i hate to admit you were right about the process thing

i had an epiphany while recording a whatsapp voice note

you guys. you guys. YOU GUYS.

wait, hold my coffee mug for a second, real quick.

*runs to the other side of the living room, opens the door to the balcony and screams:*

EVERYBODY SHUT UP AND LISTEN, I’VE GOT SOMETHING TO SAAAAAAAY!!!!

*comes back panting*

okay, i’m good. you good? good. we’re good. i know, i’m hyper excited, but i just understood something about writing and creativity and life and i need to share it with you. omg, i’m jumping on my feet. are you ready? ARE YOU READY?

here it goes.

no, wait, hold my hand.

ok, now we’re ready:

i know.

I KNOW.

i’m just as surprised as you. of course i’ve heard that before. who hasn’t? and i mean, i thought i knew, but now i know know, you know? i just want to sit on my office chair staring blankly at a window like bella swan in new moon and run the streets of the city screaming I’M FREE! like this guy at the same time.

right? right? you feel it too?

I KNOW.

ok, let’s calm down for a second. we are all adults here.

also, let me take it back a notch and explain what i mean. i swear we’ll be on the same page afterwards.

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how did i get here?

i’ve been thinking a lot about my life lately. you must have realized this by the hundreds of words i’ve written in the last couple of months. i even joked with my therapist that maybe the mid-life crisis was catching up to me.

and maybe it really is.

but the point is: after long talks with many people i love dearly, i realized that i’m unhappy with my life. most importantly, i’m unhappy with my work. i’ve prided myself from knowing early on that writing was my vocation.

and, yes, i cry every time i watch this liz gilbert explanation on the difference between vocation, career, job and hobby, because i feel exactly like she does. if i was ever stranded in the middle of the woods somewhere, without internet or contact with other people, i’d still write. that’s how much i love it.

however - and this has been on my mind for a while too -, i’ve been struggling to understand why it is so hard for me to succeed as a writer. and i’m not even talking about the holy grail of writing (books, that is) because i know those processes are long. i’m in the middle of one myself. but i struggle as someone who enjoys writing in all its forms.

long essays. instagram captions. funky carousels. newsletters. articles published in traditional media.

and even though i can confidently say i had a successful career as a journalist back home, i cannot say it was creatively successful. and the means in which i allowed myself to explore creativity never blossomed.

i mean, i’m stuck in the exact same social media number of followers for about 5 years. that has got to be a record of some sort.

and this week, it hit me. i took long walks to reflect. i journaled about it. i talked extensively with my friends about it and had a real-time epiphany while recording a whatsapp voice note.

since i’ve been oversharing on this newsletter from the very beginning, let me tell you something else. i’ve been working from an early age. as in 13, early age. the whys are long and full of details that don’t really matter to the story, but because i had to start working super early and worrying about money became my default setting, every part of my creative process was pushed aside so i could be the family provider i needed to be.

most of my adolescence and young adult life were spent between me wanting to do things i was really passionate about and making enough money to pay for my brother’s monthly college tuition or that week’s groceries.

when survival screams, creativity steps aside so you can attend to more pressing needs.

i just didn’t realize i never took survival by the collar and said ‘hey, we’re done with that, take a chill pill.’ being the provider for my family and then providing for myself became such an intrinsic part of who i was that everything got tainted with the need for monetary results.

the high performance mentality cut deep and i cried more than once because my numbers on social weren’t good, people that started after me were growing way more than i ever did in years, that no matter how hard i worked i never got what i wanted.

i mean, i even said i felt invisible, remember?

all the reflection gave me a headache, but when the dust settled it was clear to me what was missing.

i need to fall in love with the process again.

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and where should i go next?

if you ask me what i believe creativity is (and let’s say you did), this is what i’d say:

creativity is connection with yourself, your surroundings, and others.

i truly believe that, in my core. however, i’m also a hypocrite (it’s ok, most of us are). because i was today years old when i realized i didn’t act on my own beliefs.

truth is, while discussing this with a friend, i understood that, as writers and content creators, we have two sides to us: the entrepreneurial and the creative. for us to succeed in the system we live in today, they have to, somehow, work in balance.

my sides, let’s call them dwight and jim, merely for educational purposes, are definitely not balanced. dwight is a controlling bastard that likes everything in order and to make money, he wants to grow in figures, not in happiness, and he needs it now. he hates instability, hates change and, above all else, dreads making mistakes.

jim, on the other hand, likes to take his time with things, is patient and ingenious. it might take him weeks, even months, to create something. but at the same time, he doesn’t really mind making mistakes and doing the same thing a hundred different ways to achieve his goal.

as you might guess, jim and dwight don’t work that well together. on the surface level, they hate each other and want to make the other miserable. but, looking a little deeper, we might just find out that they don’t know how to communicate that well and actually have some level of respect for the other.

and, turns out, dunder mifflin needs them both.

the thing is, dwight’s little power syndrome made his ego insufferable. he believes he knows best. he has to have the final say and he won’t stand for impertinence. even though he knows he’s miserable deep down. he cut jim’s efforts for so long and so hard that jim can now only find the smallest windows to explore his fun side.

i might have lost the plot a little bit there, but maybe you got the point?

i don’t think dwight and jim will agree on everything 100% of the time. but each side has its upsides and its downsides. they have to learn how to work together and when one needs to give the floor to the other.

basically, the survival and result-thirsty side has spoken aloud for too long. and even though, as a writer, i feel pretty confident in my voice, my creative side is atrophied. and the joy my kid-version had for doing creative things is lost.

so it makes sense, whenever i feel the hit and the anger of not working fully with creativity, and how much it pains me when corporate canada says i need to use ai to ‘optimize’ my workflows. i’m caught in a cat fight with no claws to defend myself.

in the world of full-time productivity and performance-above-all-else culture, it’s easy to believe there’s no in-between when it comes to success and the arts. i mean, we’ve all heard the stories that artists starve and are undervalued.

and, unfortunately, the system reserves no time for contemplation. very few people can actually do the ‘i quit everything to pursue my dreams’ without waking up in a panic because they have no money left to pay the bills. few have the courage, too.

so while i can’t quit my 9-5 just yet and i’m thankful for what it provides me, i’ll have to slowly fall in love with the process of creating again. i have no clear idea of how to do that, but here’s a list of things i noticed after having my epiphany:

1. rushing kills joy. i was assembling some lego the other night and noticed that i was rushing because i really needed to get that part done for some reason. and i know, from watching friends doing the same, that assembling is part of the fun of those things. so i had to take a breath and intentionally slow down.

2. lack of planning makes it harder to enjoy creating. unfortunately, i’m very guilty of this. i used to believe planning too much drowned creativity, but i now understand that the planning phase can actually take the pressure off the process of creating and allows me to better mature ideas. meaning: if i know what i want to create in terms of writing or content, it’s easier to set everything up and it allows my creative mind to shine.

3. some things take time, others don’t. and knowing the difference matters. sometimes, an essay will take days to come to life. but a social post doesn’t need to take that long to be produced. so accommodating that seems like a good path to follow.

4. studying the lessons learned matters most of all. and it is key, i believe. but while creating, i noticed i hardly ever took notice of the great things i was learning about writing and myself in the process. what i liked, didn’t like, what worked for me, where i did great and areas of improvement… i just measured results and not what i gained with creating. it made me feel hollow and drained because i was giving away everything i had and measuring my value in numbers, when i should be measuring it in how much i evolved in my craft.

these are just some primary findings, as i’m sure i’ll learn much more about this in the coming weeks (i’m planning on that at least). but i feel something shifting and maybe that’s creativity waking up again. but it feels important to do this now, learning to love the process.

better late than never, right?

anyway, thanks for holding my coffee (and my hand). i said what i needed to say. you can go back to your day now.

(but maybe not as the same person as when we started talking.)

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that's it for today.

take care,

maki.