I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Wednesday Writing, I consider my writing practice and skills and how to improve upon them.
I love to write here every morning. I get to write about whatever I want, subject only to the category of the day. And, to make it even easier, I’ve added categories for almost every day that allow me to write about whatever I like. For example, I added Monday Musings alongside Monday Marketing when I arrived at one Monday without any motivation to write about marketing.
Oliver Burkeman writes of the importance of following your interests:
When you’re procrastinating on a project, wondering why your outwardly successful career doesn’t feel as vibrant as it could, or feeling stuck on a difficult life-choice, it’s worth asking if you’ve forgotten the importance of building your days, as far as you’re able around what actually interests you.
This is what I wanted to hear (or rather read) this morning, as I’m having trouble getting myself to write about anything that I’m not extremely interested in.
Whether it’s writing or painting, I find myself incapable of working on projects that don’t grip me.
On Day 11, I wrote When Authenticity and Niche Conflict, about how my chosen niche (then – personal finance for Gen X) wasn’t inspiring me. In it, I shared Martha Beck’s distinction between interest curiosity – the sense of wanting to know – and deprivation curiosity, needing to know to achieve some sort of security.
I’m writing and painting strictly out of interest curiosity these days. It means that I pretty regularly put down a creative project while it still needs more work to achieve completion. But I feel confident I will spiral back to it when it’s time.
I am fortunate that my financial and living situation allow me to do this, but part of why I can is that I’ve set down my ambitions around working in a corporate technology job. It was hard to let go of the prestige, the stock options, the paycheck, the feeling like I was somehow important in the world in a way that I’m not now. Not everyone is willing to let go like I was. Maybe I should celebrate this aspect of myself, that I loosened the grip of the burnout society on my psyche.
I’m clearly grappling over and over again with this exact issue in this 1000-day project: create and do what I want, or explicitly aim at making money again? As I search through my archives using terms like motivation or authenticity, I find many posts pondering these questions: Should I aim my creative work at income-producing, career-launching possibilities? Or shall I just create what I want, what I feel compelled to bring into the world each day?
On Day 151, I wrote Ignoring Metrics, Avoiding Monetization, in which I shared author Austin Kleon’s advice that paying too much attention to metrics (and money) can corrupt your creative practice.
He suggests you:
- Leave money on the table
- Forget to take things to the next level, and
- Let the low-hanging fruit fall off and rot.
In that post I shared how I planned to give art as gifts for Christmas. For the past couple weeks, I’ve been working every day on pet portraits and more. This has rekindled my interest in and love of painting, something I feared I lost when I paused on my Things Men Gave Me paintings a couple months ago.
I feel joy every day, blogging here and then working on paintings that are intended only to bring me joy in creation and bring my loved ones joy on Christmas (and in the future, I hope, if they decide to hang the paintings up on their walls).
Working out of interest rather than deprivation doesn’t mean you won’t see monetary and attentional rewards.
Burkeman writes:
This isn’t to say that success or money or influence or happiness won’t follow. I think they often do, because other people sense the aliveness in your pursuit of what interests you, and they respond to it. So there’s an asymmetry here: trying to pursue what others might deem interesting or impressive doesn’t seem to lead to feeling interested in it yourself; but pursuing what interests you does seem to evoke the interest of others.
I found this in the 2000s, when I started blogging, first about motherhood and later about technology. I did it because I loved it. But my tech blog attracted the notice of someone running a technology website, and he hired me as a writer and editor. Then my work on that blog network led to a book contract.
The book was a flop – I wasn’t proud of it and didn’t promote it – I wrote it out of deprivation (and because I had a book contract) not out of true interest. Still, that shows you that contributing your creative work to the world based on interest can lead to income and an audience.
Today and going forward I’m creating based on these four principles:
- Follow my curiosity wherever it leads
- Create what I want to create, not what I think other people will want (or pay for)
- Respect my creative rhythms, as cyclical and wavelike as they are
- Trust in the universe to support me, inspire me, and channel love through me
What do I mean by channeling love? I’m not entirely sure, but I’m thinking that maybe creative love is something that can stand alongside the kind of love directed at other creatures. That a life devoted to creative and creature love is the highest purpose one could pursue.