From Obligation to Exploration: Reclaiming the Joy of Writing

The need for perfection strangles the joy out of creating this blog. Why? And what is to be done? Below I use writing to navigate my way out of the labyrinth, concluding with a contract with myself.

This article can also be found here. And a pdf file is here.

I have a problem

When I started American Gaia, I wanted to document my search for a cosmology. But recently, I have felt a foe creep in: The drive to publish only "high quality" pieces.

My last essay, on Martha Nussbaum's book Justice for Animals, meets that benchmark. The article emerged from weeks of reading, note taking, outlining, summarizing, and writing. The subject deserved the intense attention I gave it, because it was important. Plus Nussbaum herself had put months, quite possibly years, into developing her philosophy. If I was going to critique it, I had to do the work of fully understanding it first.

What disturbs me is that this level of care seems to have become a new standard I am imposing on myself. It feels as though I have a tiny imp sitting on my shoulder, telling me, "No, your idea for an essay is not good enough. You need to support it with much better evidence and arguments before you can publish it. At the very least, you ought to read treatise such-and-such and book so-and-so on the subject." Consequently, writing that began as fun exploration is turning into a chore. 

The purpose of this blog was to document my search for a satisfying way of being in this ecology and universe that surround me. I hoped to examine progress, ponder ideas I had developing inside. Having just come out of two years of recording, editing and writing for others, I promised myself that this adventure would be primarily for me. There were no grand visions for building an audience. And I certainly did not intend to make conclusive statements on intellectual riddles.

And now here I am, with my prefrontal cortex hollering, "Yes, make your next essay bigger, weightier. Let's go!" The imp chimes in, "You know how to use duty and commitment to propel yourself across the finish line - go on, now, do it again!" But my body - the region in the lower belly that Zen practitioners call tanden - has different ideas, and it is good at evasion. Which means that instead of writing I spend my spare time puttering around in the garden, listening to audiobooks or watching videos. That's how days that begin with good intentions lose their focus. By nighttime I castigate myself.

Where did things go wrong? Why does the prospect of writing something new feel like a grand decision about the future of my life? How has toying with thoughts turned into a commitment to define one project and see it through hell and high water to publication?

This needs to stop. 

I decide to figure out what is going on. A few mornings of deliberation and reflective writing produce three possible answers:

1. I feel I owe it to the world to create finished thought products.

2. I am a perfectionist.

3. I fear that sharing my doubts and questions with the world makes me vulnerable.

Let me take a look.

Possibility 1: I owe the world a completed thought product

Part of me believes that I owe the world a finished thought product. But do I? What exactly is my debt to the world? I come up with several possibilities: Personal kindness, the effort to leave the planet as clean as I found it, the commitment to hold my government accountable and a few other things. Finished blog posts do not make this list.

Does the world even care about my writing? Strange as it may sound, I prefer to think "no," as this frees me from embarrassment at the very personal things I have put up here. And if the world does not care, I probably need not fret about owing it a certain kind of writing.

This leaves me with a few self-imposed obligations: Don't just publish the first thing that pops into your mind. Instead, honor the process of thinking. Do so regularly, perhaps ideally in the morning, because that is the time to set a focus for the day.

Published work should be finished in the sense that it is well written. Not only because that is a sign of good thinking but also because I want the people who are kind enough to spend time on this blog to have a rewarding experience. Plus, when re-reading my essays at a later point I'd like to be able to say, "Hey, that was good!"

Published work should also be honest about its nature, which includes its potential unfinishedness. That's for the sake of readers, among them "future me", who do care about what they find here.

All right, Gaia: You just wrote down your self-talk, specifically the notion that you owe the world a finished product. You placed it in front of yourself, and with the help of pen and paper examined it from all sides. As a result of this exercise you realized that your self-talk is neither compelling nor beneficial.

I can tell that my feelings of duty to the world are beginning to fade.

This is good. 

Possibility 2: Perfectionism?

Might I be a perfectionist? It's a trait about which Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, has a few things to say:

Tillie Olsen correctly calls it the ‘knife of the perfectionist attitude in art.’ You may call it something else. Getting it right, you may call it, or fixing it before I go any further. You may call it having standards. What you should be calling it is perfectionism. (Cameron 2007: 127)

My tiny devil has a keen desire to meet standards. This could indeed be a sign of perfectionism. 

I therefore read on: 

Perfectionism has nothing to do with getting it right. It has nothing to do with fixing things. It has nothing to do with standards. Perfectionism is a refusal to let yourself move ahead. It is a loop - an obsessive, debilitating closed system that causes you to get stuck in the details of what you are writing or painting or making and to lose sight of the whole. (Cameron 2007: 127)

My mental flywheels spin into action: Had I been caught in a debilitating closed system, I would not have published anything at all. This very exercise is all about reengaging with writing. Does it not show that I am far from debilitated and obsessive?

Yes it does!

