Maybe It's Enough to Ride the Waves

I procrastinated writing this and I guess that's kind of the point.

“Disposition” — Dannika Rose Sullivan

I read somewhere recently that self-discipline will give you freedom. I also heard somewhere else that how you live your days is how you live your life. All of these well-meaning quotes and more have been haunting me for years as I continue to fail myself over and over again.

Specifically, my failure at being consistent creatively. Inconsistency is seen as the poison for any creative endeavor. We hear it all the time: find a consistent formula and stick with it. It make sense and the results speak for themselves. Except it doesn’t factor in the persnikitiness of our attention spans or our creativity.

So I’ve become bitter towards the word: consistent. Yes, as humans we need routine, repetition and rituals. But when they’re all wrapped up in this thing called “consistency” or “discipline” I feel like a child that was promised a chocolate sundae and got a rice cake instead.

I guess when it comes to my creative process, I want it to be sweet more often than not.

Recently, someone’s wise words on TikTok spoke to me: “discipline is a form of devotion.” In that moment, I knew I’ve been getting it all wrong. Discipine, especially when it comes to your creative endevours, is the repeated act of coming back to something for yourself.

But easier said than done.

A little while ago when Twitter was still Twitter, I released a yelp into the digital atmosphere: “Once I figure out how to channel my creative chaos into productive change it’s over for you hoes.” Humorous and a little wry, this was a plea to the universe and to myself that I can find a way to funnel all the ideas I have in a productive and consistent way. Because more often than not, my ideas feel like snowflakes in a snowstorm that I can’t seem to grasp and pin down.

And the worst part that comes with being inconsistent is having that sticky, heavy feeling of shame after. The guilt over not fulfilling your potential, for leaving your ideas on the shelf to rot away.

Eventually, I realized that this was a horrible cycle. Be inconsistent. Feel bad. Be inconsistent again. Repeat. At one point, I created some mantras to help deal with the consistent inconsistency of being a creative. These include:

• Give yourself permission to change your mind.

• Don’t run away from your contradictions.

• Allow yourself to star something without being completely certain of how the end product will look.

All of these mantras, that I tell myself and pass down to others, are the scaffolding of reassurence I’ve built for myself to balance out the fact that I suck at self-discipline. Because even after I failed the 100th time to have a consistent writing routine or break the promise to myself to wake up earlier to work on a project, I had these words to fall back on. That I can still keep moving along, and that something is better than nothing.

And yet. I willingly continue to overlook them and whisper to myself; “You’ll never succeed until you are consistent.” But I guess I’m trying to find my version of it that well, sticks. Could the secret be leaning into my own distractions? Finding the consistency within my inconsistencies?

I started to put together the bigger picture, that all of the ups and downs of creativity may just be baked into the process for me. Perhaps, running away from my distractions is what’s getting me in trouble in the first place.

In this recent article about the effects of screen time on our attention spans, writer Maya Beverly interviews a psychiatriast who framed distraction and creativity not as being at odds with each other, but playing an equal role:

“The key to being productive and creative involves a combination of focus and unfocus. My issue with focus is that it drains energy. It prevents you from seeing the competition, upcoming trends, making connections and being self-connected.”

This challenge with focus is at the core of why I feel like I fail at self-discipline and consistency. But that article made me think: what if in those moments that I’m feeling distracted, I’m gaining something else? As many of us know, the best part about art making is when you get in a creative flow. But I can’t, as much as I try, schedule my creative flow at specific times.

Maybe my flow state is my inconsistency. Maybe I just need to ride my own waves.

Of course, it’s all about balance. Later in the same article, the writer interviews a sculptor who poignantly says: “In a way, being distracted is part of the creative process, but it can become difficult to establish the lines between finding inspiration and weeding out unwanted or incessant noise.”

The problem is that all we have is toxic, unproductive noise around us these days. Noise pulling us to buy things, to give attention elsewhere, to scroll into the abyss. It’s hard to view distraction as a healthy thing when it’s sucking 8+ hours out of your day through a rectangular screen.

Perhaps, the solution is finding better distractions.

Until recently, I always thought I would find a way to channel my sporadic creativity in a consistent way. I was tired of riding the waves; I was stuck in the undertoe. I wanted it to be clean, repeatable, machine-like. And that once I figured that out then it’s over. I’ve done it. I’m there. Where, exactly, did I think I would land? Because I realize that all I’ve been doing is just that — waiting. As the water crashes into me over and over.

At one point, I started looking through other writer’s routines. This often leads to comparison fatigue and that same muggy feeling of shame to take over. But then, I came across Susan Sontag’s:

“…I write in spurts. I write when I have to because the pressure builds up and I feel enough confidence that something has matured in my head and I can write it down. But once something is really under way, I don’t want to do anything else. I don’t go out, much of the time I forget to eat, I sleep very little. It’s a very undisciplined way of working and makes me not very prolific. But I’m too interested in many other things.”

That last bit made me smile, gave me hope. We all have our ways of building these roads to where we want to be. They can be bumpy and even unfinished along the way. What I took away from that is that sure, Sontag maybe wasn’t disciplined. But you bet she was having the time of her life when writing.

Susan Sontag

So here I am; in the throws of motivation, stillness and stuckness — trying to find the answer. And I now see it for what it is, this obsession with being disciplined before I can allow myself to write a book or call myself a writer. Sinister distractions, all of it.

Another quote, this one from Joan Didion, kept coming back to me as I wrote this essay: “I write entirely to figure out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.”

That’s always been the point and I still forget it time and time again. If I want to figure out what my consistency is, I must write, I must create, I must build the road as I walk down it. And if I ever want to ride the waves, I must write, write, write. And I’ve done it in the past. Up and down, I’ve surfed the waters of my own creative consciousness and came out on the other side.

Maybe it’s enough to just build that pathway back, that muscle memory, that reason to return.

And at the end of the day, maybe it’s not about riding the wave, but catching it.

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