Hustle culture killed my creativity (again)

Thoughts on editing a horror novella, making videos intuitively, and enjoying the creative vibes of autumn.

Hi friend,

Hope you are well. 🖤

I am. Because September is upon us. It's been three long summer months with too much heat and light and too little sleep. I don't know what's wrong with me, but I can't seem to relax during summer the way others can. I get restless and anxious and exhausted. I feel my best when the weather is cool, it's dark and gloomy, and I have daily and weekly routines to fall back on. I always get a surge of creative energy in autumn, and I can already feel that happening. I've been feeling very inspired lately. Might simply be because I'm sleeping better. But I think it's because I've switched my priorities around, allowing more time for creative projects.

I'm no longer doing YouTube full-time, which means I've freed up a lot of time and mental energy every week. I'm focusing on writing and art making, and no longer wasting as much time consuming media. And suddenly, my days feel a lot longer. (Who would have thought?) I spend my mornings working on fiction projects until lunch. (It's amazing how far you can get with 3 hours of undistracted, undisturbed writing.) And my afternoons are for making "content", that is, writing for this newsletter, as well as making videos and courses.

I've realized, after taking this break and releasing all expectations on myself, that I do want to keep making videos on YouTube. I miss the craft of it. I felt it right away as I recorded what was to be my "farewell video", that I didn't want to say goodbye. I had fun filming and editing it. And when the response came, and some people begged me not to go away... I didn't expect that. I expected the same sort of indifference and relief I felt when leaving Instagram behind. Instead, I just wanted to re-commit, but do things differently this time. I want to see if letting go of those self-imposed deadlines and rules might make YouTube fun again.

One commenter (Thank you, Extempore Art) said something that really resonated with me:

"If I see YouTube as results, a grind, needing to upload every week then it’s too much. If I’m thankful to have a space to share my ideas and creativity then I’m thankful there is a place to do that."

That's so true. And it only goes to show how much hustle culture messes with your head. It creeps up on you, slowly takes the joy out of what you do, without you really knowing how or why. It happens so easily to me, despite being highly aware of it. I've fought against the hustle mindset many years now, but I'm not immune, I need frequent reminders. And breaks, and sometimes telling myself I'm going to quit. 😂

I suspect you've realized it by now, but I don't have my shit together in any way, shape or form. Whenever I say I'm going to do something, or going to quit something, it's never set in stone. (However much I make it sound like it is.) Hope it doesn't drive you too crazy. But hey, I gotta be me, and I want to be completely honest and open about my experience. I'm not comfortable in the role as "expert" or "coach". I'm just another clueless, terrified creative trying to find my way forward and sharing what I'm learning along the way.

Novella in progress…

Writing wise, I'm in the middle of editing my second dark fantasy/horror novella and I'm having so much fun. I'm one of those writers who love the editing process ten times more than the drafting process. The story is already there, so there's no pressure to create from scratch. Instead, I get to sit down with a critical eye (comes easily to me), and make a long wishlist of everything I want to do to improve the story. That list is not as long for this story as for my previous one. I was already a better writer when I wrote the first draft for this novella. But there's still lot's of room for improvement. I love the crap out of this idea, and I'm going to give it my all to make it as good as it can possibly be.

I'll tell you more about in upcoming newsletters, and I'm working on a little writing vlog for my channel where I show the inspiration behind the story, and the process of editing it. Let's just say that if you are a video game/tech nerd, and are terrifed of dark, claustrophobic spaces underground, you might like this one. So stay tuned...

Art wise, I'm carrying on with my charcoal portraits. It's hard, and messy. I don't like most of my attempts but here are two that I guess came out okay:

I might have found a process that works for me. With both of these, I started out with pan pastel, which isn't technically charcoal but works much the same way. And the beauty of it is this little palette knife that you can use to apply the pastel and kind of paint with it:

I prefer to approach charcoal more like a painting and not a drawing. Which means I keep it loose, and I focus more on values than on contours. I talk more about that in this video, if you're curious. Now I just need to find the right balance between using the pan pastel to lay down the values, and using vine charcoal and charcoal pencils to add definition and details. I wish I could practice a lot more, but since charcoal is so messy, I haven't really had the patience for more than 2-3 portraits per Saturday session. Especially not in the summer heat. I'm longing for the dark cozyness of October, which naturally lends itself to long hours in the studio, drawing spooky charcoal portraits by candlelight... (And writing horror stories.)

Are you an autumn person too? Which season makes you the most creative?

It's 4 PM here now, and I'm signing off for the week. Looking forward to spending most of this evening playing Mass Effect 3...

Hope you'll have a relaxing weekend, and I'll see you again next week!

With love,

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New video: The future of this channel

My latest story: Child of the Sea (available here for free.)

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Reading:

Finished Secrets of a Summer Night by Lisa Kleypas, and was so disappointed. Why in the world would you have your main characters MARRYING halfway through the book? Thereby removing all the tension before it even had the chance to build up? Why? Why?? (Sorry for the spoiler.)

I was so sick of romance after this that I had to immerse myself in the complete opposite. So I started reading Books of Blood vol. 1-3, by Clive Barker. I've had this short story collection on my list for a while but have sort of held off on it, waiting for October. But what can you do. Sometimes you need a dose of terror, violence, and gore, and you need it right away. Loving the stories so far.

I'm also 30% into The Blade Itself, by Joe Abercrombie, which is...kinda slow so far, but cozy. I'm loving the characters and his way of writing them. And I've heard that the first book is mostly setup for the other two in the trilogy.

Watching:

I discovered Christy Anne Jones's YouTube channel this week. What an unbelievably sweet and likeable person. I love the way she makes videos, her aesthetic, her choice of music, her topics, her whole vibe. She's an author and illustrator living in Adelaide, Australia. And she's a Japanophile and a fantasy nerd and she plays videos games and board games, and I kind of just want to hang out with her. 😌 Very inspired by her and her channel right now.

Listening:

I enjoyed episode 207 of Cal Newport's Deep Questions podcast, where he led his friend, a comedian, through a six-week digital minimalism intervention. Lots of great insights here about how social media impacts our creativity, and ways to work around that.

Oh, and my artist friend Vera recreated the Child Of The Sea playlist in YouTube Music, for those of you who can’t, or don’t want to, use Spotify. (Thank you so much, Vera!) She also has a newsletter that I highly recommend.