#54 – 05 May 2023
Welcome to My Creative Calling!
Last week I mentioned I wanted to explore how we, as creators, can deal with the inevitable chaos of life and even thrive through adversity.
One aspect I wanted to explore today was the feeling of being besieged – drowning in the overwhelm of commitments – and finding a way out.
I’m tired of the same old repetitive, boring content on social media, so I am trying to experiment in more unchartered but vulnerable territory here and add new layers of depth to my content.
Let’s get into it.
You feel defeated
So last week, I felt defeated.
Nothing was going right.
My son caught another sickness from daycare.
My pregnant wife wasn’t feeling the best.
Even my dog had a seizure at 3.30 am.
And then, just to cap it off, we had a plumbing issue in the house, and the laundry flooded.
Oh, man!
You know the drill. I am sure you have had plenty of days or weeks like this.
Everything seems to go wrong.
Your work week is decimated.
Nothing goes to plan.
And it becomes an endless cycle of stress and anxiety feeding on itself.
Maybe you’re going through it right now.
And this was the week I was supposed to catch up on work! I was coming off a couple of short work weeks with the Easter long weekend and then another public holiday weekend here in Australia.
But it seemed that the world was against me.
Circumstances do not rise to meet our expectations.
Events happen as they do. People behave as they are.
Embrace what you actually get.
Epictetus
I had no energy or motivation.
I was supposed to be excited about the launch of my newsletter rebrand to My Creative Calling.
I wanted to give up.
Maybe I should go back to a regular job.
This is too hard.
Will I ever get out of this mess?
Catch your inner critic
But then I caught myself.
“Here we go again.”
Here’s my inner critic, my judge blaming the world for all my “misfortunes”.
I’m sure you know that inner judge well.
It’s the negative voice inside your head that is always casting judgements on:
- Yourself: “You idiot, why did you stuff this up again.”
- Others: “If it weren’t for those hacks, I would be succeeding.”
- Circumstances: “If only that sickness didn’t happen, I would be ahead now.”
But this judgement isn’t serving us.
It’s ridiculous.
Life wasn’t meant to be a walk in the park.
It’s not easy.
Stuff happens.
Things go wrong.
We can’t control everything.
And my wife called me out on this with something like:
“Hey, these are good problems to have. You are lucky you have a beautiful son, and you get to work on your dream as your job.”
That really hit home.
Here I was, playing the victim and whinging about my bad week, but it wasn’t that bad in the grand scheme.
I cringed at how weak I was acting.
You know when you feel like rock bottom, and it brings out the worst in you?
Then it feels embarrassing when you recover to your wiser self.
We would get through this.
I just needed to refocus my positive energy and adjust my expectations.
As a creator solopreneur and father, I can’t expect to be doing it all, every week.
Things will pop up, and I must accept that less gets done.
In the long run, it will be forgotten, and we will move onwards and upwards to better things.
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
Marcus Aurelius
Put your wiser self back in control
So what do I do when I feel down and out?
I usually take time out to reflect.
Find some quiet space.
Regather myself.
Solitude is my best friend.
And then, I consult one of my “mentors”.
I usually try to find something that speaks to my pain and helps me find a way out.
Usually, this is in the form of books, blogs, or podcasts.
This week I consulted my favourite poet, David Whyte, who has a knack for speaking to my soul.
I flicked through one of his books, Consolations, looking for something that reflected my feelings.
I stumped upon a piece called “Besieged”.
YES!
I knew instantly that was what I needed.
As that was how I felt:
Besieged!
Wait.
You might be wondering, what is “besieged”?
Here’s what Cambridge Dictionary came up with:
To surround a place, especially with an army, to prevent people or supplies getting in or out.
When someone is besieged, a lot of people surround them.
To make requests or complaints about something.
That was a perfect metaphor for how I was feeling during this troublesome time:
I felt besieged. I was surrounded by my attackers and copping it from all angles. I was running out of physical and mental resources with no way out.
I was reduced to rubble and could only complain about things not working.
And so, how did David speak to me so vividly?
He captured the human condition perfectly:
Besieged is how most people feel, most of the time:
By events, by people, by all the necessities of providing, parenting or participating, by creative possibilities they have set in motion themselves; and strangely, most strongly besieged by a success they have achieved through long years of endeavour.
David Whyte
I’m sure you feel this in your life.
You have things you would love to be doing.
