Make the thing you want to make

the process of returning to yourself

Abstraction 1970 - this and all that follows: Georgia O’Keeffe

Making the thing you want to make is almost always accompanied with the feeling of unseriousness or stupidity. Before even beginning, flashes of failure creep in.

“Oh God this is humiliating.”

This is a common state you can expect from a creative person. The worst part is, you actually have no idea whether that feeling is accurate until you make the thing.

I was just starting to feel good about my creative life, when the pandemic started. Sometimes I imagine the alternative universe where it never happened and I feel weird like when you lose touch with a friend for no reason. You keep meaning to text but don’t. You don’t hear from them either, even when you have a baby, and tension builds until you start to harbor a kind of slight resentment about the whole thing in your head.

Holding onto this kind of stuff takes up space. You haven’t done anything about it, but you also haven’t released it and so it sits there like expired egg whites in your fridge. You know you’re not going to use them, but for some reason, you haven’t thrown them away yet.

East River 1932

For years I spent my time proving my seriousness as an actor, to myself, to my family members, until I found some kind of traction. And then I felt like it was taken from me.

It’s still hard to admit that I am actually the one who abandoned my theatre career, not the other way around. But if theatre really was the thing I wanted to make, I could’ve. I still could.

Sometimes it’s easier to blame the systems that have set you up for failure than question your own actions. Maybe it’s reconciling with the fact that I don’t want to be an actor that feels scary, like some childhood dream is gone. Or like all the years I spent chasing it, pushing through the fear of humiliation, proving my seriousness about it, were wasted somehow.

People still ask me if I miss performing. I miss parts of it. I miss rehearsing a lot. I miss sitzprobe, hearing the orchestra for the first time, when everyone, so moved by the music, looks around at each other like they wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world.

I miss dressing rooms and their musty smell. Seeing everyone’s little tchotchkes. Photos of sisters and boyfriends taped to the corner of the mirror. Tiny nebulizers and huge water bottles. Loose starbursts and bobby pins and eyelash glue.

I miss the weighted feeling you get when you’re putting on a show, like you’re anchored to something that will outlast the moment. Even the silliest of musicals can offer the kind of creative fulfillment that makes you sure you’re in the right place at the right time. The feeling of a good omen.

Anne Bogart says, a good omen is “a moment when the world seems to answer you back. It is not a guarantee of success, but a charged sign that your attention, your desire, and the circumstances have aligned in a way that invites you to proceed - more awake, more responsible, and more brave.”

This is the feeling creative people like you and me will chase forever, even, and especially when, we try to get away from it.

When I started working in tech, I stopped describing myself as an artist for a long time. I stopped singing, and reading plays, and latched onto a career where I didn’t have to justify my seriousness. Working at a high growth startup was cool. Plus in a way, silicon valley has its own drama. You work quickly, kind of stumbling around chaotically until you, hopefully, capture something that feels like a movement.

I fell in love with the energy, but deep down I knew I wasn’t making what I wanted to make.

When you ignore this kind of tug in your gut for long enough, you could burnout and implode and it might not be graceful. This happened to me at the same time I got pregnant on accident (whoops). Though completely disorienting and painful, it was an important wakeup call in returning to myself.

Being an artist is about committing to making the thing you want to make, against all odds. To protect yourself, you might keep one foot inside of a lot of doors. More serious or stable doors. But if deep down you’re an artist too, you know that it is impossible to ignore the great big well inside you forever.

It Was Blue and Green 1960

The only way out is through, as they say. You have to make the thing you want to make. And find the people to make it with. You have to make it when people in your life don’t understand it. You have to make it earnestly, knowing that you could fail at it.

It’s been about six months since I really committed to doing this in my own life. Right now I’m experimenting a lot. I would say on most days it’s going really well. On some days, I battle with the internal monologue of humiliation. Through being open to the experience and learning from mentors like Sasha Chapin, I’ve learned that most of us have way more agency and capacity in carving the path we want to carve than we think, or want to think.

Being a creative person requires you to be visible beyond what feels comfortable or safe, even though only a few people will really see you in the way you’re intending to be seen. It forces you to expose yourself to the discomfort of commitment. Being an artist requires you to take your art seriously, which also requires taking yourself seriously.

To make the thing you want to make, you will have to engage with the current of anxiety and the internal monologue of humiliation that comes with being near something true or vital. But the reward for doing it anyway, failure or not, forces us to return to ourselves. Creative work is unique in its potential to do this like nothing else can.

The Beyond 1972