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.

August Prospective 2021: Thoughts on Burnout and Breaks

I’m taking an August holiday - see you back here in September!

Hello Readers! I want to thank you for visiting my blog and reading my essays. I’ve been posting weekly here for a year and a half, and it has been a joy. I plan to continue my regular posts here well into the future. Writing is how I think and learn and have fun.

I’ve decided to institute an annual August holiday from blogging. Mostly this is due to a question that has been on my mind lately: “Can I really continue to post every single week…forever?” And while I have not encountered any serious impediments thus far to doing so (my inspiration has not failed me yet!), this question just won’t leave me be. Surely at some point this will become onerous. Right? I mean, posting every single week can’t be sustainable forever. Right?

I don’t know the answer to that question. But I do know that creative work is my lifeblood, and if it ever stops being fun, that will be a very bad day. And I also know that burnout doesn’t just happen overnight. It’s a cumulative process where we push ourselves a little, then a little more, then a little more… Like a frog in a pot of water being slowly heated to boil (what a horrible metaphor, I hate it, but it aptly describes the circumstances that lead to burnout, I think). By the time we realize we are on our way to burnout, it’s often too late to forestall it.

I don’t ever want that to happen when it comes to my creative work. And lately I’ve been feeling a little tired. Traffic is down on all my platforms - here, my podcast, social media - probably because people are either on their summer holidays (Europe) or getting ready for the school year to start (US). August feels like a good time to take a break, give myself a breather, take my own staycation holiday.

And to begin to prepare myself for the next phase of creative entrepreneurship. Over the next six to eight months, I will be working on turning my creative business into an actual business. That is, launching my first major product and upping my game in market research, networking, and promotion. In addition, I’ll be readying my novel for querying or possible self-publication. It will be a thrilling but nerve-wracking time, and I want to be ready. Because I want to be able to enjoy it. I want it to be a time I remember as life-giving and full of creative joy.

So I will see you all back here in September!

My 2020 Retrospective (Also: I've Launched a Podcast!)

May there be golden flowers and blue skies ahead.

This time last year I was contemplating my single New Year’s goal: start my own creative business. At the time, the sum total of my plans was to make a website where I could feature my writing about…well, I wasn’t totally sure. I just knew I wanted to share what I’ve learned through my struggles with burnout, creative blocks, and being a gentle soul. I spent the first few months of 2020 brainstorming writing topics and how I wanted to present myself, and writing multiple drafts of introductory content. I worked on website design, had my partner take “professional” photos of me in my back yard, started a Twitter account to help me promote my work, and wrote and wrote and wrote. Because my business would be built around a weekly blog post, I wanted to have a good number up before I officially launched.

Like many such launches, it was anticlimactic. For the first months I don’t think anyone other than myself, my sister, and a couple friends visited the site. Even now I don’t get more than a handful of hits a day. But it’s slowly ticking up, and I was prepared to be patient. I knew that if I kept showing up and doing the work, if I was authentic and honest about who I am and what I have to offer, my community would grow. I’m okay with letting it all happen organically, in the way it needs to, because I’m enjoying each step along the way. That’s an essential part of starting your own business, I think. You’ve really got to feel a continual renewal of inspiration in order to keep going when there are few external rewards. Fortunately, I’m well versed in trudging along for years with no outward compensation, monetary or otherwise: I wrote a dissertation. At least with my business I’m amply rewarded internally, with the pride and satisfaction I feel in my work.

So I was happily chugging along with my website, when a problem surfaced. I had a second website, called steppingoffnow.com, that I’d set up several years earlier with plans of making it into a travel blog. That idea didn’t pan out (rather fortunately, seeing how 2020 developed), and so I was stuck with this defunct website and the relatively expensive hosting service I’d contracted with. Then the hosting service auto-renewed for another two years. I have an anxiety disorder, which means I’m susceptible to obsessive worry over certain types of things, and wasting money is one of them. This website with its two-year useless and expensive hosting service contract took over my brain. I could not stop feeling like shit about it, and I could not figure out how to solve the problem. It was a loose end that refused to be tied up, and it was driving me nuts.

The solution to the problem came to me in a flash of inspiration so brilliant it took my breath away. I could start a podcast, call it Stepping Off Now, and this wasted website could be its home! And that, my friends, is how I started a podcast in order to solve my anxiety over a hosting service that auto-renewed. I swear it made perfect sense to my stress-addled brain. It was clearly a brilliant solution, anyone could see.

Actually, I’d been thinking of doing a podcast for some time, and it just all suddenly came together. This is embarrassing to admit, but I constantly talk out loud when I’m home alone (who am I kidding, I’m not that embarrassed about it). I talk about everything: my ideas about life, intellectual puzzles, things I’m learning, opinions I’m forming. A podcast seemed like it would be a great outlet for the part of me that wants to share my thoughts out loud but doesn’t enjoy being in front of crowds. And I figured a podcast might help me find a wider audience for my work. Many people aren’t willing to invest the time to read a blog post, and I totally get that, but they might tune into a podcast on their commute or while they’re doing dishes. I like things that cover multiple bases, and starting my own podcast seemed like a solution to a lot of loose ends in my life.

Like I did with my website, I spent a few months brainstorming Stepping Off Now. Would it be scripted or free talk? What was the ideal episode length? What about cover art? I wanted it to be linked to my writing site, but also have a life of its own. I bought a microphone and started practicing. I tried scripted recording and quickly learned that I dislike it. Plus, creating a new script for each podcast episode would take far more time and effort than I was willing to put in. Free talk suited me better, but learning how to talk in a way that sounds natural, yet is dynamic enough to maintain listeners’ interest, is not easy for a quiet introvert like myself! I practiced by recording myself, listening back, and immediately deleting that content. Over and over. I noticed verbal ticks I could stop doing or edit out, and how my voice changed when what I was talking about really interested me. I tried recording in the mornings, at night, at my desk, sitting in my writing chair, with the microphone on a stand, holding the microphone, with the window blinds up, with them down…. And gradually it all came together. I even launched a month earlier than I’d planned, in time to be writing this end-of-the-year retrospective about it.

This year, 2020, will be one that is indelibly inscribed into all of our souls. The world has changed forever. It weighs heavily, even while I’m excited and grateful about how much I’ve accomplished. I want to thank my readers – and now my listeners! – for the time they invest in reading and listening. Here’s to some better times for all of us in 2021 .

❤️ 🎉 🌻