired.

A New Character Makes Herself Known

One day I was writing and a new voice came through my fingers. Somewhere along the way Mara, now transposed to my own childhood neighborhood, switched her obsession to a woman who used to live in a nearby abandoned “haunted house,” where neighborhood kids went for secret trysts. As I wrote about Mara’s investigations into this woman’s life, that woman emerged as a character with a voice. Her name is Esme, and she lived in the haunted house decades before Mara was even born. Now my novel had two POVs in entirely different time periods. Yikes! But you’ve got to go where intuition leads you.

Things Start Filling Out

From this point forward, things began to get a little clearer. I knew that Mara and Esme meant something to each other, that their stories intertwined, but I wasn’t sure how. Was this a mystery, where Mara figures out what happened to Esme? Or was it more like the novel The Hours, where the connection between the different timelines is meaningful yet tenuous? I wrote it both ways, some scenes one way, some another, whatever felt right in the moment when I sat down to do my work.

This is what is called the murky middle, where you feel like you’re lost in a swamp. You go back and forth, find yourself where you started, try again, backtrack, get stuck, give it all up, sob uncontrollably, think horrible things about other writers who seem to know what they’re doing, recommit, get stuck again… This goes on for a while. All I can say is keep going, keep all your writing, and don’t try to fix everything by editing. Your goal here is to finish a draft.

The 60,000 Word Stall

I wrote two drafts of The Gentle History that I couldn’t take past 60,000 words (a novel is around 80,000 words). I just couldn’t see my way through to the end. The problem at this point was that the story wasn’t formed enough to create its own momentum toward a resolution. This is the most difficult challenge intuitive writers face. We won’t fully understand our story or characters, and thus the plot, until very late in the process, in the final stages of revision (this is where I am now on this project). Trust me, it’s worth the wait when you do finally experience things coming together, but getting to that point is an exercise in deep self-trust. Keep going.

What I finally did at this stage was force an ending, and I think this was the key moment of the project. I wanted a fully finished draft, and I intuitively understood that I wouldn’t be able to move forward if I didn’t make some kind of choice about how to resolve my story. So I settled on the ending that was most present in my mind—it also happened to be the craziest ending, but I chose once again to trust myself—and took an entire summer to get that final 1/4 written. Finally, in draft three, I had a completed novel. I’d been working on The Gentle History for three years.

From Editing to Revision

At this point I thought I’d done the hard part. Because it was hard! I was wrong. As I began the editing phase, which I thought was a simple matter of making what I had better, I realized that the hard work was still ahead. What I needed to do wasn’t editing, but revision: essentially a complete rewrite. I’d never been in this stage of novel writing before, so I learned as I went, putting full faith in myself and my intuition to guide me.

What this has looked like for me is multiple passes that deepen both character and story. It’s very much like the writing process but more focused and intentional. Sometimes I’m editing passages and rearranging scenes, and sometimes I’m substantially revising or writing whole new scenes. I delete a lot—killing my darlings, as they say. It feels a bit like peeling off layers of onion, going deeper each time. Along the way I’ve been adding details that anchor each character in their respective time periods, and with an eye toward selling the manuscript, I’ve been working on making their stories more topical. I’m working on honing the language during this stage, too, though I’m not yet at the point of refined line editing.

The result of revisions has been that the story continues to change, and I’ve gone back and forth on what I want for it. This is frustrating, but I do believe that the story’s final form will emerge as a result of revisions (I can feel this crystallization occurring as I go along). I am currently in draft six. I expect I’ll go through at least one more before I’m ready to start querying, though drafts are moving faster as I go and my timeline is now reckoned in months, not years!

Finishing

I’m entering the final stages of revision, and I’m expecting the next step to be line edits, where I go through each sentence and delete extraneous words, rephrase/rewrite for greater clarity and effect, and continue to deepen the meaning. Much of these more fine-tuned revisions involve what I see as making the novel more self-referential, increasing the links between sections so there is a feeling of resonance as the reader progresses. This is highly refined work that requires a deep understanding of the story and characters, which is something that only happens after you’ve spent much time with your manuscript. I have now been working on this novel for almost four years, and I feel myself nearing the end of the project (though it’s likely, depending on how my path to publication goes, that I still have a number of drafts ahead).

What’s Coming Next

There is more to all of this than what I write here; I wanted to provide a synopsis of the experience. I’m hoping to write an ebook guide that gets into the weeds of how to do revisions on a novel next year (2023). So stay tuned for that, and if you have any questions about any part of the process, contact me! It will help me understand what other people are struggling with, so that I can make sure to address that in my ebook.

How Depression Helped Me Conquer the Loss Aversion Bias

Every day I make more decisions about what I’m not going to do than what I am going to do.

The next time you’re meeting up with a group of people pay attention to how long it takes the conversation to turn to how busy they are. Extra points if at least one person complains about being overly busy. The hectic lifestyle is our cultural norm. Try to not talk about being busy. I dare you.

Unfortunately, I can’t do busy. It will send me straight down a dark depression spiral. In order to stay healthy, I have to make sure there is a lot of open space in my days. This means I’m almost never too busy. And most of the time I’m not what you would even call busy. I do a lot of stuff every day, but I don’t do even more. I used to be as crazy busy as the next person, but then a bout of really bad depression made it impossible to maintain. I was forced to deal with my loss aversion bias in the most dramatic ways: I had to stop doing basically everything.

The loss aversion bias is people’s preference for gains over losses. We have a preference for solving problems by adding something rather than subtracting. Loss aversion is one of the major reasons people become exhausted and burned out. When I hear someone talk about how overly busy and stressed out they are, I know the next thing they’ll say is probably going to be about how they’re adding even more to their plate.

No one ever says they’re jettisoning things. They may talk about carving out time to be mindful, resting more. But that’s adding something, right? That’s one more thing to put on the to-do list. Or they may talk about how they’ve “failed” at accomplishing something. But almost never do they ever say they’re letting things go on purpose, joyfully. People prefer to figure out how to do everything more efficiently, using productivity hacks. Better time management, better sleep, better diet—we can do it all if we find the right ingredients to add to our life.

When you have mental health challenges you learn over time how to prioritize tasks, whittle life down to the essentials. When you are forced to jettison everything, you begin to understand what really matters. You become inured to and even accepting of the loss of productivity because you’ve learned to recognize extraneous stuff that you don’t really have to do, were doing only because you thought you had to, or were giving in to external pressures. Over time you figure out how to divide your goals into those that really do enhance your quality of life, and those that decrease it. And you jettison the latter,because you have one overarching goal: feeling good enough that you want to be alive in this world. Everything else follows from that.

I honestly think that on my better days my quality of life and happiness may be on par with or even greater than what I see in people who don’t struggle with mental health issues. Sure, I have some bad times, but they’ve taught me to slow down, open up space for myself, let go of all the pressures. I’ve been forced to learn the important lesson that if you want to get the most out of life, you have to give up more than you add.

This goes against instinct. Why? Because when you lose things, you feel bad. Adding things gives you that nice dopamine hit. Adding things is condoned, busyness makes you seem accomplished and important. Doing less? On purpose? I can tell you that in conversations about busyness I am always the only person who talks about not getting stuff done in a positive way, as something I intentionally practice. Maybe people think I just must not have ambition or the responsibilities they do; possibly they think I’m lazy. True, not true? Who knows. Comparing two people’s lives is that whole apples and oranges thing. What I do know is that every day I make more decisions about what I’m not going to do than what I am going to do. This is the way I choose to live. And I believe that most people have the capacity to make empowering choices for themselves regardless of life circumstances.

