Do I need to suffer for my art?

What if I already am?

Hello Maker,

Long nights over here in the northern hemisphere as the Winter Solstice approaches, so I am embracing the emo spirit. (Any fellow former emo kids in the house? Tell me your favorite Jimmy Eat World lyric. Did you also have an asymmetrical haircut? I respect it.)

Despite the fact that I am supposed to be in a very public, yang-over-yin, Tell-People-To-Buy-MAKING-TIME mode, in real life I’m in a cocoon. I am goo that has yet to form wings. My previous form has melted away, and my new exoskeleton is still in process.

I will still promote this book project (I’m doing so now! Haha, so sneaky of me), but my process is to allow it to be seen more than shouting from a box in the public square. Stay tuned.

Now, onto another edition of the Anti-Advice column.

It’s the kind of thing where you ask your burning questions, and I ask questions right back. Because the answers that emerge from your own wisdom will serve you best.

Hit reply to send me your questions.

This week’s question:

How do you bridge the gap between passion and despair?

I actually wrote about this precise thing in my book, so here is an excerpt:

“My husband likes to tell the story of our second date and its aftermath. That day, we wandered around Brooklyn for seven hours, telling stories about our past and hinting about a shared future. After we parted ways, he called his best friend while lying down from dizziness. He explained that he did not know what to do with himself. As his head spun and his stomach flipped, his friend diagnosed the issue: “Yeah, that’s what love feels like, bud.”

There are many things that falling in love and living a creative life have in common, but one is frequently ignored: they can both find us nauseated, hiding under the covers.

What a dreadful passage we run through on the way to true desire. I’m reminded of how the etymology of “passion” means “suffering,” or “that which must be endured.” This is not to wallow in to prove how deep we are, nor is it a punishment we deserve for not becoming hedge fund managers. It’s just the nature of undiluted wanting.

Passion reminds us that our control is limited and our heart extends outside our body. We’ve prepared, we’ve made all the moves we can, and then our best efforts have to leave our hands. Surrender is inevitable. We usually hate this.

Sometimes even anticipating the moment that the efforts you’ve made will leave your control is enough to stop you completely—just to avoid the sensation.

I used to find that so intolerable that I preferred the different suffering of only trying things I didn’t care about that much. Or tweaking my efforts, making them a little safer, a little less intense, a little more strategic, and a little more beige.

You can do that, but you’ll notice you feel less satisfied even if you “win,” even if your efforts are well received. That’s the way to suffer dispassionately. Tepid suffering. To me, that’s worse.

Passion, and the sometimes vertiginous feeling of surrender it requires, is the price of admission for falling in love. Falling in love with a person, or with something you create. At least some of the time.

That feeling doesn’t mean anything has gone wrong; quite the opposite. It doesn’t mean you haven’t prepared enough. You are not always supposed to feel like the Master of Your Domain, invulnerable to anything that happens, your heart protected with perfect strategy.

Yet like all sensation, it passes when you let it. Don’t argue with your nervous system. Treat your body gently and give it a little time. Go under the covers for a while. Congratulate yourself for the willingness to love.” (MAKING TIME, Baker Books 2024)

This place between desire and fulfillment is eros. Our productivity-obsessed with culture would try to erase the erotic from our process, because it’s embodied, seemingly-inefficient, and emotional. But try to create meaning without it.

Of course, our whole process is not all feelings and longing! There’s the chopping wood and carrying water of our daily work, but that’s a topic for another day. (And it’s well emphasized in creative advice already.)

Your turn:

• When was the last time you “suffered passionately” instead of “tepidly”? What did you tell yourself about that experience? Was it… true?

• Where are you currently trying to “Master Your Domain” with perfect strategy?
  

• What would happen if you stopped arguing with your nervous system for a minute and just... let it be?
  

• If you could crawl under the covers right now to rest and re-gather, what would you say to yourself before emerging again?
  

• What’s one “beige” strategy you’re ready to abandon so you can fall back in love — creatively, relationally, or otherwise?
  

Love,

Maria

P.S. Got a question for the Anti-Advice column? Hit reply. I promise to answer with more questions.

P.P.S. Let’s make 2025 about creativity instead of ticking boxes. Join the Maker’s Lab for the price of a pre-order of Making Time — a small toll for early access and a place to think differently.