giving up on prestige & stability to unblock your best work

Author's Note: I'm in the process of writing my first book on how to build and sustain a creative life. This post may be the basis for one section of the book. If you're compelled, engage with it - tell me your stories, share your experiences, let me know where and how this resonates with you. And thanks for letting me share my process, Wellers. Lots of advanced love to you for your generosity. A constant and colorful narrative has been playing in my head as of late. I look around at the world and imagine alternate realities of my life. I imagine having money, not lots of it, but enough that booking a vacation wouldn’t feel like taking out a second mortgage (not that I know what having a first mortgage feels like). I imagine having a normal work schedule. I imagine knowing that one day I’ll have a retirement savings. It all looks and feels so stable from my vantage point. It looks grown up. It looks grounded.

And then I look around at my life - our little rental apartment in Queens, my MacBook Pro from 2007 without a battery because I can’t afford a new battery or a new computer, my bank accounts where I need to constantly shuffle around money to pay the bills on time and I see my reality. It’s very much an artist’s life. It’s feels inconsistent, incoherent, untamed. It has all the trimmings of uncertainty and hand-me-downs that you’d expect of someone disregarding financial stability to favor the pursuit of passion.

Which makes it tricky when you lose your passion. I haven't loved acting as much lately. Let me be clearer: I haven't loved the business of acting as much lately. In her play The Understudy, Theresa Rebeck writes, “Being an actor is great. When you get to do it.” This is Truth. But we don’t always tell the truth about what happens to us when we don't get to do it. The times we don’t get to create. The times we feel oh so very trapped in a system that doesn’t seem to have room for us. These are the moments it feels like the artist’s life we're living is merely a facade because we are not actually engaged in the point of leading an artist’s life: making the art. We are ideas of identity. We are casings around the gap between wanting and doing.

This is maybe the biggest question of your career. Not only for actors, of course, but for anyone who feels they have a calling they must follow come hell or high water. Because when hell and high water inevitably show up at your door, this big question has to be answered: Do I love this enough? Is this worth it?

I have been asking myself this question for a hot minute now and I think, for me, it’s come down to this: if you choose to really live an artist’s life, one with magic and power and agency in it, you no longer have time to care about stability. Would it be nice to have? Of course. Is it worth chasing anymore? Hell to the no.

The pursuit of stability is unquestionably linked to the pursuit of prestige. For me, I actively pursued prestige by looking to anyone who would cover my insecurity with good reviews, compliments and buoyant optimism. I wanted so badly for everyone else to tell me how it would all turn out well so that I could easily and comfortably make my way from gig to gig knowing that I was always inching closer to “making it.” [Sidenote: Let me know when you figure out what “it” is.] The problem with that is that when you base your entire trajectory on grabbing prestige and stability as fast as possible, you blind yourself to what makes you shine. You’re looking to fill the market’s demands, not your soul’s. Your strengths and nuances get drowned out by the big, bad roar of SUCCESS. The one thing that actually could create stability for you - an authenticity in your work - is the one thing you’ve given up.

I lost my passion for the work because I put my passion into ambition. I have been chasing a finish line for years because the rest of the world agreed this finish line was the best possible outcome - as stable as it could ever get. So if I’m utterly honest with myself (painful though it may be), all of those years, it was never about the work. It was about being the best. And we all know what kind of work shows up when we are focused on “what they’ll think” instead of what we know. Stale, meaningless, blank, boring work.

It makes sense that we crave the stability we think success will bring. We think we live in a world of finite things. We look around and see buildings, structures, order. But that's not the nature of the world. The nature of the world is uncertain, ever-changing, chaotic. The butterfly effect and all that. What we see in the world as finite is merely a representation of the human search for order. But that yearning comes from our mind - not our nature. Our real nature reflects chaos and change; as Walt Whitman wrote in Song of Myself:

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Our very nature is to contain multitudes and so should our art. It's in our nature to be thrown off, unbalanced, unhinged. So it stands to reason if our art is going to compel the world in any meaningful way, then it must contain a recognizable reflection of those natural  multitudes. And so, if our art (and artist's life) does not obey the laws of our very nature, we are automatically sacrificing its power and falling short.

If I’m going to be living the aforementioned artist’s life of living paycheck to paycheck, then I better be making more than stale, meaningless, blank, boring work. Not everything I touch will be gold, and I’ll surely look back in a few years at the work I’m doing today and cringe, but at least I will have pursued the glory of the work itself - not my attachment to it, not my benefit from it, and certainly not any prestige or stability it might bring.

Even if the paycheck, the award, the stacked resume do show up, they will never generate enough satisfaction if you’re not doing your best work. Nothing can cover up shortcomings. Nothing can cover up regret. Letting your best work out of you day after day, despite crappy circumstances, despite instability, despite daydreaming of alternate realities is the direct route to reigniting your passion, remembering why you committed in the first place and playing for keeps. And living that life is totally worth it.