Does this way of life mean I lose out on things? Absolutely. Does it mean I sometimes disappoint people? Yep. And that is hard, but it gets easier over time. Because what I gain is so much better than anything I ever got from adding to my burdens in a misguided attempt to solve them. Every time I “lose out” on something because I’ve made a decision to pursue quality of life over productivity, busyness, and giving in to external pressures, I feel better. It becomes a bit like ripping off a Band-Aid. There’s always a sting, but you kind of start to look forward to it, because that fresh air hitting new skin is the feeling of freedom.

In Which I Rage-Write About Writer’s Block Being a Real Thing

Please stop saying it doesn’t exist!

Special note: This was written after hearing a well-known and successful public creative say writer’s block doesn’t exist. I had an angry reaction to that opinion, and this essay was what came out. It’s full of strong feeling, and I’m publishing it as I wrote it because I think it makes an important statement. It is not meant to be some kind of hot take, nor is it meant to impugn on a personal level that specific person or other people who say stuff like this (that’s why I don’t name them). Ultimately I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, that they are simply trying to help people when they say writer’s block isn’t real. And I’m sure that does help some people. But not me, and in this essay I tell you why. For an extended and more benevolent version of this essay, listen to my podcast episode on dealing with writer’s block.

Over the years I’ve heard a number of writers and other creatives deny the existence of writer’s block. I think it’s wild people would do this. It’s demonstrably false, or put another way, there’s a preponderance of evidence that it does exist: most writers have at one time or another experienced a block, even if it’s for a short period of time. So why do we still have people going on record saying shit like this? Let’s break it down.

First, a definition of writer’s block, because it’s widely misunderstood. A mistake people make is that it means you can’t write a word. More likely it manifests as a feeling of having to force the writing, feeling uninspired and finding no joy in it, and dreading having to do it. Eventually this will lead to being unable to write. I’ve experienced this in both short and longer bursts. If you learn to identify it early, you can manage your block so that its duration is shorter. The causes are usually our own fears and insecurities about our writing, but sometimes other factors are involved: mental or physical illness, exhaustion or burnout, time-management challenges. And sometimes it’s a sign that writing just isn’t your thing, or that you’re writing novels when you should be doing screenplays.

I’ve heard people say writer’s block isn’t real because its origins are often psychological: “Writer’s block doesn’t exist, it’s just your fears and insecurities getting in the way.” This is akin to saying mental health challenges don’t actually exist because they’re psychological. Writer’s block is often a mental health challenge (mine is of this type). And this kind of statement is also offensive to people who struggle with brain chemistry-related depression who are blocked. To the people saying this kind of thing: stop right now. Your mental health privilege needs to be checked.

You’ll also hear people who deny writer’s block say stuff like, “I don’t allow myself to get writer’s block.” Okay, good for you. Again, check your mental health (or other) privilege. Choose your words more wisely, have some compassion for those who struggle. Your personal reality doesn’t elide the truth of other people’s lived experiences.

I get it that many people who say writer’s block is a myth are trying to help. And it may help a minority. But mostly it sounds shockingly misguided and patronizing. And I think many people who say this kind of thing are actually getting a dopamine hit from it: it reminds them how well they’re doing with their own writing, how they’ve “conquered” their own fears and insecurities and “mastered” self-discipline. In a culture that sees hard work as a moral virtue (and writing regularly is hard work), they get to feel very good about themselves, even hold themselves up generously as an example of what “anyone” can do if they put their mind to it and simply refuse to allow writer’s block to happen.

If you are one of the majority of writers who struggles with blocks, please understand that it’s totally normal and it’s real. There’s no need to deny the existence of writer’s block in order to deal with it. In fact, accepting that it happens, that it isn’t an implication of moral weakness or inherent laziness, will help you move through these periods faster. It’s okay to feel insecure about your writing, to fear failure. If you are struggling with mental health issues that hold you back, you have my compassion and understanding: me too. Sometimes we just need a break, that’s the honest truth. I find that taking short periods away from writing every month or so helps me maintain my enthusiasm over time.

If you are experiencing a longer period of writer’s block, my deepest sympathies. After I finished my PhD, my burnout was so severe I couldn’t write much of anything for two years. I endeavored, I made strides, but I couldn’t write. To those of you who maintain writer’s block isn’t real or crow about how you don’t “allow” it to happen to you, here’s what that sounds like to me: an invalidation of those heartbreaking two years of my life, of the struggle I encountered finding my way back to writing, and of the challenges I still face in managing my mental health while pursuing my creative dreams. Do you really want to imply that I am delusional when I have writer’s block, that I’m experiencing some kind of hysteria, or that I am simply lazy, that I lack the character necessary to be a “real” writer? Please attempt some kindness and compassion. The world certainly needs more of it, and you sound like an asshole.

When You Don’t Have the Privilege of Mental Health

Grief over your unfulfilled potential is a normal reaction.

I’ve been given many privileges in my life, some of them substantial, but one area where I do not have any privilege is mental health. Since childhood I’ve struggled and suffered emotionally and psychologically. Much of this has to do with being an HSP in a society that isn’t built for gentle souls, some of it is inherited, and some of it comes from life experiences. Mental health issues are complex and individual, which is why they are so difficult to understand and treat.  

It took several decades of adult life to come to a place of peace around who I am and to figure out what kind of life contributes to me feeling like it’s worthwhile to be alive. And I’m doing pretty well these days. I’m happy most of the time, which is not something I ever felt I’d achieve. But I have to be very, very careful on a daily basis to maintain my peace. It’s the work of my life, what I spend most of my energy on day in and day out. It’s very hard to live this way, but I feel deeply grateful I’ve been granted my small lot of happiness. Not everyone gets that.

But sometimes I have mini-relapses, and I expect I always will. That’s part of life as someone who struggles with chronic mental health issues. There is no such thing as getting cured. Your best hope is to manage.

And you know what I wonder sometimes? That I’ll get to the end of my life and be left with the thought of all the things I didn’t achieve because my mental health struggles precluded me from doing so. Because every time I push myself for more, I know that eventually life will slap back—which it does to everyone. I want to be clear here that I’m not saying I desire or think I deserve a life without all the regular obstacles. What I’m saying is that I’m particularly delicate, and stuff that people privileged in terms of their mental health seem to handle with just a moderate amount of discomfort can put me out of commission.

Sometimes I look around at people doing what I can’t seem to do without spiraling down into that darkness and I’m gutted by the losses of a lifetime spent managing chronic mental health challenges.

Maybe you understand personally what I’m talking about, or have someone in your life who’s struggling with depression, anxiety, addiction, despair, anhedonia. None of us are untouched by the mental health crisis endemic in our society.

I want to convey what it’s like for those of us who struggle in this particular way. I hear a lot these days about sitting with discomfort, how important it is to challenge ourselves, how we need to push the boundaries of our own capabilities. I’ve said similar things myself on my blog and podcast. But the truth is that if you are living with mental health struggles, this is what you do on a daily basis from the moment you open your eyes in the morning. You are constantly in discomfort. Everyday tasks like exiting your house to buy food require you to push the boundaries of your capabilities. If you have anything left over to put toward life achievements, you’re lucky.

