I’ve been experiencing an extended creative block. Swinging back and forth between feeling like my work doesn’t matter, not right now at least, to just feeling creatively and emotionally drained in the truest sense. It’s been hard to know where to focus my energy. I’ve reflected on this, I’ve spoken about it on the podcast with Dan and George in hopes that saying it out loud would hold me more accountable, or push me to examine the underlying reasons, and try to break through it. As I sit down to write these words, I know progress is being made. I also know I’m not the only one feeling this way.
As fun as it can be to blame 2020, the outcomes of this year are not random. This year is not cursed. Many of the truly horrible events that have happened are very predictable outcomes to years of inaction and avoidance, years of upholding biased, discriminatory and unethical institutions. Let’s recap some of the horrors this year has brought, shall we?
Ahmaud Arbery was murdered while out jogging, and Breonna Taylor was shot while she slept, and George Floyd begged for his mother while an officer knelt on his neck for nine minutes, killing him. According to CBS, police murdered 164 Black people in the first eight months of 2020. One hundred and sixty-four murders at the hands of police. And so, when the streets erupted and people marched all over the world, it felt big. It also felt familiar. We say their names, we protest, but the systemic racism rages on all around us. The headlines change, people burn out, and families are forced to continue living a life that their loved ones should be a part of.
The annual California wildfires started and over 8,200 fires raged throughout the state, killing over 30 people and burning through four million acres. We expect these fires. We expect drought. We know that the climate is changing, and we know that this will disproportionately affect our most vulnerable. We’re told to take shorter showers or travel less, when only 100 companies are responsible for 70 percent of the emissions.
And then there’s the US election. As I write this on Election Day (and publish it one week later), I know there may not be an answer for weeks still. And for months, we’ve had to watch as an impeached president, a man accused of sexually assaulting 26 women brave enough to speak up, a man who mocked COVID-19 and anyone wearing masks, and the disabled, and journalists, tell us that he deserves another four years in office.
George shared a piece Purpose In The Time of Quarantine back in March. That was when we thought social isolation — and the pandemic for that matter — would be over in a few weeks or months, max. Here we are seven months later and the numbers continue to break new records. Globally, over 51 million people have contracted the virus and an astounding 1.2 million people have died.
These are just the things that have kept me up at night. Your list may look different.
In my own world, I’ve been working my way through years of verbal abuse in therapy and coaching, and trying to replace the space I’ve long since reserved for those attacks with statements of self-love and creative affirmations and breath work. I’ve also been making my way through Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, which has been nothing short of transformative, but I’ll save that for another post.
I had the absolute honor to interview one of my real life heroes, a woman I have admired for years, and all these feelings of doubt or insignificance told me not to write the piece. Maybe she wouldn’t like it, maybe it was the wrong time. As I talked through some of these feelings, and the surrounding shame, George said it very simply: the only way I could disappoint her is by not doing anything at all. A ha. That made all the sense in the world to me.
It’s easy to feel like our own personal struggles don’t have a place in a world with so much going on around us, with so many things out of our hands. But our own little worlds do matter. I know that mine does. And I know that yours does, too. And so, with these words, and with this reflection, I’m committing to myself that I’ll push through this because writing and creating makes me feel like the best version of myself, and that’s the version that the world needs.
For anyone reading this that can relate even in the slightest, I hope you’ll join me.
Photo by Hybrid on Unsplash