How has the quest for prestige and stability affected you?

all images via Pinterest

an argument for creating more and worrying less

I am desperate for the enrichment of the everyday. I don’t just want the sun to shine, I want it to devastate me with it’s glow. I don’t just want that food to nourish, I want it to embolden me deep in my bones. When people talk about life’s meaninglessness, I edge toward angry defiance because I know there's depth in every moment.

But there are days when I sit and stare at Facebook for two hours straight with a numbed mind that borders on comatose. So, you know, we all have our ups and downs.

We exist in a constant state of flux that, if we’re honest, causes us to see eighty different variations of living one day. This fluctuation shakes things up for us because it seeps into the one thing that’s supposed to be reliable - our work. Our day jobs and night jobs and gigs and contracts. Eventually, our body of work feels like a living organism that breathes in the limitless elements of this world and exhales a combination of those elements that doesn’t always make sense. A blog post here, a gig there, a day job we love, one we hate, sitting at a desk, building a start-up. All of these things materialize into something that resembles us, but we can’t quite see the through-line. And this is where my conversations have led me lately:

How do we manage all the things we are?

Everyone is well aware that very few people nowadays have one job for a lifetime. The economy has made sure of that. And with the way social media has started to drive business (every kind of business), we have better access to each other and more chances to define exactly who we are. And define we will because we know that if we’re not very clear, who we are gets lost in the shuffle. But beyond these imposed social profiles and strict definitions, there is a small hum inside our guts that tells us: there’s more. Not just more to get done and more to add to your plate, but more down deep. More of the good. More where that came from.

Right now, I have three main paths. I’ll call them paths for now because one makes me money, one will make me money, and one may never make me money. But nonetheless, they are my life’s work every day. So, three paths. Incredibly different. They feed each other now and then, but they require access to different parts of me. And this reconciling is what gets me tied up in knots. This piecing together of those different parts is where my mind starts to spasm.

However recently, I have been mulling over Steve Jobs’ famous quote about connecting the dots. I never really understood why it was so significant for so many people. I used to think, right, of course we don’t know how anything is going to work out yet, we can’t predict the future. This is not profound. But when I re-read this, I finally picked up on why this advice is crucial:

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well worn path; and that will make all the difference.”

When we are balancing our eight different potential paths, we feel lost. Am I going to end up doing this? Or that? Or a combination of the two? Is this really who I’m supposed to be? But when we realize that whatever that generator is that is humming in our bones is exactly who we are “supposed to be” because it’s exactly who we are, we can see that the type of work we do is less important than simply committing to doing the work. In other words, if our message is being transmitted out into the world, the vehicle is secondary.

Director, painter, musician, and meditator David Lynch says this about the different ways he will make a film:

“See, a painting is much cheaper than making a film. And photography is, you know, way cheap. So if I get an idea for a film, there are many ways to get it together and go realize that film. There's really nothing to be afraid of.”

He’s not attached to the film. He’s attached to the transmission. He’s attached to creating and communicating. He has developed a body of work that on paper seems to be a thrown together collection of hobbies, but in real life, is an intricate and logical plan that allows him to constantly create without the fear of having to “give anything up.” The dots are connected because the body of work is connected to him.

How do we manage all the things we are? By always doing the work. That hum in your gut won’t go away until you communicate it. Instead of trying to manage it, we might be better served by releasing all of our anxieties about the type of work we “should” or “shouldn’t” be doing, and getting ferociously committed to communicating that ebb and flow that exists in all of us. We might finally see the bigger picture, create the balance, and connect the dots by just going ahead and letting ‘er rip.

When do you clearly see your through-line, if at all?

all images via Pinterest

resistance: taming the beast

I have tried to operate my adult life by the mantra: If it scares you, then you should probably do it. There is an instinctive part of me that knows growth necessitates starting before you're ready, giving yourself permission to play big, and swimming in discomfort for awhile. I know that if I want to do bigger and better things with the time I'm given, I have to get fully exposed and authentic in front of you. But still, there's that voice that says, maybe next time, slow down, hold off, wait and see, let them ask you first.

Resistance. I know I've mentioned this in more than one blog post; it's a cornerstone of most of Allie and my conversations; it just keeps coming back for more. And here's the reason: when you are on the verge of doing some really incredible stuff - Resistance gets all pouty and up in your face. When you start talking yourself out of it, having second thoughts, listing all the reasons it would never work, you can be certain you've gotten cosmic orders to proceed.

And truthfully, sometimes it is really hard to figure out if you're pursuing something for the achievement-based side of your brain, or for the truly passionate side of your brain. But for me, I know Resistance when I meet her and so I do the only thing that has ever kept that b!+@# at bay: I put my butt in the chair, or in the audition room, or in the studio. I just get to work. Then this great thing happens... I feel good.

In my opinion, if you do the thing, feel good, and encounter Resistance, that is a recipe for must pursue. Getting clear on feeling good is key because when we resist things that don't actually make us feel good, that's our true nature calling out to us in the form of instinct. And trust me, there are plenty of things we should be resisting. But if you get your butt in the chair and the act of doing, uncomfortable though it may be at first, eventually makes you feel like you breathe a little easier, you can be sure you're in the right spot. You can also be sure that you'll meet Resistance again. But this you can use. You can allow Resistance to be the trigger for your creative mind to say, let's do this. It's go time.

