It's OK to be a Slow Creative (Is It?)

I woke up at 5 am this morning to meditate and exercise. I then helped my wife head out for work and prepared breakfast for my son. I aim to be ready to work by 7 am, though the summer hours have shifted a bit since my son is on vacation. That gives me two full hours before my 9 to 5 as an audio post-production engineer, to build and write. I think it's important to be transparent and help put things into perspective. The artist development work that I do on the daily is achieved on very part-time hours.

Could I be doing this full-time? Possibly, but life currently has me here at this present pace. It's a pace that I'm learning to cherish and find value in. The only reason I ever pursued audio engineering straight out of high school is because of my deep love for music. All I wanted to do was listen to music all day and dive into the history of it. At that time, being an audio engineer was the only way I knew how to achieve both things. Only later would I discover the business end of the music we all love.

There's a constant push and pull between these contrived mechanisms of copywriting, of industry, of selling, and the desire to simply write the things that come naturally to me. The problem with this is very obvious, but there is an underlying issue which begins to suffocate and cut off my creativity.

Almost every day I wake up and I know that I've reserved a piece of my day to post and connect online. At least twice a week, I'm posting something original. The rest of the week, I'm engaging with others and commenting. Has this worked? In some ways, yes. I've grown my online community, I've connected with some very interesting people, I've expanded my mind and grown in valuable knowledge.

Yet, there is this insistent push to engage and create at a pace that feels misaligned with the rhythm of my life. I'm not naturally attracted to social media, and therefore it's difficult to find a space within it that feels comfortable. It always feels like I'm going too slow, like I'm not doing enough, because there is a constantly changing reference point that is slightly unattainable. At this very moment I'm thinking about the online post that I am not writing, just so I could have the time to write this newsletter. Nutty, I know!

All of this eats away at me when I'm not looking. It eats up my best ideas. It snacks on my courage. It puts my most original methods deep in its pocket for a late midnight snack. All of a sudden, I'm in a constant loop of painstakingly filtering my perspective through these industry contraptions, then feeling like the output is not enough, which feeds into a sense of inadequacy, that then morphs the perspective from which I'm speaking from.

I want to tell more stories of my own and of others, but I also want to understand why I am doing this in the first place. I want to believe that it is OK to be a slow creative, and that our success is not only determined by financial markers or vanity metrics. Mostly though, I want this newsletter to contribute to the actual life that I want to lead. I want it to be embedded as an artifact that reflects what is really important to me. I want it to feel like a safe space for other creatives also feeling the weight of this instant world that is rushing past us.

All of this to say that I feel a change coming upon me, and this directly influences the message I'm trying to share. You may catch less of my social posts, even though I'll still be engaging with others online. As much as this action may or may not hurt my online presence, I'm doing it so that I can get a grip on my own method of creation and the message I'd like to share. I'm bursting with ideas, but I'm trying to fit them into an online paradigm that feels awkward. Once I bridge that gap, then it'll be smooth sailing once again.

This time it's a short edition of the newsletter! I only felt it important to share this message, but I'll be back in your inbox sooner than you think. Until then, I'll also be exploring ways to share my work without depending so much on social media platforms and algorithms. Just to be clear, this isn't an anti-Internet, anti-social media, anti-AI message, I understand the value in each. It's about understanding that I am the one in control of the tools, not the other way around. We'll see... maybe in a couple of months I'll find myself right back in this same place. 😁

Lots to think about and create... Hasta la proxima!