My Creative Journey

So far?

Jul 07, 2024

The proverbial fork in the road. (Image generated with Dall-E).

At first, I was fearful and hesitant.

I had an entire Bible of excuses: “I don’t know where to start,” “who is going to care?,” “What if people think I’m a phony?” I mean, it was all the greatest hits. These excuses became the soundtrack of my hesitations.

I remember hearing this soundtrack get louder when I filled one of those “Where will you be in five years?” journals. There was a page that asked me to list out your dreams “Write a book. Live in a penthouse. Give a TED Talk.”

“I can’t possibly write a book.” Writing books is hard. I had just finished reading One Hundred Years of Solitude around that time. It was written by one of my heroes, the man I dressed up as in fourth grade for one of those cultural events at school. He could write. Me? I could barely keep up. No, that’s not for me.

Fortunately, the soundtrack got dimmer, until you could only hear the hiss of the needle kissing the vinyl of the record player. The silence from the soundtrack arrives in many ways: A traumatic event, a novel experience, a moment of stillness (like a long vacation or sabbatical). For me, it was COVID (of course). I started doing the creative thing I’ve been putting off—writing a book. In an island cabin the weekend that Biden won, I began crafting my book. “It’s an experiment” and “no one will die if I make this” were my mantras. My permission slips.

A few months later, I finished writing The Compass—the book I wish I had when I started working at Boeing many moons ago. Fortunately, writing this book did not invite the four horsemen of the apocalypse to make an appearance. I was buoyed by the discovery that the worst case scenario (being shamed like Quasimodo) was just a nightmare I had been playing in 4K.

I put the book for sale on a Gumroad page. “Name your own price” was the deal. I had conquered the fear of humiliation, but I still hadn’t become the person who didn’t feel sheepish asking people to buy something I made.

Friends and family invested in me. They gave me money for my words. Even that one girl who I hadn’t seen since college graduation named her own price; far more generous than I would have ever expected. “Okay, so maybe this is a thing.”

Other people began noticing the change: “Where are you getting your wings?” Creativity brings levity. The more I started writing, the less adjusted I felt to the world as it is, but more aligned with who I wanted to be.

It was time to invest in my creative practice. I joined Write of Passage. I found other people like me, crazy enough to sit in front of a blank page for hours until something emerged. You have to find your own band of lunatics.

Now, I was grooving. Writing regularly, crafting essays while downing cappuccinos, publishing every couple of weeks, writing those little Twitter threads that you hope people click on: “Click the link for more!” Eventually, people I’ve never met, who didn’t have an agenda other than telling you that they like what you wrote, told me that they liked what I wrote. A total stranger, praising me? What a thrill. It dawned on me that my creative work transcended. It wasn’t just about me.

I kept making things. But now my gaze shifted to metrics. How many hearts did I earn? Who shared what I made? Did anyone complain? Those cheering in the sidelines, always cheering, are muted by my fixation with “the stats.”

Soon enough, a new type of soundtrack starts playing in my mind: “Can you make this better?” “Why are you not getting more fans?” “Is this the limit of your talent?” I steadied myself and attempted to keep writing. But now I’ve invited Camelo, quality control manager for Camilo, Inc., into the boardroom of my mind. He wears a hard hat and a musketeer mustache. Implacable and surly. And he tells me that the next thing I write has to be better than the previous one, and so on and so forth.

Now, I feel like a pole vaulter given a crossbar labeled “better” to clear. The problem is that with every glance it gets higher and higher, until I have to squint to see it. I could go for it, but it seems more likely that I will flounder and fail, the pole vault striking my groin in an oh-so-not-grateful descent.

I’m paralyzed.

The writing stopped being fun. There are stakes now, you see; this is what I could do for a living. But very few make a living writing. Decent won’t cut it. I have to be exceptional. Then, I thought about all the artists and creatives that I think are exceptional: Matisse, Baldwin, Benedetti, Morrison, Kahlo, and Woolf. They are one-of-a-kind. Their singularity earned them their legacy. And I finally admit to myself that I want that. To become timeless, have my work exceed my existence and be brought up in times far distant. But oh wow, the gap is so big, and here I am wallowing and not writing the next thing.

“Writing is an act of ego, and you might as well admit it. Use its energy to keep yourself going.” - William Zinsser

This is my new mantra now: Embrace duality.

Creative work indulges the self, but it also indulges the ego. The self is my essence; that part of me that will casually re-read something I wrote and smile. It’s unburdened by any expectations or desires. The ego is the part that wants something to come from my writing: Money, respect, notoriety. I want these to varying degrees. Except fame, that one you can keep—I like going to a coffee shop and just be me.

My creative journey now nudges me to return to the beginning. Beginner’s bliss. It’s all flow state—a timeless place where I’m in the zone, I’m doing the thing for the sake of doing it, removed from any utility or assessment of worth, while accepting that the present work is true to me, and others will judge it, and because they judge it, so will I.

This is the creative journey. You sail stormy seas, but you know that it is only by looking up at the sky and seeing your North Star that you’ll be able to traverse without sinking.