One of the great stressors of doing creative work is the worry of whether or not “the thing will make money”. I can admit that this fear of making myself financially miserable because I spent my time working on things that no one will buy sometimes takes hold of me. Actually, it probably sits with me every time I pick up an instrument.
But I think when you are able to take a step back, you can see that the need to monetize creativity is a dangerous path to go down, at the very least it’s dangerous in the beginning of a project.
This fear is a protector, a built-in alarm system that steers us clear of anything weird and novel that we might be developing.
I can admit that you’d think it would get easier to handle as you get older, but in this phase of my life it seems to only get worse. You start gripping onto walls in an attempt to play it safe. And it’s right in this exact space that the magic happens.
No matter what station in life you currently sit in, you must be willing to do the work that is calling to you, no matter how it answers the question of making money or making poverty.
So how do you work through this fear in practice? When it’s time to play music, paint or write, set a timer for the duration of your working session. This is commonly done for getting specific tasks done, but in this case, I am suggesting that as long as the timer is on, you are in a judgement-free zone.
You will not boss yourself around about how good or bad you are, but more specifically to this message, you will not worry about whether or not the thing you are doing will make money.
Writing this letter makes me think about how much this fear spills into all work in general. Let us cultivate time, once a day or once a week, to be silly or to be stupid with our work. To let in the element of play that we see in kids.
A few weeks back I wrote that all life is learning, but today I would like to add to this the idea that all creative work is play.
My newest track When Everything Disappeared Twice is available on Thursday, February 16th.
Selecting artwork used to be a difficult task for me to figure out. But for this one, I went through my camera roll and selected this sunset. Taking a closer look, I didn’t even notice the crane in the distance which could’ve been removed. And that’s fine because it’s real.
When doing the artwork for a music recording, you want to find a balance between being respectful to the music and the listener, but also not going overboard and trying too hard. Finding photos that I’ve taken myself helps strike that balance for me.
I look forward to sharing this calm and meditative piece with you in the next email. There was also a preview of it in last week’s edition.
Wishing you a great week ahead…
Elliott