When you look Resistance square in the eye and face the beast...

No one cares about my opinion turns into I could help.

I am nowhere near qualified turns into I'll figure it out as I go.

Everyone will laugh at me turns into how can I get my creation to serve others?

She knows how to do this so much better than me turns into I'm inspired by her.

He's already done what I'm doing turns into let me riff on that.

Your work becomes easy. Not necessarily simple, but light, easy to handle, charged with the effortlessness that comes from pure joy.  It is bigger and better for it. And guess what else? So are you.

What do you resist doing or creating the most?

why you should go over the edge

Working at your edge. Allie and I talk about this all the time. We try to walk up to it, define it, encourage each other to work there and passed it. But what does that even mean? It's not something that someone else can illuminate for you. It's always changing, from moment to moment, because it's based on the mystery of your inner mechanism. The brain tied to the heart tied to the ability tied to the fear.

Sometimes when I look at highly functioning, well-funded, pristine and polished pieces of work I think - now those are the edgy and smart tastemakers. They have something going for them. And whatever it is, they've been able to alchemize it into profit or success or longevity. It's unnamable. We try to access it with words, but the more we try the more it escapes.  But we do know they have ideas that are validated by material affirmation.

Then sometimes I look at low functioning, budget-restricted, sloppy and unkempt pieces of work and I think - THAT is the edge. Diving into the abyss with no life raft, drifting on the bare bones of grit and hope. Not knowing if you'll ever land. There is something unmistakably dangerous when the odds are against you. We call it edgy because it's alone in the wilderness, where validation is extinct.

The only thing I know for sure about the edge is that it's where you are discovered. Whether it's easy or difficult or boring or frightening, it brings you out of you. Because no one else is there. No one else can show up to it. When the moment comes and you are standing heels on the line, toes dangling over it, the edge will tell you who you are.

Can you survive it? Can you balance on it - trying as hard as you can to stay centered and unshakable? Is that even the point? Or should we just tumble over, release that last piece of imagined control and find out who we are past the tipping point? I suppose the fear is of the complete and utter knowing of ourselves. The knowledge that means we can't go back. The possible disappointment. Or potential power.

Steven Pressfield calls this moment "turning pro." It's a sort of shutting off of whatever held you back in safety. A death of your pre-edge self. And like everything else in life, it's a choice. I don't know what it would look like for you - maybe relief, maybe freedom, or absurdity, or severity, or grace, or triumph. But I do know that your edge is an undiscovered no man's land - if you aren't there, no one is. But when we allow ourselves to pioneer our way into this unknown territory of ourselves, we become explorers for others, too. We allow them access to our edge and permission to reach their own. And when we do that, we just might make something worthwhile.

"The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over."

- Hunter S. Thompson

 What does your edge look like? Have you gone over it?

taking fear along for the ride

Five years ago, I was offered a creative opportunity I really wanted.

Here was my first reaction: Holy @#$% YES!!!

Here was my second reaction: Holy @#$%, I can’t do this.

Well I did it and did the best work I could, but I was haunted the entire time by feeling number two. What Brené Brown calls “gremlins,” what Steven Pressfield calls “Resistance,” what Craig calls “bullshit,” all of those thoughts crept in and around my creativity. I wasn’t free, I was looking in on myself, I was stifled and scared and plain old MEAN to myself. I considered all the terrible things people might say about me and told those things to myself first so that I was prepared. Prepared for what was surely going to be my inevitable demise and destruction by virtue of me simply showing up on the playing field. I left satisfied with the work I did, but feeling like I lost an important part of the creative act: the courage to be seen, or, authenticity.

So five years came and went with a lot of what Marc Maron calls "Thinky Pain." I earned some recognition. I got married. I didn’t work for a painful stretch of time. I was depressed. I got over it. I recommitted myself to the fact that my life’s work and purpose have nothing to do with stability and security (and certainly not affirmation). I redefined success as authenticity.

And then something happened. I was offered another opportunity I really wanted. And once again…

My first reaction was: Holy @#$% YES!!!

My second reaction: Holy @#$%, I can’t do this.

Because the lesson will keep showing up until you’ve met it face to face.

There was a time I thought I’d finally be free from fear - that I would know so much, or have so much experience that my confidence would be effortless. That I wouldn’t feel like a fraud. That my abilities would speak for themselves and the gremlins would quiet down. Now I know that despite the knowledge I develop, the experience I gather, the abilities I hone, the gremlins stick around. I know enough to know, I will never know enough.

And that is okay.

Five years ago, the unknown mystery of what I could possibly produce and accomplish frayed my nerves. I suffered because instead of embracing what I couldn’t predict, I fought against it. Nowadays, all I know is that I don’t know. All I can do is jump in with a full heart that includes both YES and I can’t do this. And somewhere in the battle between both feelings, work emerges. A bigger story is told. And the bullshit, while still along for the journey, takes a backseat to authenticity.

What's the scariest part of creativity for you?