This post references a lot of the concepts I've been dancing around with since about Monday, so I guess you’ll have to go back a few articles, you know for the whole picture and continuity.
i don’t know if I have a post in me today, to be honest. i’m always pretty sad when a creative wave crashes, because I wish I could just ride it forever but that’s not how waves work. waves crash, I grew up next to the ocean so I know.
when I get sad that the wave crashed, like waves will always do, I also get a little impatient with myself like I could have kept it going, defying the forces of creative nature. this is a good opportunity to revisit the idea of self compassion that I touched on a few posts ago, and self acceptance. plus when It feels like the writing writes on it’s own (when it’s working), like it’s beyond my control, why would I blame myself for the flowing of ideas to stop if i’m not in control of them in the first place? that would be me being unfair to myself (something I have been known to do) . I have a question: why do I get down on myself if i’m not productive and creative all of the time? it’s societal pressure, for sure but it’s also that very harsh inner critic I have who tells me i’m inherently not good enough or only as good as what i produce and is visible to others (especially in the era of constant content via social media). I want the validation from others for being good at something, and to have people relate to my feelings, and that machine has to be fed constantly. modern society insists that unless you become famous, make money, or ideally both at the same time there isn’t really any tangible value to what you did when the juices were flowing, anyway. the only reason I try to shake a few bucks out of what I can do creatively is because I need it, otherwise that wouldn’t even be part of the equation, and there wouldn't be those little fundraising pieces at the bottom of my articles. Why do we not consider the value of the infinitely pleasant feelings that come with the creative process, to me those are absolutely priceless, I had such a good time writing yesterday and it didn’t take anything but this keyboard clicking away to the music in my headphones. it wasn't financially lucrative, nor did it get that many more clicks than anything else normally would yet it was so rewarding.
this won’t come as surprising to anyone, but as someone with fluctuating moods due to a mood disorder diagnosis, the whole creative process is wrapped up in the mood, too. I was texting my friend something like “uh oh, i’ve felt really good for 4 days in a row, seems suspect”. I was being kind of tongue in cheek, because she has her own personal experiences with both manic and depressive episodes and we have the kind of dialogue where we can poke fun at the difficulties we’ve encountered due to these polar ends of the mood spectrum. for most of the week I had a lot of energy, had a lot to say (ask the people I communicate with how many texts I sent them), some pretty big ideas that might have been a little too big (the book i’m going to self publish, for instance), and maybe a bit of an inflated sense of importance. I have some good news though: my somewhat manic 4 days this week were only 4 days, and they we’rent as destructive as that end of the bi polar coin can be. the other good news is now that I've hit the valley following that peak, the downside isn’t as bleakly depressing, I don’t feel super awful, just not as good as I did feel. I have a suspicion that the mood stabilizers I was put on in the during my last hospital stay, which ended a few weeks ago might be mitigating the harm that these mood swings can inflict on my life, not that i’m a doctor. I want to call this progress, and a positive direction for things to be going in given how bad they were a relatively short time ago.
To bring back a couple recurring things from the past week of what I was typing into this blog. I asked (new Google AI) Gemini (which I've been experimenting with since It was launched at the beginning of the week) with about the ebb and flow of creative inspiration, since I don’t really have the patience and attention span to listen to Rick Rubin’s podcast about the creative process . it returned with the self compassion concept. isn’t Gemini cool for trying to make us humans stop beating ourselves up? it also had the suggestion that I re-frame my thinking, which was the Essence of a lot of the work I did over the past year when I was in treatment. it’d be beneficial to switch the idea of not being productive enough with the concept of recharging the battery of my mind. Gemini must not be American, and definitely not a new Yorker because it said that being in “go mode” all of the time is not realistic and that down time are essential for both mental and creative well-being.
there was a time when I thought a creative slowdown or even stand still was the permanent end of my ability to make stuff that was any good at all. that’s how warped my thinking tends to be like “oh, well that was nice being a writer, too bad I wrote everything i’m ever going to write already”, but as I watched it come back in it’s cycles I learned not to freak out like that. It’s the kind of mind set that had me convinced I was totally washed up at age 24, and some things hadn’t gone my way for a bit. i’m 38, a 24 year old is basically a teenager from where i’m standing, its preposterous that I thought I had seen my best days by the time I was 24, I didn't even start writing until ten years after that. i’m so fucked up I still worry that I peaked in high school, like the time on this planet has a singular peak and it would be so early in the game. peaks and valleys, man. peaks and valleys.
I guess I did have a post in me. would you look at that.
as per usual it’s a great time to mention the karmic benefits of donating to the comfort and quality of life of the person who writes these things that hopefully make you think and even have a chuckle, almost every day… unless he isn’t surfing the wave of creativity and manic energy and giving himself a bit of rest: https://ko-fi.com/evr0ck17