I hear people talk about sitting with discomfort and feel mystified: isn’t that what life feels like all the time? Is that actually something people have to actively try to cultivate in their lives? What privilege, what colossally lucky people these are, who go out seeking their challenges, who get to dip in and out of discomfort.

Everyone has advantages and disadvantages, and as I said I do have many privileges. I move through this world as a white person, as a thin person (which masks the fact that I am very much not in shape). I have some economic privilege; I’ve had the privilege of an education. But I also move through the world with an invisible and substantial disability, one that keeps me from being all that I want to be.

I work very hard at maintaining my sense of optimism and hope. I work hard at humility, and feel genuine gratitude for the small and large gifts of my life. But sometimes the grief at what I have lost, at what I will continue to lose out on, haunts me. Some of these things are substantial: my dreams of publication, having a human family of my own, having a career of note. Some are seemingly smaller, yet chronic losses: being able to grow my business, being the friend, daughter, partner I’d like to be, being able to participate in community. I am overwhelmed when I contemplate the losses that accrue over time.

If you feel like this, too, I want you to know that I think it’s okay to feel this way. It’s the normal feeling anyone would have in such circumstances. You’re not feeling sorry for yourself, you’re grieving. And I’m so deeply sorry that you are experiencing this.

If you do not struggle with chronic mental health issues yourself, you surely know someone who does. Hopefully this has given you some insight into what life is like for them. People with chronic mental health challenges are trying so very hard to just have a modicum of what regular folks have. These people deserve our compassion and respect. If you don’t suffer from chronic mental health challenges, thank your lucky stars tonight: they have smiled upon you and granted you many blessings.

Finding Your People Through Finding Your Arena

Instead of looking for your people, focus on what you love to do.

The quote in the photo is attributed to Maya Angelou.

Have you ever wondered how you’re supposed to find “your people,” whatever that means? I have. I’ve been lonely all my life. In fact, some of my first memories are of feeling lonely. If anyone needs to find their people, it’s me. Maybe you feel the same.

Maybe, like me, you’ve tried and failed your whole life to do just that. I’ve tried reaching out online, going to Meetups, attending services at churches with rainbow flags prominently displayed in front, and on and on. I’ve reached deep, challenged myself, put myself out there, just like my therapists said I should. And all for nothing. I never found my people that way.

Exasperated, hopeless, angry, I resigned myself to my loner-hermit existence. Some of us are just meant to be alone. It’s okay, I thought. I’m a misanthrope, what did I expect? I don’t like people and they don’t like me. Back to my cave. It’s cozy there. I get to write and live in my head, it’s all good. So I wrote and wrote, because that’s what I love to do, and I started putting stuff out on a blog.

And then something totally astonishing happened. I mean, this was really unexpected (love it when life throws a surprise at you!). People started reaching out to me. Turns out I had been doing it all wrong before. You don’t find your people through seeking out people. You find them by establishing yourself in your arena. I still like retreating to my cozy cave, but I can feel my community around me, and the more confident I grow in my arena, the less lonely I feel.

What do I mean by arena? This term comes from Brené Brown, and she got it from a speech Teddy Roosevelt gave in Paris in 1910. The gist of Roosevelt’s arena concept is this: when you are challenging yourself in an area of life that you deeply care about, facing the inevitable failures head on, falling down and getting up over and over, you will (and this is the part Brené adds) look around and see people in there fighting with you. These are your people.

Here is the part that I add to this concept: there is more than just one arena. Imagine a complex of arenas. Over that way there’s one where they’re creating medical breakthroughs. Look the other direction and you’ll see one where they’re ministering to the sick at heart. There’s one filled with jokers and comics, because we all need to laugh sometimes. There are arenas for people who really like knitting, or parenting, or scuba diving, or playing video games. And somewhere in there is your arena. That’s what you need to find, because inside you’ll find your people.

So how do you find your arena? To some extent, it’s about experimentation. I tried the academia arena, it wasn’t for me, but I gave it a go. I tried the Washington, DC arena, and while I really enjoyed being in the midst of all the excitement, that wasn’t for me, either. I tried the internet startup arena, nope. I tried the corporate arena, NOPE. I tried the arenas of community involvement and volunteering, and while I appreciate my time spent there, ultimately they’re not for me, either.

My arena is writing about ideas. I’ve always known that, but sometimes you have to venture out and apprentice yourself to life before you circle back around. In the parlance of the current era, I’m a content creator. I research, I think, I analyze, I imagine, I write. And I put that stuff out into the world through my blog and podcast. This is my joy. I never tire of doing it (or rarely), I never have a paucity of things to write or talk about, it gives me life. In this arena, I feel confident of my belonging. I don’t worry about whether or not I’m good enough; I just keep doing what I love and enjoying myself.

That’s the feeling you should be looking for. You’ll know you’ve found your arena when you are so energized and engaged by what you’re doing that you’re prepared to face the inevitable failures. You’re able to see them as part of the privilege of being there. Now, at the beginning you may still lack that self-confidence, and we all grapple with insecurity now and again, but you’ll feel that urge inside of yourself that pushes you forward. Maybe you start at the edges of the arena, and you look at the people there at the center, and you wonder if you belong.

Just keep doing what you love to do, and eventually you’ll be there at the center. And your people will be all around you.

How to Judge the Value of Your Creative Work

How do you know if your work is any good?

This post is also a podcast episode!

When I was just starting up my blog and podcast, I’d have cold sweats and heart palpitations every time I hit the publish button. Okay, not gonna lie I still do sometimes. The question that looms large in your mind when you’re putting your work out in the world, regardless of whether you’re new at it or not, is, “How do I know if this is any good?” And while we’re asking, how do you know it’s good enough to dedicate time to producing it in the first place? Creative work requires a lot of time, time that in all likelihood you’ve taken away from something else. How do you justify that, unless you’re actually producing something of value?

Most creatives and artists cycle through extremes when it comes to their feelings about their work. One day they’re imagining all the accolades they’ll receive, the next they’re questioning all their life choices as they stare despondently at the crap they’ve just brought into the world. It’s notoriously difficult to accurately judge your own work. Nonetheless, it is possible to come to a stable assessment of it. I’m going to give you some realistic parameters of evaluation that are anchored in the nature of the creative process itself.

Why is it important to use the creative process as your basis of evaluation? Because if you try to judge your work based on either your own feelings about it or other people’s opinions, you will continue to be stuck in that cycle of extremes. While I do think it’s important to find value in your own work that’s rooted in your enjoyment of doing it, that’s not a good way to judge its value to the world. And relying on other people’s judgements is pure folly: a good review puts you on top of the world, a bad one sends you crashing down. It’s exhausting to live that way.

A much better way to judge your creative output is by your capacity to actually do the work. Producing creative work takes persistence and patience. That’s it. Your relative talent isn’t very important, because if you continue to do the work, your skills will increase as a byproduct of that process. You won’t even have to try that hard to improve: the human brain is wired to seek challenge and learning. As long as you continue to feel motivated by your work (learn how to maintain motivation in this post), improvement will happen.

The relative excellence of your work is a moving target. Because creative work is about process, the value of your output is found in its improvement over time, not how good it is in any given moment. You must have a long view when it comes to judging your work. It doesn’t matter how “good” any particular piece of it is; it’s in the regular accumulation of your work that its value is found.

