hello, or: message in an algorithmic bottle
musings on perfectionism, internet agoraphobia and the artist's way
A few weeks ago at a café in Mexico City, I caught myself mid-sigh in conversation with my pal Margaret. This didn’t come as a surprise. We were discussing creative blocks.
“Mad, I hear what you’re saying,” Marg chimed in, “But I’ve seen your website and it looks great!” Oh dear.
“It’s just not done. It’s not where I want it to be.” My resistance felt like a bottle of coke mistaken for a shake weight.
“Trust me, I get it. But it can always be tweaked in the future, right? I know a website seems like the most important thing, but who is really looking at it anyway? People have to go out of their way to find it.” She was right. I knew this because I’ve given the same advice to other creative friends.
“You want to share your work with people. SO where can you make that happen?”
I put my head on the counter, actively sighing this time. When I emerged, I did so with the hunch of a grounded adolescent, my eyes rolling to the back of my head.
“Instagram,” I groaned. I’d read the words “your artist is a child” enough times to know mine was throwing a tantrum.
“I think so.” Marg was very tender and put her hand on mine. She did get it. I knew that. And as much as my inner critic was screaming at me to tell her she was wrong, I knew she was right.
• • •
If there is such a thing as internet agoraphobia, hand me the diagnosis. In my case, the fear to venture into the outside/inside world of public cyberdome–one in which *self* is directly tethered to *work*–has personally become my big scary monster under the bed. It’s strange to return to a space that largely chronicles a past self who you love, but who no longer feels like you.
Nearly a year ago, I bleached my hair and started “The Artist’s Way.” It was one of those moments in life of feeling pulled towards “yes” with such a lack of hesitation, you fixate on whether the outcome might have been altered had you worn a different t-shirt or had the weather been a little cooler. But I did say yes.
Julia Cameron made her book an easy sell. “If you are creatively blocked—and I believe all of us are to some extent—it is possible, even probable, that you can learn to create more freely through your willing use of the tools this book provides.” *Cue choir of angels arriving in harmony to save you from your existential dread* … So from November ’22-July ’23, I kept time watching my roots grow out and trekking my way through (what’s intended to be) the 12-week course in recovering and rediscovering your inner artist.
I’m very eager to share more about this process, especially on getting to the finish line. But for now I’ll say that in those eight months, I filled out 12 notebooks of daily brain thoughts (aka “the morning pages”), and gradually found myself tapping back into the parts silenced by dread, shame and self-doubt (you know, human things). I felt myself rebuilding muscle after years of what felt like verbal atrophy.
Which…is kind of simple, really. When you write every day, your brain works differently. When you clear your mind of the chatter, when you organize the alphabet soup of your subconscious into words on a page, you deweaponize that inner critic that forces you to slam your head on a counter at breakfast with your friend. You start believing in yourself again. You’re shocked to wake up to how much you actually didn’t believe in yourself. But you forgive yourself because you realize you have space to look around. You start hearing lyrics again. You catch yourself ogling over ducks on the bayou. You get on Pinterest. You no longer tolerate socks with holes.
“Art is born in attention. Its midwife is detail. Art may seem to spring from pain, but perhaps that is because pain serves to focus our attention onto details.”
Those close to me know The Artist’s Way has changed my life *so* much, not a single person in my life hasn’t heard me atop the soap box at least once. Margaret is one of those people.
But for all my incessant pushing of the book, the thing about The Artist’s Way is, for all the inconceivable ways it will encourage you to make changes and re-wire your brain (without telling you it’s doing that), it’s not going to do the work for you. And even when you’re all done, you’ll still encounter blocks to blast through and creative u-turns to turn back around (or allow yourself to fully grieve and say goodbye to). Your inner artist will still throw tantrums (it is a child after all). And that’s when it’s really useful to have a friend (who is also doing The Artist’s Way) hold up a mirror to you like, “Honey, is it possible this ‘productive-seeming’ thing you want to do might actually be a way to avoid the thing you’re really scared to do?”
God fucking dammit.
You gotta love good friends.
It’s wild to conceive of how we overly center ourselves when in actuality often nothing matters and no one cares. That’s why our self-doubt is so fundamentally selfish. Instead of just doing the damn thing, you wallow and come up with a thousand excuses to *not* and give unnecessary power to the fear that turns out to be nothing at all.
Which is all to say, hello! I’m back. I’m excited to share images and brain thoughts. And while I’m very tempted to spend hours perfecting this first substack to adequately reflect my voice, I know that’s avoidance. So I’m going to let it just be as it is–fresh out of the morning pages. Hopefully it resonates with one other human being in this cyber-sphere. But even if it doesn’t, a first step is better than none at all.
Happy new moon
& happy new year,
Mads
