I’m blocked. Not down there ya dirty bastard.
Creative blocks are not fun. Somehow you have to learn to push through. Thus, I am pushing myself to continue writing today even though every time I try to think of….anything I stop in front of a blank, white wall of mediocrity. In my head I visualize this as akin to walking the halls of the Lumen corporation in the early days of Severance season 1 when we had not the foggiest idea what was happening.
Me inside my head right now.
I had a thought. The ‘not creating space’ is a more unspeakably unbearable place to find oneself in than the place of ‘struggling to create but doing it anyway’. Even though sometimes the act of putting stuff out in the world can be shiver me timbers uncomfortable as all get out on the vulnerability spectrum. Each time I offer up the little slivers of my interior to the world and all my beloveds I cross a precipice of fear and inferiority.
It’s funny that when we feel stuck for how to move forward into something we know gives us life, instead of rooting down into ourselves we run to the externally, eternally sunken place of C O M P A R I S O N. Thievery is the name of the game, that is in how we allow other people and their things to make our own lives less than. Ever present in the back of my mind when I face my own daily battle with measuring all of me against the highly specific and carefully curated public representations of other people is the quote, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” This is correct however, it does not make it any easier to believe in our truest selves. The real question is at what point did we come to this place where we are all actively participating in a ‘who has the most valuable life’ measuring contest? Why are we handing over our happiness in droves to this maddening culture shift towards selling us a quick fix to marketable conception of a well lived life versus allowing us to actually just live and figure it out as we go along?
Feeling stuck is not helped by turning to the work of people who you admire and wishing you could be (like) them as you greedily consume morsels of their own creative production. Or their looks, or their lives or where they live, or really anything that we find ourselves envying. There is a fine line between seeking inspiration and a kinship, and sitting scroll reading their stuff and thinking “wow they write so much better than me why should I even bother when they addressed this very idea to a wider audience with cuter metaphors and memes peppered throughout?”
When we give up because someone has already done it better than us we are choosing not to live and lean into our own personal deep joy. Instead we are saying to others there is no point in trying, success and meaning comes only to those who already have arrived or possess the thing we want.
It is no secret that I have found the transition into motherhood more than challenging and have lost a sense of self in the process. One of the big contributors is attempting to not only grow as an adult with a viable sense of my own purpose in a world that is coming apart at the seams, but also through trying to raise a human child under what equivocates to a searing magnifying glass of epic proportions. We cannot live without demonstrating how we are living and if we try to learn along the way we are handed no room for growth, failure, questioning and anything short of greatness. After living in a country obsessed with the concept of ‘being great’ for nearly a decade I can deduce two things. One is that the goal posts for success will always be moving ahead of us as society continues down it’s own path of endless progress and reinvention and our role as citizens changes in response to that. The other is that it is not a bad thing to want to be great, to feel powerful and confident in your choices, but that greatness without grace is simply perfectionism.
Just a little proud baby me picture, showing off my artwork on display in the South Bend Museum of Art Indiana back in 2022. Creative success can wax and wane over the years and look different as it evolves, as do we.
I am certainly not immune to the attractive force of trying to be and do it all. The wonderful world wide web spinner and it’s illustrious offspring-baby social media spider pack-have a maHOOsive part to play in adding to our inability to just be at ease with existence. They weaponise our existence against ourselves so we are on an unceasing treadmill of ‘not good enough but also too much’ thoughts.
Hi Ned, here is your starter pack for humaning in today’s world. If you are not trying to make a profit off of your production, then you should be trying to master a new skill and find the right career path to ensure you can buy the best life for you in this economy. But also wellness is key and in order to be the healthiest you, buy all the clothes and products and clean snacks and things that soothe you because SELF-CARE and make sure everyone sees it in some capacity or at least talk about it a bunch or it didn’t happen. Don’t forget it’s important to find a justification for why you have always felt like you don’t fit in the world, so probably how about we search for some kind of self-diagnosis to your personality ‘issues’ so you can buy a bunch more things to fix that. Then you can influence others to do the same and hey you can make money off of that! Oopsie poopsie you are distracted now and can’t look deeper into the why of the world of not-rightness that you exist in. Simply blame your own brain and/or body for being abnormal. Whatever that is heh heh heh. You are the fucked up one not the world. Let’s do a quick scroll of the socials to make sure you are on track. Oh and you are a bad mother and your daughter hates you and you have to make a zillion decisions to raise a human with zippo in the experience department. Ok byyyyeeeeee. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more.
I love to share written work by people I admire and am impressed by but I confess I do so within the realm of jealousy and perception of my own inadequacy. This is my battle, yours may be different just as the creative spark in you may be wholly different to the spark in me. Creative work is essential work even when there is a lot of flailing about. We will get messy but we will be ok with the flaws because meaning is found in the process. It is about birthing parts of ourselves that both belong to us alone and tether us to this greater human community around us. The important stuff is the stuff that counters the voices and external forces that want us small, distracted, shallow and turning to consumption rather than contemplation to manage our stories and scars.
“Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.”