Take for example Seth Godin, a well-known thought leader in matters of entrepreneurship and creativity. His work is of high value, at least based on traditional measures: he’s popular and he makes money. But Seth Godin isn’t saying anything other people couldn’t say. In fact, many other people are saying similar things. What Seth Godin does is put a lot of work out into the world without worrying too much about whether it’s “good”: currently he writes a blog post a day. He has ideas, and he writes about them and puts his words out there. He keeps doing (and shipping) his work.

I’m not saying that value equals fame and fortune. Most of us will never have either. Seth Godin is simply a well-known example of the value of process. In fact, on the very day I’m writing this his blog post is about the incremental improvement comprising process. I’m willing to bet that Seth Godin judges his own work primarily based on the fact that he did it yesterday, is doing it today, and will do it again tomorrow, and that it will evolve over time in accordance with what inspires him.

That’s creative process.

When you begin to see your work as an evolving body rather than discrete outputs, you’ll begin to find value in the creative process itself and your dedication to it. Your attachment to specific outcomes will lesson, and you’ll worry less about what other people think. Everything is experimentation, a work in progress. Don’t be too precious about your work. Just keep doing it.

Creative Success Really Does Come Down to Just These Two Things

The only things you need are persistence over time and patience.

Look, I get that we all define creative success in different ways. I define it almost exclusively on internal conditions: am I happy, satisfied, fulfilled by my creative activities? Do they feel meaningful not just to me but within the context of the wider world? If those conditions are met, I feel successful. Validation, money, etc. are just icing. Nice, but not necessary, and sometimes they even spoil the dessert (I don’t want brownies with icing, thanks very much).

Maybe you define it differently, and your way is totally valid if it’s working for you! But I bet regardless of your definition of success, one thing remains true: if you’re not actually doing your creative work and finishing projects, there is no success to be had.

This is where most people end up failing. Yes, most. For every person who finishes a novel and puts it out into the world, a hundred, and probably far more, have thought about writing a novel but didn’t, or made an outline but then never wrote it, or got through chapter four and abandoned the project, or even finished a rough first draft but then didn’t have the heart to dive into editing.

Sticking it out is the hardest part of creative success. And in fact it is the only truly necessary and sufficient ingredient. Talent is neither necessary nor sufficient, it’s really not. It helps, but what constitutes talent is relative and plenty of people of average talent succeed.

Let’s take a closer look at what’s involved in sticking it out. That “rule” about 10,000 hours of practice? The one that says you have to do something for that long to become an expert (whatever that means)? Toss that out the window. It can take a lifetime to amass that many hours, and not everyone has the capacity or desire to spend that much time on their art. Imagine spending 20 to 40 years getting your 10,000 hours (that’s spending between five to ten hours a week). Will you still want the same things at the end of that? Will you only then be ready to debut your precious art? That’s silly. Share your art now. It doesn’t matter if you’re an expert, it doesn’t matter if you ever are.

There is one thing that the 10,000 hours rule does get right, though: if you dedicate yourself to achieving your 10,000 hours, you will most certainly manage to not only do your work (obviously), but probably finish lots of stuff.

The truth is that you only need two qualities to be creatively successful: persistence over time and patience. We tend to overvalue the first, undervalue the second. We know that we need to keep at it, this is ingrained in us through our cultural myths. Think The Little Engine That Could, or Slow and Steady Wins the Race. What we often don’t understand, the thing we trip up on, is the colossal, unbelievable, and frankly insane amount of patience that is needed to be a successful creative.

How long do you think it will take to finish your project? Double that and add six months. And it still may take longer. Not all projects are like this, but many are. And if you seek long-term success as a creative, you must essentially have never-ending patience, because the work never ends. And it’s always work, always effortful (though it’s also joyful if you accept that it’s always effortful work and learn persistence and patience). This is what the creative life is. It’s doing your work, continuing to do so, and practicing the patience of one who has deeply absorbed the lesson that it’s all process and journey, never arrival and destination.

Do you have what it takes? There’s nothing wrong with you if you don’t. Maybe you prefer short-term gains, the feeling of progressive achievement, the world’s esteem. You may get those things from creative work, but if that is your aim, you will probably find yourself struggling to establish a creative practice that supports large projects. And that’s fine, because you should do what’s right for you. Just be clear on your own capacities and desires.

But if you do have what it takes, rest assured that truly the only things you need are persistence over time and patience. You can build these qualities into your creative practice, they can become what is sacred about it. You will find joy in your work, you will finish your projects, and you will see improvements in your skill over time. You will develop self-confidence and self-respect. And your success will take care of itself.

Why I Gave Up on Ambition

The question to ask is, does ambition make us unhappy?

“So what are your long-term goals?” she asked me. “Where do you see yourself in two years, in five?”

I was interviewing for a position at a DC-based think tank. I answered, “I don’t really think about the future. I don’t care that much.”

“Well, I guess that’s…refreshing,” she said after a pause. I could tell from her expression that she did not actually find it refreshing at all, but flippant. Who was this lazy-ass person wasting her time, was what she was thinking.

Okay, the truth is I didn’t have the guts to say anything like that. I don’t remember my answer, but I’m sure I said something along the lines of “I have exciting ideas about contributions I want to make and a progressive career path blah blah blah.” After all, I used to believe that’s how I was supposed to think. Plans, goals, up and at ‘em. I used to have an ego about these things: I was going to make something of my life. I pursued an important career because I thought that’s what smart and talented people who have the privilege of opportunity do. I worked hard, too hard. I burned out.

When you live in a culture that worships ambition and the attendant hard work it requires, it can feel so wrong to say “I’m not ambitious.” But I’ve been thinking that maybe, just maybe, ambition can be damaging. During the years I had ambition, I was unhappy. I never felt like I was achieving enough. There was always something more I needed before I could finally feel like I’d arrived. I always felt like I wasn’t getting enough appreciation or recognition for my contributions. I worked so hard all the time, exhausting myself, and the rewards that accrued to me weren’t satisfying or fulfilling.

What an awful way to live. Now, I do think many ambitious people find satisfaction going that route. They must, because they keep doing things that way. They like the chase, the big dreams, the thrill of expectation that there’s always more to be had. But I found that kind of life hollow and exhausting. Happiness and fulfillment were always out there on the horizon, never right here right now.

The problem with ambition, see, is that it can make us believe that more is needed to feel satisfied, and it draws our focus away from the small moments in the here-and-now that are the true measure of happiness. Gratitude and mindfulness practices are popular because they draw us back to these present moments. But what if you lived in those moments permanently? What if in each moment you felt like you had what you needed, you felt whole, settled, and at ease? What would a life comprised of many such moments look like? Would you cease to achieve anything? Would life lose its luster when you aren’t feeling excited about all the things the future will give you?

Does giving up on ambition mean you’ll become a lazy couch potato whose biggest achievement today is putting on some pants?

Not at all. In fact, you may end up achieving even more. You’ll be focused on expending your time and energy on the things that fulfill you in the moment, which will have the effect of creating momentum in your life, and that can lead to big things. You’ll probably find that these big things begin to almost happen on their own, with comparatively little effort on your part, because you’ll be excited about the stuff you’re doing right now and that will give you the right kind of energy to tackle the challenges that come your way.

Here are some of thing things I’ve accomplished since I started living my life for the small here-and-now moments: I finished a novel (after 15 years of failing to do so); started a weekly podcast; been consistent with writing a weekly blog post. During the ambitious phase of my life I got a PhD, but here’s what I was actually doing: waking up dreading the day; doing all the things I “should” be doing, often to the bare minimum of acceptable standards; climbing back into bed exhausted and mourning the loss of another day that wasn’t satisfying or happy. Oh, and drinking to anesthetize myself, let’s not forget that part.

