From Group Guilt to Creativity as Care
A few Sundays ago, I promised my creators’ accountability support group that I’d finish the first draft of a blog post. This was supposed to be about:
- Why I wanted peer pressure to meet my writing and creative goals
- How that led to the idea and emergence of a creators’ accountability support group aka the Writing Cult turned Creating Crew (we changed the name to be more inclusive!)
- What I learned from our first few meetings — about perfectionism, writer’s block, and more
BUT… I missed the meeting which was to be my due date, which gave me the convenient excuse to avoid having to confess I didn’t meet my goal. It also allowed me to further reflect on:
- What felt like inevitable disappointment and shame, which I somewhat intentionally designed (!!) because I knew was an obliger, far more inclined to be accountable to others than myself
- My attachment to productivity culture, associating self-worth with output and efficiency; and the incessant productivity shame from feeling like I’m never doing enough
- And what sometimes feels like this oppressive construct of time, when considered a scarce, limited resource, in contrast to the deep creative flow that is often the source of joyful, resonant, timeless creativity.
Let’s start with shame. I’m feeling it now, as I write this several weeks later than I had promised it’d be complete. Hands clammy, heat in my face, I can feel the embodied sense of mortification arising. I’m worried that you, dear reader, will judge me for this deep-seated belief that I’m an unworthy human being who will never be ‘successful’ because I lack the discipline to Do What I Said I Would Do.
There were times when I thought this shame was actually a driver. It was only after several therapy sessions did I learn that the negative self-talk which cultivated weird inner fear and chastisement wasn’t really a healthy motivator… A part of me suspects this is what I subconsciously wanted when we started this group. That the subtle fear of judgment would light a fire under my ass, to work on the innumerable personal projects which never saw the light of day, because work and other things I was ‘externally accountable’ to always took priority.
And while the inner shame remains, when I revealed my “failure” to the group, I was met with nothing but compassion, support, and incredibly helpful advice and insight. We discussed as a group, that we didn’t want people to feel guilty or pressured, but aspired to be a community supporting each other’s goals — goals that were achievable (like Michael’s suggestion to write for 10 minutes!), and iterative, to accommodate for when life and other things got in the way.
Finding Fun and Flow
During one particular weekly update, I noticed that several people mentioned they pivoted when they felt it was no longer fun — changing direction, topic, or even throwing out the whole project entirely because the process had become somewhat painful.
This brought up memories of my own excruciating thesis experience (which I suspect was so difficult because the research topic wasn’t fully my choice). But it also reminded me that prior to being trained to write in the explicit, cold, lifeless style of academia, I spent years as a child writing short stories, poems, and musical lyrics — which often felt like they were pulled out of me, as opposed to forcibly produced through some anxiety-fuelled word-vomit — and real vomit too, when I once took “write drunk, edit sober” a bit too literally!.
In an attempt to design for accountability and productivity, I had completely forgotten that these writing and creative projects weren’t just tasks to be completed, but meant to be enjoyed. That we could get into creative flow — an immersive, fully in the moment state, where creating feels effortlessly productive, deeply fulfilling, and timeless.
The Bliss of Losing Track of Time
But this aspiration for some euphoric timelessness feels at odds with everything I’ve been taught in this western, capitalist world — that time is a linear, limited, scarce commodity — to be measured and carefully managed. That the value of me as a worker and human being (or perhaps more accurately, a human doing) is my output and efficiency. In my privileged, remote-work situation, I subconsciously re-interpreted the luxury of “more time” to suggest that I needed to ‘spend’ every minute of it wisely, or ‘effectively’.
Most days, my partner and I wake up and plan our days, so that our respective schedules can be synced for breaks, meditations, and the occasional walk. One weekend, we scheduled a ‘life planning’ session — to deeply reflect on big life questions like where we wanted to be in the next year, five, twenty? Did we want to have kids? Where do we want to live? What are our dreams and goals? How are we going to accomplish them, and by when? I loved questions and reflections like this. I thought it was important to dream, then turn those into actionable goals and due dates. As they say “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”
But that weekend, we spent most of the day in bed, having long, sometimes difficult conversations, amidst loving cuddles, drifting in and out of sleep. My partner sleepily remarked, “This must be how birds feel, sleeping in their nest, or puppies cozying up to each other, not knowing what time it is or what they’re doing next.”
It was the first time, in a long long time, that I had lost track of time. It was so liberating, I didn’t even want to know.
Rest as Resistance, Creativity as Care
As excited as I was that this creative crew accountability group could help push me to publish a new blog every week, I’m realising now that what I’m really craving is some creative inspiration, and also, some REST from doing The Things I Have To Do.
The best grassroots activists I know who work tirelessly to address the cracks of broken systems are always reminding us of the importance of rest as resistance. That we need to care for ourselves, and each other, in order to sustain and build new worlds — especially in the shell of a fractured one which still largely insists our livelihoods ought to be correlated with the value we produce for The Economy.
Personally, I’m hoping to rethink my own participation with the Creating Crew as one of creative resistance for self and collective care, where I can more consciously and mindfully detach from my “responsibilities”, and connect with the parts of myself (and others!) that want to be shared with no expectations, in that space of creative, resonant, joyful flow. And as Bill beautifully suggested, I hope to reframe these as gifts:
“…instead of “I’m guilted into being productive otherwise I have nothing to show” I like to approach it from the perspective of “I am working on a wonderful gift for my friends and it would be great if I can give it to them by the next meeting — if it’s not ready then I don’t want to give a half-hearted gift, I can try again next week to give my gift later”.
Either way it is coming from the perspective of adding joy to people instead of “making up” for an imagined disappointment.” — Bill, Co-founder, Steward of Creating Crew!
Well friends, here is my whole-hearted, belated gift — for you and myself!
Thanks to Creative Crew members & editors Sibi, Bill, Michael, Tara, Amy, and Manny for co-creating this gift!
And thanks to you for reading! :)