I consult another definition of perfectionism, this time from Psychology Today:

Perfectionists set unrealistically high expectations for themselves and others. They are quick to find fault and overly critical of mistakes. They tend to procrastinate a project out of their fear of failure. They shrug off compliments and forget to celebrate their success. Instead, they look to specific people in their life for approval and validation. (Psychology Today n.d.)

I do look to my partner Leo for validation. And to a small group of people whose views I respect. But according to this definition, the central characteristic of perfectionism is fear of failure, which is not a strong theme in my life. Whenever I have found myself lacking the skills to achieve a goal, I have acquired the skills and completed the task. That's how, over the years, I have learned a lot. And much of it has been enjoyable. 

Perfectionism is not the problem, then.

Possibility 3: Fear?

That brings me to the fear of appearing vulnerable. It might be where the dog lies buried.

I think of myself as an accomplished woman who leads a happy life with a loving and loved spouse. But as you can probably glean from my essay "The Arrogance of Atheists," I am highly aware of my vulnerability. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk memorably explains that "the body keeps the score."

Mine has learned that if you look like prey, that's what you become.

I therefore have a pronounced need for security, which manifests itself in small, scurrilous ways: My invariable urge to fill up the gas tank when it is down to a quarter - no less. Now and then, Leo points out how unnecessary this is, because he, too, has to fill the tank by my clock. But overall he accepts my insistence as part of this loving partnership. It's a give and take, with Leo, in this case, being the one who gives.

That I prioritize security also manifests itself in my habit not to spend more than I have and in my ability to detect scams, phishing attacks, and other attempts at toying with me, or us, from a great distance.

I have learned to set and enforce my boundaries and feel mostly safe as a result. Nonetheless, there is a drive for self-preservation that silently runs in the background, like an app you don't use but that consumes resources on your hard drive just so it will be ready when needed. It makes it challenging for me to share vulnerabilities - both the big ones of the past that are processed, chrysalised and scarred over, and the small chinks in my armor that arise from the unfinishedness of thoughts.

Years of training have taught me that confidence in expressing one's point of view is key to career success. Will I present myself as weak and manipulable by admitting that I have more questions than answers? That answers I had previously believed in no longer worked?

A tiny imp bent on protecting me might well see my questioning ruminations as risky and try to hide them from the world by sending me on an extensive literature search.

So perhaps I simply fear that sharing my doubts and questions with the world will make me vulnerable, much like the weak spot on Achilles's heel led to the downfall of an otherwise invincible warrior.

This possibility seems a lot more plausible than number 2.

How do I do this without standing in my own way?

Writing may be a problem - after all, the block I encountered in trying to produce writing for American Gaia is what caused this very attempt at self-examination. But as the above reflections show, it is also a solution.

That’s because writing is not just a brain dump, where you do all your thought work inside your mind, spill the finished results onto the page and are done. Instead, writing is an ongoing dialogue between yourself and the page: You put ideas on paper, look at them, notice where they lack connection, pull them back into your brain, mull them, write attempts at improvement, review the fragments, move them around. Gradually a coherent picture emerges, one where your thoughts and emotions have a crisp edge. That's the point at which you have gained a new level of self-awareness.

Writing thus helps develop your thinking and feeling. It helps me understand the norms and ideas I value most highly and the person I want to be.

When publishing is your primary objective, you treat writing as a finished outcome. That does not serve me, and so I must get away from it. I need to stop striving to "ship" essays. In contrast, when your primary goal is to consistently show up to a puzzle you want to solve, you treat writing as part of the thinking process and as key to achieving clarity. That is the reward I want. 

I should therefore not ask myself: What can I write that looks good as a finished article? But rather: What is on my mind today? What questions are floating around, waiting to be captured and looked at? And in a next step: How can I rearrange pieces of thinking so they make sense to me? 

With constancy or, as Kelly Wilde Miller calls it, devotion, this process of examination may produce something more polished or intriguing than the initial daily ramblings I start out with. At that point I'll refine it further. And eventually I'll allow myself to hit the "publish" button.

Most days, this means sitting down and writing what Julia Cameron calls one’s “morning pages.” Their purpose is to clear and calm the mind and to focus it - towards what a Zen practitioner might call “single-pointedness.” Once there, if I can afford the time, I want to move on to more focused reflective writing on a topic that occupies my attention.

Such writing differs from that for a professional or academic paper, as it does not have a pre-ordained structure. I have no idea what the next written piece will be, exactly: A critique? Poem? Rumination? The horizon is wide. I am granting myself the permission to be unpredictably creative and the freedom to grow in the direction this tanden is choosing.

It is a journey of discovery.

Contract with myself

I, Gaia, will make writing - morning pages and, when possible, deep introspective writing - a regular part of my daily life. 

I give myself permission to buy the inks, fountain pens, and stationery that enhance the joy of writing.

I will leave guilt and obligation behind.

References

Cameron, Julia. 2007. The Complete Artist’s Way: Creativity as a Spiritual Practice. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin.

Psychology Today. n.d. “Perfectionism.” Accessed November 5, 2024.