As soon as I gave up on big ambitions and began to focus on enjoying the moment, that’s when stuff started happening for me. I felt momentum, excitement, fulfillment. And yes, happiness. I’m not without dreams for myself, but I practice detaching from outcome. The future can, and will, take care of itself. The power to effect change in our lives lies in acting in the current moment, and leaving the future open to possibility.

The Truth Is That the Creative Life Isn’t Very Exciting

It is a life defined by the act of fully inhabiting yourself.

It only took 20 years of adult life to work it out, but I can now say that I am living the creative life. What do I mean by that? I think it’s probably different for everyone, but for me, this is what that looks like: I dedicate a portion of each day to my creative work, and I try to the extent that I’m able to pass the rest of my time in ways that are conducive to fostering creative flow.

I didn’t always know there was such a thing as the creative life. As a writer, I saw life in terms of the dichotomy between successful writer vs. still trying to be one. And I was very much on the side of still trying, because I visualized success as having achieved publication. The life of a writer, I imagined, would feel more real and alive than my sad life as a wannabe. There would be events, inspiring friends, possibly travel and interviews involved! 

And possibly there would be, and certainly are for some writers. But I’ve jettisoned my old ideas of what success looks like; I now think being happy and creatively fulfilled is success. And now that I’ve found my happiness and fulfillment in the creative life, I have to laugh at such imaginings. Because the truth of the creative life is that at its heart it really is rather boring, at least viewed from the outside.

Here’s the main of it: I sit down and write today, then I do that same thing tomorrow, then I do that same thing the next day after, then I do that same thing the day after that…. And that’s it. That’s what it’s all about. Some days I come away from writing feeling awesome, but most days I just feel satisfied, not particularly excited. For every day I do feel on top of the world about my project(s), there are more days that I do not.

The creative life is about doing the same thing day after day with patience and persistence. It’s about iterated effort over time, and about understanding and accepting that that’s the sum total of the foundation of a creative life. Regardless of any successes you experience or don’t experience along the way, the creative life is constituted by the quiet act of dedicating yourself once again today to your work. 

There is absolutely no glamour about it.  

That, in fact, is what I love about it. The creative life is a humble thing, and therein lies its beauty. It is a life defined by the act of fully inhabiting yourself. It is what happens when your focus shifts from trying to fulfill external expectations, real or imagined, to the task of expressing your internal, lived experiences into the world in the way that suits your nature. This is what creative practice is about. Not the goals or singular achievements, but the iterated act of being yourself in the best way you know how.  

How to Stop Performing and Show Up as You Are

It’s a practice, not a goal (isn’t that true of everything?).

When we’re showing up in the public spaces of the online world as creators and/or entrepreneurs, it’s easy to believe we need to perform. Public spaces are performative spaces (this is true of IRL spaces too!). A lot of people are playing parts; many treat it like a game. And that’s fine: it’s one way to be and you can find success that way. But for those of us who have an aversion to being performative (INFPs in particular hate it, and INFJs find it equally challenging but for different reasons), that kind of interaction leads to misery and burnout.

Unfortunately, we rarely feel that we are good enough just as we are. We operate on the assumption that performance of some kind is required for us to be accepted/acceptable.

It sucks to always feel like you have to be more or better to deserve your place at the table, doesn’t it?

What if it were as easy and simple as just showing up? Let’s say you’re invited to a potluck dinner. What if all you had to do was show up in whatever way naturally occurred? Straight from the gym, sweaty and tired. With some chicken McNuggets you only bought because you happened to drive by a McDonald’s and thought, why not, it’s convenient.

What if you sat at the table with everyone else and didn’t say a word all night because you’re tired and nothing worth saying came to mind? What if you got up halfway through, made your apologies, and left because you’d reached your sensory input limit?

What if all that was totally fine, and you didn’t have to worry at all about what people would think, whether they would still like you and invite you back?

Maybe you have friends like this, whose only desire is to have you there at the table, in whatever way you are able to show up. But when it comes to participating in a wider community, especially when we’re putting our work out into the world as creatives, things can feel very inhospitable. It’s easy to get caught up in beliefs about how we need to show up.

We need to be peppy, flashy, and outgoing.

We need to be attractive.

Our work needs to be on point, of excellent quality, engaging.

We need to speak to the zeitgeist (just speaking our truth isn’t enough).

All of these are really the same thing. They’re statements about how we need to be more and better to deserve our place at the table. We need to perform for our dinner. Last-minute chicken McNuggets aren’t going to cut it. Having a quiet night when we just don’t want to have to talk won’t get us a repeat invite.

I’m not going to lie. Those of us who are reserved, shy, introverted, and socially anxious are disadvantaged in some ways. But we have one major advantage, which is ironically the very thing that is also our disadvantage: our inclination toward authentic interaction. If we could just find a way to let go of all the pressure we put on ourselves to perform, to be in certain ways, we could relax into just being ourselves no matter how that manifests.

But how? Like most aspects of the creative life, this is a practice, not a goal. We may never get to a point where we are completely indifferent to how people react to us, but we can practice every day and get better over time. It does get easier, but only if you practice.

Here’s how I do it. It’s not anything fancy, not some brilliant hack. It’s just some basic steps. Step one is finding situations where simply showing up is enough, because this shows you what it feels like. Places where you are not called on to perform anything, and you are able to get a glimmer of what it would feel like to not be pressuring yourself all the time to be something else. You may find this in a relationship, a friend group, or an online community.

Step two is reminding yourself over and over (and over and over) that it doesn’t matter if you’re “doing it wrong.” Remind yourself of this as much as needed in places where you don’t feel as accepted, where that pressure to be more arises within you. Remind yourself that what you naturally have to offer is enough.

Step three is embracing doing it wrong. Turn that wrong into your right. After all, who’s to say it’s either wrong or right? Who has that authority? No one. Or put another way, you have as much authority as anyone else to decide what’s right (for you). Believe me when I say that it is exactly those areas where you feel you’re doing it wrong that people need to hear about!

So what if you don’t know what you naturally have to offer? What if you’ve been performing for so long, you’re a blank when it comes to who you really are? This is step four, and figuring it out is an emergent property of the practice. It will happen gradually as you learn to release the pressure you have been putting on yourself. You may be pleasantly surprised at what you discover.

Learning This Decision-Making Principle Will Inoculate You Against Burnout

Make decisions based on energy, not time.

Our way of life is harming us. We’re not happy, as a people, are we? Feeling overwhelmed and exhausted by life shouldn’t be normalized. Busyness shouldn’t be worshiped (though it’s easy to see why it is in our culture: business/busyness). The answer isn’t to figure out how to be more efficient and productive so we can fit it all in (where does it end?!). There’s no getting around it, the answer really is to do less. But how do we do less without feeling like we’re falling behind? How can we begin to change our lives so that we don’t burn out, we feel happier and more relaxed, and space opens up for us to pursue our true desires?

Let me start with a question. Do you make decisions about energy based on time, or decisions about time based on energy?

If you’re like most people in a Western(ized), postindustrial culture, it’s the former. You make calculations for what you can get done around how much time it takes to do it and time availability in your day. It’s a pretty simple equation: you expend energy based on time. Another way to put this is that you prioritize time usage over energy reserves (with the assumption that you’ll find that energy somewhere). This decision-making methodology will inevitably lead to exhaustion or even burnout for most of us.

But it seems like the obvious and correct way to do things, right? For example, you need to mow the lawn. Do you have a spare hour on Saturday afternoon? Yes? You schedule it in, and then you do it without thinking much about the energy side of things: you mow the lawn regardless of whether you feel like doing it. It seems natural to do things this way. When you have a long to-do list of things you (feel you) absolutely have to get done, there really is no other way to guarantee you do it. You have to find or make the time, schedule it in, and get to work.

It’s not wrong to do things this way. But it does lead to a particular experience of the relationship between time and energy that can be unpleasant. Feeling overloaded, overwhelmed, and exhausted are the extreme effects, but often the unpleasantness manifests in more subtle ways. Feeling chronic dissatisfaction, unfulfillment, tiredness, boredom, malaise. All those existential problems we associate with modern living. But this is not an inevitable consequence of modernity. It has to do with how we manage that relationship between our energy and time.

What if you decided to switch that relationship? Make decisions about how to use time based on energy? How would you do that, what would it look like?

It would look like living life in a way that appears, on the surface, to include two states of being we have an absolute abhorrence for in modern Western culture: being lazy and wasting time. It’s important to understand that terms like these are judgements, not realities. They belong to a paradigm, or worldview, that influence how we conceptualize work vs. inactivity. Here is the trade-off life gives us within this paradigm: either we run ourselves into the ground (feeling overwhelmed is normal! Everyone feels that way, it’s just part of life), or we let things slide, give in to our baser natures that want to waste hours, not just minutes but hours!, scrolling through Instagram while Netflix plays some inanity in the background. Neither of those choices are any good, in my opinion.

Here’s a different paradigm: feeling satisfied regardless of how much you get done, ending each day calm and happy, and not worrying at all about whether any given activity, including Instagram scrolling, is lazy or wasting time. How about not feeling overwhelmed and exhausted and inadequate to the tasks of our lives? How about not taking account of every minute spent, living in a constant fog of time-is-getting-away-from-me anxiety? It can take a long time to change your life in this way, but where you start is by making decisions about time based on energy.

This is what it looks like. There are all these things you think you need to do…dig deep and examine that. What’s going to happen if you don’t do them? Is someone going to come and arrest you? Probably not? The things we think we need to do are tangled up in all kinds of largely subconscious beliefs about our identity, what other people think, perfectionism, you name it. The next time you have something scheduled in on that Saturday afternoon, ask yourself if you feel up to it. Do you have the physical, mental, and emotional energy to tackle it? In other words, will it either energize you to do this task, or at least not deplete you? Yes? Do it. No? Use that time to do something you do have the energy for, even if it’s scrolling through Instagram. Because if that’s what you feel compelled to do, it’s because your brain needs a break from strenuous focused tasks. If you feel like taking a nap, that’s your physical body telling you it needs a break. Feel like reading? Your emotions need some quiet time.

Wait a minute, surely I’m not suggesting you do stuff based on whether or not you feel like it? Yeah, I am. Not all the things—obviously living your life entirely like this isn’t feasible for most. But you can start small and then gradually make changes in your life as you gain confidence that everything isn’t going to fall apart if you do things this way. You will learn to trust yourself that you will get done the stuff you absolutely have to, and you’ll feel better doing it because you’ll have greater energy reserves. You may even start enjoying that must-do stuff more, now that you’re not so depleted all the time (I actually learned to enjoy mowing the lawn, which used to make me cry in despair every time).

Dealing with your knee-jerk, culturally indoctrinated reactions to doing things this way is going to be your greatest challenge. This is a transformational process. It will entirely change the way you live your life, what you see as important, and how you feel. But it takes practice. The resistance you will feel at first is a normal response to going against cultural norms. It can feel like you’re breaking some kind of law (you are, a cultural law). That’s why the question, “Is someone going to come and arrest me?” can be an effective counter.

You’re going to have to fight with yourself for a while around this, because cultural indoctrination runs deep. It took me some years to get to a place where most of my decisions are energy based. Yes, it means I end up not getting a lot of things done. I’ve realized I never needed to do most of those things anyway. Like I said, the answer really is to do less. And what a difference this makes in the quality of my life. I feel like I’m living my life, rather than it passing me by in overstuffed chunks of time I’ll never get back.

Why I’ve Committed to Making Self-Published Novels a Sizable Proportion of What I Read

Simply put, I just really love reading them, and here’s why.

As a writer with a finished novel, I’ve been thinking about my consumption of self-published novels and what that means in terms of my impending decision around what kind of publication to go for. For the time being I’m pursuing traditional publication, but realistically my chances are slim (as they are for most novelists for a variety of reasons). Self-publishing may very well be in my future. The problem? Until recently I wasn’t reading many self-published books.

I’d read a few over the years, usually friends’ novels. I’m the type of friend who really will read your novel, the whole thing. I’ll even give you kind and constructive feedback if you ask for it (but only if you ask). I’ve helped edit friends’ manuscripts for self-publication: I’m a professional editor as well as a writer, so I’m the person to ask. But I’m also someone who grew up in the era prior to ubiquitous self-publishing. Back then, we only had what were called “vanity” presses, and the implication was that if you used one it was because you weren’t good enough to get published.

These days this is no longer true, and I’m not sure it ever was. If you take a random sample of self-published novels, you’ll find that they run the gamut in terms of writing skill and polish, with many on par with or better than (some) traditionally published novels. But I’m happy to read all skill and polish levels. Often the only difference is that self-published novels haven’t had the benefit of the multiple rounds of professional workshopping and editing traditionally published novels do. And I’ve realized that this is exactly what I love about self-published novels.

Traditionally published books have been through the hands of many middlemen who work to turn it into a salable product. Often a very good one, but still, it’s a product meant for the transactional marketplace. While self-published books are also products, most have not been shaped in the same way. The product you are getting often feels more authentically immediate in comparison to those slick traditionally published books. And I like that. I like the feeling of reading a piece of creative work that has come relatively unmediated straight from the creator’s imagination.

As a writer I have mixed feelings about traditional publication. Like any institution, it represents and maintains certain types of privilege. And I don’t want it to be the sole arbiter of what I read (I recognize I’m not addressing independent presses in this piece; it’s an area I have yet to explore). But there’s another reason I am committed to putting more self-published novels on my TBR list.

Writing a novel is hard. It takes vision and persistence. It takes being able to advocate for yourself to carve out the time and space to write and an almost insane level of self-belief in the face of continual small and large failures to accomplish. And then to put your work out into the world yourself, without the backing of a publishing house? Phenomenal. That is effing brave. Traditionally published authors at least have that buoying esteem of the publishing industry behind them, whether they feel like they’ve made it or not (even traditionally published authors struggle with imposter syndrome!).

And here’s one final reason I’m committed to reading more self-published novels: I like supporting fellow writers not just by reading their stuff but by buying it. I am also a creative trying to make some money from my creative work, and it can be a disheartening struggle. Our society doesn’t value independent creative work as much as it does creative products that have been taken up by institutions and packaged for the transactional marketplace. And that’s kind of messed up when you think about it.

I get most of the traditionally published novels I read from the public library, and I’m happy to spend some of that money I’m saving on self-published books, knowing most of it is going directly to the author (don’t feel guilty about borrowing rather than buying traditionally published books: authors make good money from library purchases). It feels like a win-win situation.

If you are a writer who hasn’t explored self-published works, I’d recommend doing so. You’ll enjoy them, you’ll learn from them, and you’ll be supporting fellow writers.

What Would Betty White Say?

It’s never too late to achieve your creative dreams.

I can’t emphasize this enough: it’s not too late for you. You’re turning 40 soon and still haven’t written that novel? Not too late. Turning 60 and still haven’t written it? Not too late. In your 70s and thinking to yourself, why bother now?

What would Betty White say? I think you know what she would say.

It’s not too late for you.

Here’s something I like to say: late bloomers bloom the brightest. Why? All kinds of reasons. You can probably think of a few yourself. I’m not going to list any here because my intention with this post is different. I’m here to tell you not only that being a late bloomer is awesome—better than being an early bloomer!—but also that we all have the capacity to be late bloomers, regardless of whether we already bloomed early.

That’s because what we all are is repeat bloomers. We are perennials, not annuals. We are meant to live out many iterations of blooming throughout the length of our stay here on earth. We excel at reinventing ourselves if we give ourselves permission to do that regardless of age.

You want to be a painter at 50? Go do that. Learn classical guitar? Do it. Make the rest of your life the brightest blooming part of it.

Never stop blooming.

My 2021 Retrospective (I Finished a Novel!)

It’s never too late to achieve your creative dreams.

As you can see from the title of this post, the overarching triumph of this year for me was finally—finally!—finishing a novel after 15 years of not doing that. I did finish the first one I ever wrote, and then…nothing. I tried three or four times, and have multiple drafts of multiple novels in various files on various computers. But I just couldn’t seal the deal with them.

It would be easy to say that it was because I was busy (getting a PhD), or that it was because I couldn’t get any of my short stories published (I came close so many times, but no cigar). But in truth it was because I didn’t believe I could finish a novel, or rather, I didn’t believe it mattered if I did. I was laboring under the weight of the belief that whether other people liked my work—wanted to publish it—was an important part of the creative process. It was only after I decided to take ownership of my art and commit to a creative practice that was for me and only me that I finally finished a novel.

Still, it wasn’t easy. Another issue I struggled with was the anxiety of too many choices. When you write a novel, your freedom is absolute. You can make the story go in any direction, make the characters do anything. You are like a god. One of the reasons I wasn’t able to finish a novel for so many years was because I couldn’t figure out how to finish them. Write endings. Make the choices necessary to wrap up the stories. How do you know if it’s the right ending? Ultimately I had to tell myself that I just needed to write something as an end. I could change it later.

I still remember how it happened. I was sitting at my kitchen bar under low lighting. I typed some sentences, then some more. And then suddenly, that was it. I’d come to the end. It felt rather anticlimactic, and now that I’m fully into the revisions process, I understand why. Finishing the novel is just the beginning! That’s the least of the work you need to do. But it’s still a very big deal, and it’s the thing I’m most proud of about this year.

And I’m glad I have that triumph, because things on the business front, they’re…not going as well. The truth is I’m an artist, not an entrepreneur, and I will only ever be able to do business uncomfortably at best. But I had hoped to be further along at the two-year mark (I hung out my signpost in early 2020). I’m making a little money through Patreon subscribers and occasional coaching clients, but progress has been slow. This is to be expected, and I’ve realized that it may take me many (many) more years to build my business up to a decent and sustained income level. Fortunately I have other sources of income right now. But still, I can’t pretend I’m not disappointed by my performance in this area.

My lack of much success in the business arena has been eye-opening for me, however. Through the ups and downs of entrepreneurship I’ve realized something that will guide me forward this coming year. It’s this: I don’t want to be an entrepreneur. I don’t want to do business. At least not in any conventional sense. I’m an artist. That’s what I want to be, and it’s what I am personality-wise and in how I see and experience the world. Any business I do going forward will have to happen in the periphery of me doing my creative work.

I don’t know what this means in terms of income. Maybe I’ll always have to earn money through means not directly related to my creative work. Or maybe over time business will pick up for me on its own. My one goal for next year is to figure out how to be more consistent in showing up on social media. I’m putting out tons of creative work through my blog and podcast, but no one is going to find me if I don’t promote it!

Despite my disappointments in business, I feel this year has brought me clarity. I’ve developed a sense of peace about my purpose in this world, and my creative practice has gained depth and resonance. I feel grateful to know myself as an artist, even though I’ve come to that understanding later in life. It is not too late. It’s never too late to achieve your creative dreams.

Get Friendly With Your Ultradian Rhythm

Learning to trust our intuitive preferences is essential.

Back in the olden days when I thought that being a “real” writer meant developing certain specific writing habits and hitting explicit targets like word count, an author I admired did an interview about her work routine. She said that when she finally decided to get serious about writing, she committed herself to writing four hours a day. For a long time, much longer than I like to admit, I thought that four hours a day was what you had to put in to be a real writer. But now I understand that’s bullshit.

I think that four hours is too much time to dedicate to writing. To any single task. And while it may work for that particular author, in general trying to remain focused that long is not only difficult but can actually be harmful. This is because humans operate in accordance with an ultradian rhythm. You have no doubt heard of the circadian rhythm that governs each 24-hour day. The ultradian rhythm governs our biological functions throughout the day in 90-minute increments. For example, when we sleep we cycle in and out of REM sleep on an ultradian rhythm. Our ultradian rhythm also governs how long we can focus deeply on any particular task before our brains give out.

Before I learned about ultradian rhythms, I thought something was wrong with me that I only seem to be able to sit down and write for about an hour, hour and a half max. The thought of writing for four hours straight seems nuts to me. I suppose in rare cases I could power through such a session if I had to (I’ve never had to, even when writing my dissertation), and I don’t doubt that some people like working in longer sessions. But most of us will only be able to do around 90 minutes of focused work before we fade (and that’s an average—my ultradian intervals seem to be around 60 minutes; some people’s may be closer to two hours).

If you pay attention, you’ll be able to pinpoint the exact moment that brain fade happens. Your brain basically says, “Yep, I’ve had enough now.”

Learning to stop when that happens is essential to developing a sustainable writing habit (or any other kind of habit), because it allows you to rest and regenerate before you’re entirely depleted. As I’ve talked about recently on my podcast, it can take a lot longer to recover from burnout than it would have taken for you to rest and regenerate in order to avoid it. While it’s possible to power through in the short term, you’re harming your chances of being able to sustain your motivation over the long term.

Many people can only do one ultradian period of highly focused work in a day. But I find it’s possible to do two or more periods of around 60+ minutes as long as I make sure to rest during (learning how to strategically use procrastination and distraction can help) and between. I use these periods for creative work. Other activities in my life, such as admin work and household chores, don’t require that kind of focused energy, so I intersperse that stuff in between my creative sessions. And of course I also schedule copious amounts of rest and rejuvenation periods, which include taking walks, watching TV, or journaling.

I find that chunking my daily life according to a loose ultradian rhythm feels natural and relaxing. It just makes sense in some deep way—because it makes biological, physiological sense. Throughout the night I usually wake up around every 90 minutes (particularly in the first half), and I no longer view that as indicating I’m doing sleep wrong. I’m just cycling out of an ultradian interval.

