how to fall in love with the process

on creativity

Happy Sunday, folks.

This is something I've been thinking about for a long time, probably since I quit my corporate job to do an amalgam of writing things, the things being the newsletter, fiction, an occasional bit of poetry, some video content when I feel compelled to flip my camera and allow my face to be judged by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of strangers.¹

It was difficult, at first, to organize my days without the structure of a more traditional job. No one, after all, was tracking my progress. No one except myself. And I really, really hate checking my metrics—inherently fluctuating numbers that I can’t help but pathologize in some way. It is cumbersome to measure one’s own progress, a famously long-term affair, with any sort of regularity or objectivity.

Humbling, too, which is a term we pretend is nice but often feels like shit.

So I mostly just keep writing. Take in little clues when I can. Set my alarm for the early morning. Pencil “interesting SYNTAX” on the margins of my favorite books, the ones I read over and over again like they’re lectures on the fundamentals. Organize my desk. Print and re-read my writing, red pen in hand as I prepare to kill my little darlings.

All of which is, I suppose, work.

*

In the West and especially in America, I think we necessarily romanticize idleness and leisure because if we did not, we'd have to pretend it is normal to dedicate all our time to revenue-making productivity (usually, our productivity for another’s profit). We've created a strict demarcation between work and leisure, because the former is usually for others, while the latter, a reprieve from the former, is strictly for ourselves.

The calculus is a bit different when you (a) work for yourself and/or (b) are pursuing creative endeavors.

My dad took this picture of me when he visited a few weeks ago.

Not that I don’t think leisure time isn’t vital—but do we focus too much on merely having it, as opposed to what we do with it? Is free time the whole ball game, or should we be more intentional about what we fill it with? Maybe it's a distinction without a difference; I just know that I like keeping busy. It’s not even about productivity or output; to me, it feels more restful to go on a two-hour walk than to spend that same amount of time scrolling.

I’ve written about the beauty of effort before.

The (I'm sorry) anti-intellectualism of it all hurts, because there are few things more rewarding than dedicating time to something you love and in so doing becoming better at it. And yes, as time is a finite resource, there is an opportunity cost involved. I thought that was a given for anything of value.

I’ll try not to repeat myself. For now, I guess I’ll say I believe in the process of creativity more than I believe in its isolated eureka instances. One feeds the other. One is necessary—the other is nice.