It is difficult to believe that this year is already coming to a close. It only started to dawn on me that December was coming around the corner when the promotions section of my email was flooded with notices of black Friday deal this, and 20% off of that. For someone who has decided that time means absolutely nothing - which is probably the same for millions at this point - these emails brought me to a standstill and left one simple question whirring in my mind: what have I actually done this year? Aside from developing hobbies I saw on my “for you page” and fumbling through a year’s worth of online schooling essays, the sum of my achievements as a “creative” (and this term makes my skin crawl, but bear with me) seemed minuscule in comparison to the goals I had mindlessly set out for 2020.
For any gen-zers who decided that creative outlets would become their primary source of income, this year could have gone in 3 ways: you have taken advantage of this time to create, you have been a complete vegetable and done compulsory school work while hoping to get a burst of creative energy, or you’ve oscillated between both. Being someone who has gone through 2020 with the third option as their M.O, this period has forced me to face some of my thoughts, insecurities, and expectations as a young “creative”. While absolutely no one asked for this, these are some of those things I’ve had to face, and I’m hoping that in this case the specific is universal (otherwise you are here to just read my angsty musings or confessions, so to speak).
Have you ever heard of writer’s paralysis (writer’s block sounds too forgiving)?
After 19 years of existing, and dedicating 2 of them to forming my writing voice, I have started to believe that there might be a quota on the ways one can write innovatively. However, as soon as that thought begins to settle my mind in an excusatory state, I start reading articles on Pitchfork, The New Yorker, or the Daily Maverick, and it seems that this is simply a pseudo-fact. For the last year, despite launching a blog, writing during a 6 month internship, and even scripting for a podcast, I have struggled with the belief that everything has already been written, and I may not have anything new to add to global conversations. While contributing to global discourse is more towards the side of grandeur, the doubt that comes with this thought process feels more like “writer’s paralysis” rather than a block that insinuates this state is temporary. To combat this, I made myself constantly search for ideas to write, and I thought that I should just assign more time to find them. Then my screen time alerts notified me that I landed up scrolling through my phone looking for inspiration rather than actually using it to write. Not my finest moments of the year, but 2020 has been brimming with tenth-rate behavior on my behalf, so I’ll give myself a slight pass.
A change of appearance might mean a change of perspective
As you could tell by now, this year has been the year of searching for ideas. This process has been particularly agitated by the internal timer I have set to 2030, and by the time that timer buzzes, I hope I would have achieved quite a bit. Until then, I have been on a quest for the ideas that would propel me to 2030, and strangely enough, I have been using my appearance as the outlet for this. Now, I would like to detail the chronicles of all the ways I got tattooed, pierced, poked, prodded, etc. but I am a bit more basic than I’d like to admit. Instead, from the start of the lockdown, I grew out my hair, braided it, bleached it, dyed it, braided again, then resorted to finally cutting it again. Initially, I thought nothing of the various hair identities I assumed throughout the quarantine until I noticed that each decision to change my hair was preceded by a case of “writer’s paralysis”. As I am writing this, I can confirm that my hypothesis has been proven wrong, and drastic appearance changes only come with deductions from your bank account.
So, what now?
After essentially whining for four paragraphs, there is a bit of hope that I also gained after this very strange year. Amid all the hobbies adopted, zoom lectures attended, tv shows binged, and even hair bleached, this year has been a lesson about the present. There is no true path set out for gen-z creatives - especially considering the current state of the global economy and the media industry, but that’s another article for another year. There is also no way of knowing if the challenges that come with “writer’s paralysis” or racing against my internal timer will ever resolve themselves. I would however like to still believe that there is much to draw inspiration from, and hopefully, in the new year, I won’t still be writing in this state of self-diagnosed malaise. But in the meantime, I will rely on the fact that I am only 19 after all, and that is not a pseudo-fact (I hope).