Learning about the ultradian rhythm made me realize just how important trusting my intuitive preferences is. I’ve always naturally found myself doing writing sessions of 60 to 90 minutes; it’s what feels good to me. I could have saved myself years of angst if I’d just accepted that as how much I need to work. Instead, I felt bad about myself, tried to force more. How many other intuitive behaviors do we have that we don’t accept and learn to work with because culture tells us they’re wrong? If we paid attention to what feels good to us and let that guide us, we’d probably find that life starts to feel a whole lot better. And we may even end up getting more done, because we’re working with our energy cycles, not against them.  

When Putting Your True Self Out There Makes You Feel Anxious and Embarrassed

We all want to be liked and approved of.

For creative entrepreneurs, putting your private self into your public work is often a requirement—or at least it’s a current norm. Confessionary social media posts are in style. Being authentic and honest about your own journey, and sharing that with followers in a way that resonates with their own, is how business is done in the burgeoning creative economy.   For many, this is a challenge because it means revealing yourself in ways that feel deeply uncomfortable. This post is for those of you who are struggling with how to approach this new cultural and business expectation of a blended private/public life.

This is not a post about boundaries—that’s a worthwhile subject but one that has been widely covered elsewhere. This is about that icky feeling of anxiety mixed with embarrassment or shame that you get when you’ve revealed something about yourself publicly that feels very personal. These feelings originate in our primal fear of being rejected by the group. As one of my clients once asked me about putting my own private stories out there for public consumption: “Did anything bad happen when you did that?”

This amorphous “bad” thing that could happen if we share too much or if people see who we really are is the dark storm cloud blocking us from both delving too deeply into ourselves and putting what we excavate out there into the world. We want to be liked, approved of. This is totally normal. The problem is that after a while, being likable becomes unlikable, because it’s not real (or it’s not the whole truth). It’s boring. What we think will make us unlikeable, the stuff we keep buried and private, perhaps even from ourselves, is what provides nuance and depth to our public personalities. Think of it as a painting: you need shadow along with the light to create something with meaningful depth on the canvas.

I’m sure that sounds rather conceptual, but it’s a helpful image to keep in mind, because what people remember is that resonance they have with someone who has revealed themselves to be fully human. Part of this is the relief we feel when we realize we’re not the only screw-up in the room. Part of it is that we have a natural fascination with what in the olden days was termed a “human-interest story.”

Creative entrepreneurs may be required by the current norms of the creative economy to be their own human-interest story, but it also makes good business sense. In a world of product glut, people make purchases based on resonance, fellow-feeling, and values. It’s difficult if not impossible to offer anything truly unique these days. Every time I have a brilliant idea, a 3-second Google search shows me it’s already been done a dozen times.

What you can offer is your unique story, warts and all. Especially the warts. Just as Tolstoy says about families (all happy ones are alike, all unhappy ones are unhappy in their own way), our embarrassing, anxiety-producing quirks are what make us unique. Or to put it another way, being “good” always generally looks the same, but our secret struggles, dreams, insecurities, sorrows, and passions are what make us interesting human beings.

So has anything bad happened since I started putting all my “secret” stuff out into the world? Nothing more than the anxiety and embarrassment I tend to feel in waves. My guiding philosophy for putting anything out there is this: the way people receive your work (or you) is 100% about them, and you have 0% control over it. They’re going to judge you either way, so you might as well give them something to chew on!

You won’t ever get all the people to like you. When you start being honest, your overall approval rating probably won’t go down (and may even go up). Some people may decide they no longer like you (remember, this is all about them—perhaps they hate your honesty because they’re not being honest themselves), but some people who didn’t like you before might decide they do.

I can promise you that it gets easier over time. You can start small! Really, really small. Use self-deprecating humor if it helps. It’s all just practice and experimentation. No one’s saying you have to reveal all the stuff. I have many things I don’t talk about and probably never will. I only share stuff that measure up to about a 5 or maybe a 6 on the discomfort Richter scale. I started at 1.

And if you need a final piece of wisdom to ease your mind about sharing your true self with the public, there’s this: often the worst thing that happens is you find out nobody actually cares that much anyway!

No Time for Creative Practice? Learn to Listen to Your Energy Cues

Most of us have an energy problem, not a time problem

The major reason we don’t get around to our creative projects isn’t that we’re too busy. Most of us have the time somewhere in the day, even if it’s just twenty minutes. And that is absolutely enough daily time for a solid and rewarding creative practice. The problem is that when that twenty minutes shows up in our schedule, we either don’t notice, are too revved up to sit down and be creative on cue, or are too exhausted to do anything but collapse on the sofa and catch an episode of 30 Rock on Netflix. But by doing a little energy magic, we can open up more energetic space in our lives that we can fill with creative practice – and other stuff!

We need a framework to understand energy before we can start to work our magic, and this article in the Harvard Business Review provides a good one. It divides energy into four categories: physical, emotional, mental, and spirit-sustaining. The trick is to figure out what activities in these four categories give you energy rather than drain you. The best way to do this is to simply pay attention to the activities you are already doing throughout the day. Chances are you’re already working some energy magic without realizing it.

Physical energy is the one we tend to be most cognizant of in our health-obsessed culture. Often just that act of moving through the day is physically draining for most of us. Getting out of bed, going to work, doing chores…these activities are usually not generative in terms of physical energy. But exercise often is. Many people use exercise as a way of counterintuitively generating more energy. It may tire them out, but it also releases endorphins, which are both calming and energizing. Now, I don’t like exercise. But I do like talking walks. That counts! Maybe for you it’s gardening, yoga, jumping rope, or wiggling. Move your body in a way that renews you.

Emotional renewal usually comes in the form of interactions with others. For sensitive creative types, interactions can often be draining, but if you pay attention, you’ll find that there are certain types that give you a burst of energy. For me it’s often a simple, low-pressure exchange with a check-out person in a store. It’s brief, usually friendly, just a perfect type of interaction for me. The HBR article suggests practicing expressing appreciation for others, which I think is brilliant. It also points out that we often feel emotionally drained when we feel like victims of circumstance. Learning how to examine our assumptions objectively can help us move past that mindset and reconnect with our personal power.

Mental exhaustion is perhaps the most common type we deal with in our productivity-centered culture. The truth is we just don’t have as much capacity to focus and get stuff done as we think we do. In the course of the day we have one, maybe two 90-minute windows to concentrate on challenging tasks before we’re drained. This is called our ultradian rhythm, and understanding it can be life-changing. I’ll be writing a separate post on this in the near future, but to start working with this rhythm the first thing to understand is that pushing yourself past it results in rapidly depleting energy and quality of work. You can learn to recognize your own ultradian time period by paying attention to when you reach that point where you are having to really force yourself to concentrate. You may hit it sooner or later on any given day. That’s your natural stopping point. Give the task a rest and come back to it later, preferably the next day.

Spirit-sustaining energy is the one we often stumble on the most, and it’s the one most important to creative practice or any activity that’s closely connected to what we would call our heart or soul. When we feel our lives lack purpose and meaning (an extremely common affliction in our culture), we lack this energy and everything else gets harder. But here’s where us creative folks have a leg up: for us, creative practice can give our lives a feeling of purpose and meaning. It really can be that simple. We have a magical energy-generating engine inside of us: our urge to create. Uncovering it and keeping it running through creative practice can permeate all other areas of our lives with clarity and vitality.

If you learn to recognize your energy cues throughout each day, you can gradually make changes that will open up that energetic space you need for your creative work.