When you're just not feeling it

I get it. Neither am I, some days — and right now, “some days” feels like “most days” because all days are the same.

The other day (okay, enough with the “day”), I held an Instagram Live conversation with some creative friends as part of my 1-Star Club series. This is my attempt to build momentum for myself, to create a ton of stuff again (this blog included). It’s also a way to feel connected to others who are like-minded and want to create. We talked about this very idea of creating when you’re not feeling it.

(Side note: The name of the series is meant to evoke the vulnerability and criticism you naturally feel or receive as a creator who puts their work out publicly. We don’t stop making stuff in the face of 1-star reviews. We shouldn’t stop making stuff now. Makers make. The world needs your art more than ever.)

Anyway, on most days pre-COVID, we as creators faced a monumental task: push a boulder. That’s what it’s like to create things for a living. Show up, no matter what, and start pushing this-here boulder.

Good luck!

But now, it can feel like the boulder has an army of people pushing back on you. Worse, we aren’t always bringing our full selves to the work. When we feel THIS vulnerable or stressed or scatter-brained, it’s all we can do to just trudge forward, let alone press our palms firmly against that boulder and, with everything we’ve got and everything we are, push.

I don’t have all the answers for what you can do when you’re not feeling it, but here are a few things helping me right now — things I shared with the 1-Star Club.

1) Copy your heroes.

Find what inspires you, analyze it and interrogate it, and use the smaller bits and pieces that make it special in your work, too.

This isn’t to say “copy and stop.” This is all about intent. Mimic your heroes, and continually mold it to who you are. You don’t need to be all that proactive about this. It should happen naturally. For instance, when I first used Anthony Bourdain’s TV show as a model for my podcast, Unthinkable, it only took a few episodes for my desire to experiment to kick in. I’d find little angles and avenues to break away from his style and shape the episode to my own.

Do that enough, and it becomes something original.

Find what inspires you. Figure out WHY it inspires you. And use it.

2) Redefine the purpose of creating.

I used to think making stuff was about sharing what you knew, definitively. “Here’s the answer. Here’s the story. Here’s the fully-baked idea.”

Now I realize: Creating is an act of seeking to understand. By forcing yourself to articulate the idea and investigate it, your act of writing or creating anything becomes more like a public research vehicle than the culmination of that research.

The goal of creating is to find answers, not share them. That should lower the stakes and help you kickstart that boulder rolling. Don’t feel the pressure to be brilliant. Just be curious.

3) “Raid the pantry”

You can call this “empty the notebook” too. Go back to older things you did with confidence — things you liked or others liked, or both — and consume them. What new thoughts or ideas come to mind? Since you’ve changed since that time, how would you tackle that same piece TODAY instead?

Find the things sitting in mental corners or digital corners or, if your art is physical, actual corners. Raid the pantry. Then see what you can do with those existing ingredients.

Whatever you do, don’t stop making. The world needs it. And so do you.

(By the way, the 1-Star Club is not really a club. It’s for anyone that wants to show up, every Tuesday at 1:30pm on my Instagram.)

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