Let's Go Underground

On the paradox of showing up and simultaneously the importance of disappearing :)

Good morning!

I’ve been quiet for a moment on here, but with a little time I am reminded that this is a purposeful step; being visible online & holding yourself accountable to your community (and audience) is something to be balanced alongside the inner work and the time you need for reflection & consolidation, away from eyes and ears, perceived judgement, or score keeping. I admire the people who can continue to show up in a creative way, but for me I can’t seem to hold both in my hands at the same time... particularly when its deep, meaningful work I’m after.

I am currently on the long, winding journey home after an extended period of orbit away from my creative work. I was waiting for something meteoric to throw me back on course, but this time it took the gentle inquisition of a friend to make me ask the question ‘Yes, what am I working on at the moment?‘. After a couple of weeks of focussed journalling, I am beginning to find my feet; getting little glimpses of the thing - my next move - little tastes, whiffs of the stuff... gender yet unknown.

In a time when daily and scheduled posting enables us to seem consistently present (and industrious/ prolific!), it is very easy to mistake visibility for progress. After deciding to start showing up for myself more regularly (in order not only to build a community, but also figure out what I’m offering to the world), there is a dopamine-fuelled momentum that accompanies this - the likes, the comments, the follows - and at some point you get to a stage where the time you make for this usurps all other creative goals; literally spending multiple hours translating an idiosyncratic and nuanced take on creativity, the practice, the balance of life, etc, into bitesize, text-on-photo quotes, that (however hard you try), end up reading generic, vague, and a little too close to ‘is this written using chatGPT?’.

It is easy to forget that the mulling over, the rolling ideas through your fingers, the composting if you will, comes from the fallow periods, the idle time, the stillness of a slow morning and a hazy, drawn out afternoon. When all the creative sparks become performative and vehicles to signal progress, to harness them in this sterile, content pushing way does rather remove the potency and the aliveness of them- they’re not here for others- they are here for you; lighting the way ahead just enough that you can crawl a little further through the tunnel... albeit on your knees & canary in one hand, all to uncover what it really is you need to say.

The challenge for us is in not only acknowledging this subtle nuance, but identifying correctly whether the stillness, or the quiet is a result of the above work in progress, or whether it is avoidance, a block, or fear of the work. There is no quick flow-chart to figure it out, as ever we learn through doing; to read the signs, to interrogate our actions and accompanying feelings & emotional momentum. Ultimately asking, how do I feel? Do I need this time for something unknown to bubble up beneath the surface? Do I just want to hide away from the important work because I’m running on fumes?

It is up to you to hold yourself accountable to what it is, and to allocate the time and space to uncover the root of it.

The paradox is this - The showing up only means something if you’ve done the underground work first. For most of us social media is a necessary piece of the puzzle - I’ve definitely found real clarity through regular posting these past few months - but the moment it climbs higher than the craft on the food chain, it starts feeding on the very thing it’s supposed to reflect. Every creative spark becomes a vehicle, every nuanced thought gets flattened into a caption, and slowly the aliveness- what makes you you - drains out of it.

So the disappearing isn’t the opposite of showing up, rather showing up is conditional on it.

For me- this little hiatus wasn’t prolific, industrious, creatively abundant, but I have let an idea sit, implant in the womb, gather up its own timeline of momentum. I don’t know what it is yet, but I know it’s growing, and that in itself is the work.

So, don’t be afraid to go underground & let the thing grow in the dark. Nobody is tracking your absence as closely as you think, and when you come back, you’ll actually have something to say.

xxx