Why Consistency and I Don't Always Get Along
Marketing vs Creating, Worm School, Brandon Sanderson, Personal Work
You are so busy being consistent that you only do the expected, forgetting that the unexpected might fulfil you. — from my journal this week.
June 17th marked the 25th week of 2024.
Week after week, I sit down and edit photos from the weekend. I schedule posts to different social media channels. I create little videos and clips and sprinkle them across various platforms. I track it all. From January 1st to June 17th, I have spent 127 hours, 47 minutes, and 10 seconds doing this—what I call the “content” side of things. That’s about 5 hours a week.
That may not seem like a lot, but when I was a kid, spending hours drawing in my bedroom by myself, if someone had told me that I’d spend five hours a week writing captions for social media, I would have thought they were crazy. That in no way is inspiring.
In fact, focusing overly on marketing and content can suck the creative life force out of me. I also create content for brands, so a big chunk of my week is producing work for other people, leaving limited time for my own ideas. By the end of the week, it can feel like I'm trying to juice a raisin—my creativity is all dried up.
But I keep thinking.
What would it be like to have 5 hours to create without expectation? Like when I was that kid in her room drawing for hours?
I often feel like I'm just a little bit tight on creative time. I'm working through the weeks of Worm School by Mason Currey, and week one already challenged me. Without giving it away, it pushed me to think about unhinged, weirdo ways to achieve my creative goals if the obvious path isn’t available.
I can't magically pull an extra 5 hours out of thin air, but I can reconsider my relationship with consistency, self-promotion, and creative time.
Ask yourself:
What if you could create without the pressure of meeting external expectations?
How would your work change if you focused less on marketing and more on genuine creative exploration?
Can you find unconventional ways to reach your creative goals, even if they don't fit the typical path?
I'm still thinking about it.
I stumbled across a creator on Instagram (and I didn’t save their name, so if you see it, let me know) talking about consistency, and it got me thinking.
Maybe I just suck at acknowledging that I, in fact, already do a lot for my creative goals. I just suck at celebrating the wins and seeing each as a small step forward. The creator shared an illustration of what we think consistency is versus what it really looks like, and it lifted a little weight off my shoulders. It looked something like this:
The bottom line is, by focusing on a perfect version of ‘consistent’ I may have created a negative feeling towards it. I was being hard on myself for no great reason.
So this week, I want to celebrate the small steps I took to honour the creative in me:
I started reading one page a night from an Art History book, each page introducing a new work of art.
I journaled.
I wrote this.
I took an extra long walk to think and used speech-to-text to record my thoughts.
Instead of listening to podcasts, I watched more from Brandon Sanderson’s lecture series.
I tried a different edit on photos of flowers, which were shot in a ‘not usual for me’ manner.
What is your relationship to consistency?
Do you end up getting stuck on marketing versus creating?
How do you find ways to honour your creative side?
Learn More About Worm School
What I was Watching (mentioned above)
Lecture #1: Introduction — Brandon Sanderson on Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy
Personal Work
Summer has arrived on the Island. For at least a couple of days. Which meant burning heat. Swim hole visits. And of course, flowers.
Hey, you made it to the end! I have a little secret for you!
Well, less a secret and more a ‘what a strange career I have’ moment.
I was out in the woods, bear spray tucked into my pants, running around, recording myself saying a script... and, well, I honestly loved the ‘in between shots’ so much that I made a short blooper reel. Enjoy!