Existential crises are amazing. I’ll tell you why.
They give you exactly what you need: clarity. Sure, you might spend hours, days or weeks in a spiral with stomach cramps, nausea, loss of appetite and an overall feeling of dread and/or panic, but in the end, you will come out of it with your priorities straight. You’ll know yourself better too.
Last week was interesting. I was spiralling. If you read my last newsletter, maybe you felt it. I know some of you did, because you reached out privately with kind, reassuring words. Thank you.
I said a lot of things behind the paywall, like how there was too much noise clouding my mind, how I blamed rats for my lack of motivation… Essentially, I didn’t feel like finishing my novel manuscript and it was causing me a lot of distress. The thought of sitting down and finishing the last 25% of the draft I started back in 2022 made me want to gag.
I also wrote “I’m going through a creative existential crisis.” I’ve always been an economical writer.
I spent a day in bed, paralyzed by my fear of failure and disappointed by my inability to complete a project I told everyone I’d do. Does that sound intense and overly dramatic? A writer spending a day in bed because she’s sad she can’t find the motivation to write a novel? Welcome to an artist’s life, baby. So glad you’re here to witness the show.
Although I wanted to, I couldn’t spend the **entire** day in bed because I had to pick up my kid from school at 3:20 PM. So technically, I had until 2:50 PM to be a sad artist. I got dressed (sad artists lie in bed in their underwear; it’s the law), put my mom cap on and off I went doing mom things.
Later that evening, my kid and I were reading on the couch when I glanced at the stack of magazines sent to our flat by mistake. They were meant for the previous tenants, or the tenants before that, and nobody had claimed them so I’d claimed them as ours. I thought of my friend back in Montreal, an illustrator and visual artist, who’d told me she’d started making things outside of her usual medium as a way to explore her creativity without the pressure of productivity or performance.
“Want to make collages?” I asked my son.
We sat down at the dining room table with the mags, scissors, glue sticks and some construction paper. I put a playlist on, “Mix des années 2010,” and we spent the next hour cutting images and putting them together. We had so much fun chatting and making little artworks. I wasn’t planning on writing anything, but I felt drawn to certain words or parts of sentences in the magazine articles, so I cut those up too. Next thing I knew I was putting words together as if they were puzzles to be solved.
While collaging with my kid, I felt lighter and at ease. I’d tapped into the joy of creating without the pressure of it being likeable, relatable, marketable, noticeable, instagrammable. Is this what we call the “flow state?”
Last week I said “when you don’t know what to do, do nothing.” Somebody else said that first, but I’m not sure if it’s Oprah or Queen Elizabeth II. Anyways. This is an example of nothing. I took a break from obsessing over my novel’s future. I went back to basics. Rock, paper, scissors, glue—no, wait—words, paper, scissors, glue.
As the week went by, I felt increasingly better. Giving myself permission to explore other art forms out of curiosity and pleasure made me realize that I want to follow that feeling. I want to enjoy making art. I don’t want to return to a project feeling nauseous or like it’s the worst thing in the world. I don’t want to make art out of fear, guilt or desperation. That would be terrible. A lot has happened in the last ten months since I’ve touched my novel. Some things don’t feel aligned anymore.
Guess what? I’m over the novel. I quit!
See you next week.
P.S. It seems I wasn’t the only one reflecting about these themes over the last week. My friend
, who writes the amazing The Good Enough Weekly, ended her latest essay with the following thoughts:“Being an adult in our capitalist society can drain the joy from life. Fighting to hold onto childlike curiosity and wonder is essential to the kind of life I want to live.”
Then my friend Nicole Zhu, who writes nicoledonut, the wonderful newsletter on living a creative life, shared a link to an essay written by
on how quitting can be great.No one truly knows whether you should quit. No one can or should be responsible for that decision but you. But I can tell you, your intuition is your greatest power on deciding whether or not to quit, or leave, or let go. And if you do decide to quit, know that you are bringing your present self who learned so many lessons that will be useful for the next thing you do.
Finally,
from astrology for writers wrote as part of her reading of last week’s leo in full moon:“And those of us who tell stories, especially, know that there is no outrunning the lava flow: rebirth demands destruction of the old in order for the new to begin.”
Brb, going to grab a match and light who I thought I was supposed to be on fire.
Oh how I get this. January defeats the best of us. I think we're meant to become the mush inside the chrysalis in January and gather ourselves for the next phase. Take heart and take care, friend! Thank you for baring yourself in this essay xo
👏👏🥰Tu as le don d'écrire tes ressentis et de les présenter franchement sans filtre, avec un humour subtile, sans que le lecteur s'ennuie Ceci est justement parce-que tu as un plaisir en les écrivant et le lecteur ressent ce plaisir et en est réceptif. This is why If you don't feel ithe novel, don't do it. Écrire et lire c'est un donnant donnant. 😘💓