I’ve been struggling with a counterintuitive experience for the last few years, borne from a mismatch between external expectation and an internal experience.
It was not long ago (just about four or five short years, in fact) that I was told over and over by folks who [felt they] clearly knew better than I that I would have no time for various pursuits, no matter what they might be. My children, forthcoming at the time, were used as an excuse to lift various roles and responsibilities. It was fascinating to watch, actually.
What I found to be the actual case is that I did not truly have less time for pursuits; I had less patience for the pursuits that matter to a small subset of humans.
The truly strange thing is that my productivity didn’t decline, it shifted to something new. It became more external, more creative, but most of all, more explicitly supportive.
This led to a shedding of old processes and patterns, and a deepening of creativity.
I focused less on expansive pontification, and more on finding the essential meaning I wanted to convey. My long-form blog began to dwindle, and my microblogging platforms with greater reach expanded. I focused less on words and more on images. I found diminishing benefit in small festival workshops and more in teaching though different media wherever possible.
By every measure I can imagine, my productive output has increased significantly in the past few years. It resulted greater giving and less fear of the expectations of others. When I reached a bright place where suddenly, after a few years of testing my skills and fine-tuning them, I embraced it, and the result is this Patreon blog.
I don’t know if all parents experience what I did, but I know we all see a change in focus. There’s no time for politics, just production. What you do matters more because the time feels significantly more precious than it did just a few years ago.
All this is to say: the creative turning point in my life was being forced to embrace this new process when I was shut out of my traditional creative roles by people alternatively well-meaning and spiteful, in several areas of my life. And so I thank them all.
Embrace the changes in who you are. They will lead you to bright places you never thought you could see.
