I was texting with my lovely friend and fellow creator Jordan earlier this week, and we ended up discussing how we’ve both been feeling weighed down by creative pressure lately, and how the threat of burnout also seems to loom closer than usual.
As we enter our second year of a global pandemic, it’s understandable — life still hasn’t gone back to normal, we’re missing out on huge life experiences, and we can’t cope with the stress like we want or need to.
And as an added bonus, we keep hearing things like, “Shakespeare wrote ‘King Lear’ during a plague,” and many of us can’t shake the feeling that we “should” be doing so much more creative work during all of this “downtime”.
Jordan captured the feeling really well in one of her texts: “I feel like there’s also still this… weird unreasonable internal pressure to prove I’m okay? That I’m thriving and I can do this, and be on my own, and create some great creative work in this endless expanse of time, that I can achieve stuff no matter the outside circumstances.”
But… we’re artists. We are by nature intuitive, sensitive, empathetic beings who (at least in my own experience) are deeply affected by the world around us. And on top of that, we somehow feel like we need to prove that we’re not. That we’re somehow impervious. Bulletproof.
Jordan and I have basically, over the past year, been taking turns reassuring each other that it’s okay to simply survive right now — that neither of us needs to create some kind of genius, pandemic-fueled masterpiece on top of it all. But… I don’t think either of us really believes it.
We desperately want this pandemic to be our time of “King Lear”. We want to think that we’re keeping up with the rest of the creators, who must be making the most out of their “downtime” and not just surviving… right?
But is that anything more than an assumption?
There’s a lot going on here with regards to expectation, comparison, and truth. But what I want to share with you today is the knowledge that you are not alone. I see you struggling, comparing yourself, doubting yourself, and making assumptions that everyone else’s creative work is hitting new heights of genius while yours falls flat on its face.
We’re all doing the best we can with what we have right now. And if you’re doing the best you can with what you have right now, that is enough.
Words & warmth,
Sarah