But you are drowning in obligations.
The things you have to do.
In human life there is no escape from commitment.
David Whyte
Sometimes you wish you could just hit a pause button on the world, take some time out to rest, and then catch up on things.
If you’re a parent, you know this feeling well.
If you’re a business owner, you know this well.
If you’re a human living life, you know this well.
It’s like a never-ending avalanche of responsibilities and commitments weighing down on you.
We continually face up to things we may not like doing, but we must do them.
Our problems are like whack-a-mole.
They just keep popping up.
And if we aren’t careful, they can become overbearing.
But we can’t solve them all.
I remember once hearing Jordan Peterson share an insight: you can remove all the snakes from the garden, but they will start appearing in your mind.
It’s part of the human condition, this feeling of being besieged.
The besieged creator
David Whyte hits on two key points for us as creators:
1) “Creative possibilities they have set in motion themselves.”
Often we feel trapped or overwhelmed by the content hamster wheel we created for ourselves.
Content, content, content.
There is a never-ending deadline cycling daily, weekly, or monthly for whatever you have set in motion.
And this could be across multiple platforms:
- Blog
- Podcast
- YouTube
- Newsletter
- Book writing
- Social media posts
It’s exhausting just thinking about it.
If we aren’t on top of our mental and physical wellbeing, creator commitments can quickly become a living nightmare.
We are left feeling besieged by the circumstances we created.
We cry to ourselves, “Didn’t we choose this path for freedom?”
Oh, how ironic.
2) “And strangely, most strongly besieged by a success they have achieved through long years of endeavour.”
Are you still riding the coattails of success from the win you had long ago?
Often early success as a creator leads to trappings.
An example comes to mind of Matthew McConaughey.
From memory, it went something like this:
He found success in Hollywood in romantic comedies.
He was really good at them.
So he became known as the “rom-com” guy.
That’s all producers and directors wanted him for.
But he began to feel besieged.
He was yearning to do deeper work.
He wanted to act in drama movies.
But everyone thought he was a joke.
Nobody would take him seriously.
So what did he do?
He took time out.
He stopped saying “yes” to rom-com’s and disappeared for a while.
Here solitude becomes our friend.
Work happens in the space.
He was forgotten from the public eye.
But then, one day, someone asked, “Hey, where’s McConaughey at these days?”
They were now open to working with him differently.
They knew he was serious about this.
He risked it all to stand his ground.
And look at the success he has experienced since on his new path with major hits like Dallas Buyers Club and Interstellar.
He transcended to another level of mastery in his craft and blew everyone away.
So my question for you here is:
Is there some way you feel trapped in a creator rut because of some success you experienced?
Maybe you jumped on a trend.
Maybe you had a post that went viral.
So you started doing more of them.
But now it feels inauthentic.
In fact, you hate it.
But you feel pressure to live up to the expectations of the audience you built.
Remember what McConaughey did:
- Take some time out
- Regroup
- Reflect on what matters
- Stay true to your values
- Come back in an authentic way
We want you to be here for the long run, enjoying your journey.
Not struggling to show up burned out and uninspired.
Come on. You got this.
Let’s bring the fun back.
How to deal with your world of overwhelm?
If the world will not go away, then the great discipline seems to be the ability to make an identity that can live in the midst of everything without feeling beset.
David Whyte
We’ve already established that commitments are a part of life.
They don’t go away.
And they seem to increase as we mature.
The challenge here is to carve out an identity that can live in the world without feeling besieged all the time.
That’s deep.
And easier said than done.
What would a world look like for you where you didn’t feel like you were drowning in obligations?
A remedy – the “not-to-do” list
One of the best things we can do when it all feels like too much is:
Create some space.
Start saying no to things.
Reclaim your creative sanity by removing all unnecessary commitments and obligations.
Often this feeling of besiege rises in proportion to our to-do list.
And as solopreneur creators, there is always too much to do!
David recommends flipping the script:
Being besieged asks us to begin the day not with a to-do list but a not-to-do list, a moment outside of the time-bound world in which it can be reordered and reprioritised.
In this space of undoing and silence, we create a foundation from which to reimagine our day and ourselves.
In essence, this is what Matthew McConaughey did in the story above.
When things weren’t going in his desired direction, he didn’t grudgingly bear the load and press on saying “yes”. He responded with a firm “no” and did less.
