Do not disturb

On carving out time for your craft, even when you feel guilty for doing so.

I have a list of 2023 goals on my phone. Between “leave the country” (the first one I fulfilled) and “try a bloomin’ onion for the first time” (done—it was delicious, by the way) sits “establish a creative writing practice.”

We’re in mid-November now, and I still haven’t checked that one off.

It’s not for lack of trying. I sit down to write a lot, because one of my biggest fears is becoming a writer who doesn’t write. I’m great at flirting with creativity: dimming the lights, turning on some lo-fi, finding a comfy spot on the couch to settle into with my journal or my laptop. I’m even decent at getting started, despite the fact that getting started is often the hardest part.

But when it comes to staying in that spot and really logging some words, I struggle. A text pops up on my screen. Work tugs at the back of my mind. My cat pukes on the floor, and while I’m cleaning it up, I remember I need to move my laundry from the washer into the dryer, that we still haven’t grabbed groceries for tonight’s dinner, and also that my sourdough starter hasn’t been fed for over a week. There’s so much that requires a response or needs to get done, and suddenly I’m faced with a choice: ditch my project to tend to the outside world, or attempt to push on while guilt makes a home in my chest.

Neither option is particularly satisfying, but I’m beginning to realize the first one isn’t sustainable—not from a creative standpoint, at least.

The problem is twofold. To start, our economy places a lot of emphasis on productivity and utilitarianism. People need to be useful all the freaking time, and they’d better have something to show for it somewhat regularly. Anything that we find fulfilling or restorative therefore gets pushed to the bottom of the priority list. There seems to be a societal shift bubbling here, some gradual yet encouraging pushback against the idea that humans are machines made purely for function. While some argue that rest and personal fulfillment are important because they make us more productive, others (like myself) believe productivity shouldn’t necessarily be the point in the first place.

Second, we’re more available to one another today than we’ve ever been before. Not only do the phones we carry everywhere make it easy to call, text, email, and DM each other on a whim, but many of us spend all day working at a computer, essentially tethering us to multiple lines of communication for hours on end. This isn’t always a bad thing, but when it comes to honoring our creative time, it isn’t great. How are you supposed to set aside an hour or two after work to draw if your boss can reach out for “follow-ups” and overtime requests whenever they’d like? How can you fully throw yourself into your writing when friends’ and family members’ text messages, though well-intentioned, keep pulling you out of the zone?

The methods by which we communicate aren’t going to change anytime soon. (In fact, thanks to the wacky devices I get to write about for a living, they’re probably going to become even more invasive.) This means it’s up to us to set our own boundaries.

A friend of mine always has their phone on “do not disturb.” I noticed this over time, as our friendship grew: any time I went to send them a message, that little disclosure would be at the bottom of our iMessage conversation. At first I thought it was a little odd, and in a moment of insecurity, I even wondered if it said something about how (un)important my texts were. (A few years ago, I set a New Year’s resolution to take things less personally, and I think I should take a stab at that again by adding it to my 2024 list.)

But I’ve since experienced a few-week period in which I felt so ridiculously overwhelmed and mentally fatigued that I finally put my phone on “do not disturb” for over a week straight. And I get it now. I think, as Star Wars fans and unoriginal Redditors keep saying, that “this is the way.”

There is immense relief in setting the expectation that you are not immediately reachable at all times. By doing so, you’re giving yourself permission to focus on what’s actually immediately important—AKA your creative work. Your creative time starts to morph into a non-negotiable part of your day or week, just like the parts of your life you’ve spent all of your adulthood prioritizing.

To be sure, there are parts of our lives that require immediate attention: kids to pick up from school, looming deadlines to meet, food to pull out of the oven. There are others, however, that can wait a few more minutes—even a few days—before they start to induce real consequences. The laundry can wait. I’ll resume my work tomorrow. Maybe a partner or a roommate can pick up the groceries.

Our creativity deserves to be prioritized. It deserves a promotion from “nice-to-have” to “must-have.” More importantly, we deserve to dive into our craft head-first, without the looming threat of lost productivity pulling us back to the surface.

What’s inspiring me lately:

✰ Wintering, a book by Katherine May about rest and retreat during personally difficult times. I’m only halfway through it, but I’m already finding myself thinking back to its gentle lessons during my day-to-day life.

✰ This poem by Jane Hirschfield:

✰ This passage from a guest post by author Erin Bow on a very old blog: