Recently I’ve noticed that I haven’t been doing much. I like to blame worksuck or just not posting as much or being busy as a reason for not reading as much or not writing as much or missing so many movies. Yes, 2016 has been draining as an Earthling but it still seemed a bit…lacking.
Liz Gilbert, everyone’s favorite white auntie, just wrapped up Season 2 of her podcast Magic Lessons. She helps more creative types get their stuff together and make the thing they want to make. Personally, I enjoyed Season 2 a little better than Season 1, but it’s still Liz Gilbert helping people along and dispensing gems along the way.
AND THEN in PEAK Liz Gilbert fashion, she announced she was getting a divorce from her Eat, Pray, Love love and was in love with her best friend who is suffering from cancer. But that’s neither here nor there, it’s just the most Liz Gilbert thing to do.
Anyway, in Episode 2:07 she’s trying to help a woman work on her second novel. Britta was a successful lawyer for 25 years and took a sabbatical to write a novel. #thedream . Her novel was successful and she got a deal and everything but now it’s time to write the second book and decide if being an author is even something she wants to do. Why was the first novel so easy and the second such a task?
They talk and Liz dispenses Liz knowledge and then gets Neil Gaiman involved. Then Liz calls Britta back and she {clutches chest}, Liz, she says this:
This is a real trap of industrialized, mass manufacturing, capitalistic society. We are all stuck in this model where we’re supposed to be on a chart; a chart that looks like one for a Fortune 500 company with a red line, every year, that goes up and to the right. That is what we’re supposed to do. We’re supposed to follow this model where you must be improving. You must be doing 5% better, 5-8% better every single year, than you did the year before. It is a very efficient model for industry and for business. It makes sense for mass manufacturing.
It does not make sense for a human life.
And it certainly does not make sense in a creative life.
You must be allowed to have years where you go and try something that whatever this even means doesn’t work. You must also be allowed to have years where you don’t manufacture anything at all.
Hashtag Gap Year.
And here’s the link to listen to the podcast if you’re not podcast app savvy or whatever
This is one of those blog entries where you just marinade in it for a while. Not a quick 30-minute marinade, but a couple days so it seeps into the small cracks. Thanks for this one! I needed it!