How taste can guide life choices and the creative process
Hey girl, you don’t need more time to get to your artistry.
You are already an intriguing mashup.
You have an aesthetic and taste that
shows up in your clothing choices, your IG photos, the phrases you pick up and repeat. It shows up in the culture you’re drawn to, the songs you add to a playlist, the books in your TBR (To Be Read) pile.
It’s reflected in the rhythm and constant adjustments you make to keep the teetering balance of home and work and relationships somehow upright. And it’s shaped too by the things you’ve tried and discovered you don’t like at all.
There might be big hints of your artistry in work that generates a paycheck, or none at all. But this is still helpful for if you feel the echoing absence/gaping hole/yawning desperation of something missing. . . this is vital. But in light of today’s repression against writers, his letters have taken on new relevancy for me.
An invitation.
Let me illustrate this in the following (real) fairytale. This is important because the moral of the fairytale is. . . well, skip to the end if you want! Otherwise, here you go:
Once Upon a Time
Once upon a time in the Land of Joan, there was a mayor (Joan) who had unruly hair but was still beloved by (um, almost) all far and wide. After many years mayor-ing one day she looked up and said, “Isn’t this curious? While I’ve had my head down, faithfully doing my important widget work, a weird little odor has crept in here.”
A trace of sulphur. Or rot. Like the first whiff of undiscovered scrambled eggs her prankster BFF Vicki put in the toes of Joan’s tennis shoes in college (seriously!!).
“Has something turned?” Joan sniffed the air. “There’s a change.”
The Land of Joan existed in a much larger country after all, with other governing entities. As Joan delivered her assignments, oddly, for the first time, she realized that for a while now it had started to smell like busy work. In the past her pursuits had introduced new crops of ideas and changed the weather of conversations and been a wild and wooly place of joyful hoopla teamwork, but now—how peculiar—the cheerful chirping of acceptance had strangely quieted. When it came to acting on her research—crickets.
In earnest, she doubled down amassing data and giving speeches and creating V.I.P. (Very Important Particulars) PowerPoint decks but even then had a sneaky suspicion that each time she got her attagirl back slaps, afterwards, the work would be ciber-filed away and likely remain there, unopened, forever gathering digital dust.
What to do? What to do? Joan had no time to waste on unwanted work. A scuttle of dark clouds slipped over the Land of Joan. The wind had shifted. Joan pinched the skin between her eyes to concentrate and noticed how her nose was now flawlessly smooth from keeping it to the grindstone.
Perhaps she could try harder.
One day as Joan sat in a Very Important Meeting she listened to a Lovely Citizen give an Enthusiastic Explanation of a Brand New Process. Joan admired Citizen (even as she was not as excited about the Brand New Process having seen many, many Brand New Processes over the years). “Look at you!” Joan bravo’d with a smile. “Such energy! Such excitement! You go, girl! Why I think I used to be you!”
Joan suddenly stilled. I used to be you.
It wasn’t just the Land of Joan that had shifted under her feet, but the regard for Joan had changed too.
Perhaps there were many reasons that Joan was not valued as much as she used to be. The ubiquitous sidelining of women in senior positions. The upward pressure of an aspiring populace who wanted their leadership turn. Societal ageism that presumes personal growth happens only for the young.
Joan wondered, too, if she’d been oblivious (careless) of the pressure her own ambition may have exerted on others in the past. Had she been a beneficiary of these warped circumstances only to now be its victim?
Maybe. Yet; the sh*ty bottom line realization was, “I am not valued here as much as I used to be. I am still mayor of the Land of Joan, but my territory is now tiny. This organization is done with me.”
A single tear slid down her cheek. It recognized the loss, but still she looked up. A little shaft of sunlight broke through a cloud. Cascading down, the ray dried her tear. “They might be finished with me,” she realized. “But I’m not done.”
I’m not done with me.
It was time to mark out new territory for the Land of Joan.
Your Aesthetic Can Help
Thank you for riding along on that fairy tale ride. The reality of transitioning out of my career was not quite so light-hearted, of course. I carried around a suitcase of anger, resentment, perplexity, sorrow—grief—until I could finally put that weight down.
It was in that period of time that I started to think about what could lay beyond a sixty hour work week and, for the first time, wonder about another life chapter.
This is such hard work when you’re in the thick of mucking around in the mud of a shifting identity. Unconsciously, I’d accepted that my worth was valued by the house-of-cards combo of position and salary and title, which brought admiration and respect, right?
How do I determine my worthiness without those accessories?
I leaned into my aesthetic. Listed all the things I love. Writing was No. 1.
So, even as I struggled with disillusionment around my career, I started to entertain this idea of writing a book. Here’s what I did:
Subscribed to Poets and Writers and The Sun literary magazine so writing magazines would arrive regularly in my mailbox.
Investigated joining the board of the local lit magazine, The River Styx, by going to a few meetings to hear how that inner world works.
Attended local author readings.
Went to local writing group meetings.
Took a few vacation days to attend a three-day writer’s retreat.
Began a weekly blog and got subscribers by begging family and friends for their email addresses in order to hold myself accountable to weekly publishing.
It was around this time that I came across Ira Glass’ writing about creativity. Glass is the popular host for the syndicated radio/tv program This American Life. Among his writings, a commentary on the creative process really struck me. Here’s an excerpt:
Nobody tells people who are beginners, . . all of us that do creative work. . .we get into it because we have good taste. There’s a gap that for the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good. . . It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, your taste is still killer, and your taste is good enough that you can tell what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you. A lot of people never get past that phase. A lot of people quit. And the thing I’d just like to say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste and they could tell what they were making was not as good as they wanted it to be. . . .the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you’re going to finish one story. Because it’s only by actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions….It takes awhile. It’s going to take you awhile. It’s normal to take awhile and you’re just going to have to fight your way through that.
(Here’s a recording of the full quote.)
That statement gave me permission. It set expectations. This writer thing, if I was going to do it, needed to be a real commitment. Little did I know then that writing a book would take me seven years. I would end up writing a manuscript, then trash it and start over. All I knew then was that I wasn’t empty-handed. I had artistry and an aesthetic I’d spent a lifetime accumulating.
Taste. It could prod me on.
The Moral of the Story
Life is about change and curveballs and choices. You’re not alone. For more ideas, here on Sub stack Amy L Bernstein and Mary Chris Escobar both play in this space.
When looking for direction, consider your mashup in all its unique goofiness.
There are kernels of direction in there.
Can’t wait to see it!
Warmly,
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