And in that sacred space, he carved out a new identity.
In the space, we can reimagine a new self
This reimagining is what I did in the space after the shock of losing my accounting job in the economic downturn.
By temporarily removing the daily structures and routines, we create the freedom we need to think about a better way of doing things.
It’s weird, but unfortunately, we can’t find this clarity in the thick of our everyday work.
You know the feeling:
You go on holiday, and it’s hard for the first few days. You feel a little anxious and stressed. It’s almost like there is a hangover effect from the work routines.
But by day 3 or 4, you break out of that and suddenly feel free.
You then start to have what may seem like radical ideas. You start cooking up new strategies and project ideas you could never have imagined.
Magic happens in the space.
For some reason, this happens well for me when I am in a plane up in the air on a long flight.
I think that freedom from reality and technology liberates us to connect with our deeper selves.
Beginning the daily conversation from a point of view of freedom and being untethered allows us to re-see ourselves, to re-enter the world as if for the first time.
We give ourselves and our accomplishments, our ambitions and our over-described hopes away, in order to see in what form they return to us.
David Whyte
I love that reflection.
From this space, we can re-see ourselves and later re-enter the world as if for the first time.
I know from private conversations with some of you, my subscribers, that you have been on your own personal journey of self-discovery.
You feel like a different person from who you were one to five years ago.
So much has changed, and you have grown.
You know this feeling well.
And how did that change happen?
It started with some kind of space away from what you were doing.
Let go of the old to make room for the new
In essence, you gave away your old hopes and dreams so that you had room to welcome some new possibilities.
I was throwing away my accounting career to make space for something greater.
There is always some element of sacrifice or giving something up to move to a new level.
Are you willing to sacrifice the present for something better?
This was a question I reckoned with.
From the outside, things in my life were kind of perfect. I had a “good job” and a beautiful family.
But something was missing.
I wasn’t happy with my work. And that was eating me up cause we spend so much of our lives working.
I tried to tough it out and soldier on. But at some point, it became too much. I was no longer willing to waste the best years of my life on unfulfilling work. I wanted to be an inspiration to my family, not a bored and brainless drone.
I could acknowledge the reality of my journey to date, the highs and lows, but another horizon now called me:
My Creative Calling
And that meant I had to start again.
And jeez, it’s embarrassing and humiliating having to start again.
But it’s also one of the world’s most exciting and freeing experiences.
It’s an essential part of life – We start over many times on our journey.
So don’t be put off if you are currently going through the process of starting over.
It’s normal.
It’s growth.
Finding a balance between attention and solitude
David Whyte
Besieged as we are, little wonder that men and women alternate between the dream of a place apart, untouched by the world, and then wanting to be wanted again in that aloneness.
So to work through this process, we must balance participating in the world and seeking solitude.
At times we crave attention and connection.
But at other times, we long to be alone on a deserted island with nobody to bother us.
Eventually, we rise from this personal work and are ready for the world again.
We “want to be wanted again.”
I know I am guilty of this as an introvert.
I love being alone and find great pleasure in solitude.
But at some point, I start to crave human interaction.
We need each other.
Especially as creators — I touched on this in a prior letter addressing the lone genius myth.
David highlights that we thrive in a conversation between aloneness and belonging.
We are both: other people will never go away, and aloneness is both possible and necessary.
Creating space for that solitude is one of the most important things you can do.
I love long walks with my dog in nature.
I love late-night journaling when everyone else has gone to bed.
Find what works for you.
It can be your haven when you need breathing space after a hectic day.
A new mindset – be besieged, but beautifully
Be besieged – but beautifully, because we have made a place to stand in the people and the places and the perplexities we have grown to love, seeing them not now as enemies or forces laying siege but, as if for the first time, as participants in the drama, both familiar and strangely surprising.
David Whyte
After this period of aloneness, we come to see things differently.
We appreciate the people who matter to us.
We even start to appreciate those who were once annoying interruptions.
Although it may suck sometimes, we realise it’s nice to be needed.
We find that having people knock on our door is as much a privilege as it is a burden; that being seen, being recognised and being wanted by the world, and having a place in which to receive everyone and everything, is infinitely preferable to its opposite.
David Whyte
I need to spend more time reflecting on this point:
Those people (metaphorically) knocking on my door are just as much a privilege as a burden.
Interpret that how you want, your intimate relationships, friends, colleagues, customers, clients or audiences.
They are just as much a privilege as a burden.
My inner victim sometimes complains about all the people I “have” to deal with.
But there are two sides to that coin.
And I should be grateful to be wanted in the first place.
And I’ll leave you to reflect on this restatement of David’s wise words to help us form a new mindset around the feeling of being besieged:
Being seen, recognised and wanted by the world is infinitely preferable to its opposite.
Reflection
Catch your inner critic when it starts to hijack you. Maybe it’s the judge blaming:
- You.
- Others.
- Circumstances.
What strategies do you have to bring your wiser self back in control?
Are you overwhelmed by the content system you created for yourself?
- You have the power to change it to something that serves you.
Are you clinging to a prior success no longer aligned with where you want to go?
- If so, start saying no.
- Create a not-to-do list.
- If possible, take time away from your work to reset.
Commitments are a part of human life. That besieged feeling is inevitable.
- So how can you be “besieged, but beautifully”?
- How could you re-design your present situation to make it bearable?
- Find that balance between attention and solitude.
- Create a space of solitude.
- Reimagine a new self.
- Let go of the old and make room for the new.
A quote to ponder
The beautiful and frustrating thing about being a creator doing this stuff is there are no right or wrong answers.
It’s so many shades of grey.
It’s not binary.
I guess I just need to try it. Test it all.
Justin Moore
What happened this week
Create the right crowd
I was messaging with creator and wellbeing coach Ryan Jeearry, and he shared a beautiful thought:
No need to stand out from the crowd, when you can create your own crowd.
It made me stop and think.
We get hung up on standing out from the noise – I have previously written about being remarkable, the idea that if we try to blend in, we may as well be invisible. The opportunity is to create something truly remarkable.
But Ryan’s words made me reflect on another angle, that we could cultivate a cherished audience one relationship at a time.
If you take the time and effort to develop and nurture your audience, there’s not so much pressure to “stand out”.
So don’t overlook your humanity.
Connect one-on-one with your audience.
Long-term connections
This approach reminds me of a strategy from a UX/UI designer and creator I recently connected with, Sepideh Yazdi:
I’m experimenting with a theory.
I don’t have the focus for creating a huge audience and followers right now, but I can post my journey and also connect with a few people (10-20).
I want to stop expecting things to happen, and I want to give it time with as low effort as possible and watch what will happen 10 years from now.
If I meet 1 INSPIRING, AWESOME person per year, that will add up to 10 good friends in 10 years.
I also documented my journey for whoever can get inspired by it.
How brilliant is that?
I love the long-term strategy, focusing on connecting with inspiring people.
And imagine the possibilities that would emerge from conversations with those incredible people.
This message is valuable, particularly for entrepreneurs, creators juggling busy careers or parenting.
And another point on connecting with creator peers:
Dan Koe has often mentioned the creators at a similar level, who you are rising with now, will become your greatest opportunity in the future – business ventures, friendships, networks, etc.
Many put too much pressure on themselves to GROW at all costs, and it ends up causing burnout and health or relationship problems.
If you’re feeling the strain, why not ease some pressure and shift some of your focus to having fun and making some cool friends?
A few inspiring people could generate the one opportunity that changes your life.
Final thoughts
Today’s writing background playlist was a two part combo:
1) Mamba FM on Spotify from fellow creator Daniel Mamba Odoi.
If you want inspiration for bringing charisma and ENERGY to how you show up consistently as a creator, check him out on LinkedIn.
I found Mamba’s playlist was lifting my mood to an upbeat energy, an excellent flow for creative work.
But there was a sombre tone to some of this newsletter, so for parts of the writing process, I switched to something more melancholy to access different parts of my psyche.
2) The sombre background was the album Valtari by Sigur Ros.
I just realised how strange this may sound that I go to these lengths, but if you haven’t noticed, music is a driving force in my life. I can use it strategically to unlock different parts of me.
If this idea is new to you, I recommend you experiment with it.
As creators, one of the great traps of our time is the need to maximise content inputs for inspiration. So unfortunately, for many, that means sacrificing music in exchange for audiobooks, podcasts and YouTube.
But I’m here to challenge you and say, don’t forget about music!
It’s been around in some form or another, probably since the dawn of humanity, so don’t overlook the power in that. It’s integrated with our soul and can speak to us in ways words alone can’t.
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It would be great to have you on board!
Cheers!
