How To Handle Seasons of Your Creative Life
Behind-the-Scenes #2: In which I journal through growing older as a creative.
2023 was probably the most exhausting year of my life.
It beats out many of my physically challenging years of life, like the year that I trained for and ran the Chicago marathon.
It beats out my last pregnancy and my first taste of being a mom.
It even beats out the years I was getting divorced and transitioning from a fancy corporate career to entrepreneurship. (And doing it quite poorly...I was so broke!)
In 2023, coming out of a 4-5 month burnout stint (that I thankfully caught early) and getting pregnant immediately after, at age 39, and after having a kid already (and all the years of sleep deprivation and added responsibility that came with it) hit me like truck after truck all year.
Needing to sleep constantly and having no way to do so made it really difficult to work.
Needing to work constantly and having no way to do so made it really difficult to show up as the person I know I am.
I think 2024 is better, but it’s hard to tell.
In 2024, my energy has returned, though I turned 40 in February, so it is subdued and calmer and less ebullient at this point in my career. Still, I've become both sharper and wiser—not just in my thinking, but in my lack of patience for bullshit. I've earned my business stripes after being at this for 15 years, and astral growth is more peaceful these days, like a warm cup of tea and a fancy spreadsheet.
I want to shout to the world, "I'm back!"
I want to embrace the fiery, no nonsense woman who used to bang down door after door.
And...
I have a lot of new people who think they met me, but met a circumstance I found myself in that disappointed them. I couldn't catch them and care for them the way I wanted to because I couldn't catch myself, either.
I have a lot of new awareness that undiagnosed, decades-masked female neurodivergence + children is a cocktail that I and many other women around the world are drinking at any given time. As such, I should not set endless deadlines or plans too far in advance.
I also have a lot of new 4-month old to contend with for my limited hours in the day. Energy that has no container still can't be emitted. This phoenix can't phoenix like she used to, and so she needs to get softer and steadier.
When you can’t spring back like you used to.
Perhaps you've been in a creative season of life that has passed but still lingers. The one thing people don't say explicitly enough about seasons is that they aren't breaks or phases or blips in an otherwise steadily rising curve.
Instead, they are portals. You simply aren't the same on the other side of them, and it may require a new way of being with the things you love to do.
The way I’m handling this portal right now is:
Accepting that my twentysomething years are behind me. That means that pulling late nights and all-nighters is as dead to me as binge-drinking. I need to learn to phoenix some other way.
Acknowledging that I don’t even want to move that fast anymore. I actually enjoy spending the morning holding my baby. I want to go to sleep at a decent hour. I need to prioritize my health and spend more time on cooking and exercising. I need to take more things off my plate and let more things go.
Leaning on business systems that are worth investing in.
noted to me recently, “If you aren’t in a mentorship or leadership role in your career by 50, then you may be in trouble.” I basically have ten years to transition my author business to something that runs without so much of me in it. This is a massive shift in mindset from my younger days, where it was important to dig in, learn it all, and get my hands dirty in every aspect of my business.Prioritizing everything differently. Getting older and having more responsibility makes me more focused on my finances and health, as well as what I really want to do with the rest of my time on earth. I’m not going to live forever. I’m hopeful for a few more great decades, and if that’s the case, what do I really want to focus on in each one?
Have you ever experienced a portal into a new version of you, or of your creative life, that couldn’t be undone? What did you do to get through it?
Thank you for sharing about your 2023. Mine also included several life-changing "plot twists."
I may have to agree to disagree about fifty as a deadline. I'm a ways past that age, and "mentor" is not on my website or business card, although people do come to me casually for advice or to hear how I did something.
In some ways, I'm just getting started, and that's okay. I was a late bloomer when I was young, and that seems to track now, too. Plus, a lot of people, especially women, reach fifty and just get started on things they had to set aside for decades. And, sometimes, they have to wait until they retire at 65.
Anyway, IMO, you're already a mentor. So's your sidekick Russell. Y'all are right on track. :)
Thank you for your candor.
Phoenix fist bump. 👊 💝 🔥