Listening to Creative Longing, Neil Diamond Style

I’m longing to create. And, as a practical person, I’m not sure what that means.

Let’s be clear: I create a lot. I’m interrogated nightly with ‘What’s for dinner?’ and answer with shrimp tacos or chili. I craft multi-day leadership development programs for clients, I’ve turned pool noodles into fruit loops for a halloween costume, and I’ve even (brace for shameless plug) co-authored a children’s book with my kids.

But this is a creative longing of a different variety. With creative endeavors to-date, I’ve felt like the lead singer for the Neil Diamond tribute band, Super Diamond, donning the sequined, tassled shirt and emulating a baritone to deliver a high-quality experience to a crowd. It feels great. I’m good at performing, at leveraging and promoting other people’s creative work. Argyris’ Ladder of Inference and Snowden’s Cynefin model are my go-to tools to help leaders navigate complex interpersonal dynamics. I follow a Damn Delicious recipe for those crowd-pleasing tacos and Pinterest savants give me step-by-step instructions to guarantee crafting success. But this new creative longing is compelling me to write my own Sweet Caroline and Forever in Blue Jeans.

After decades of accumulating knowledge, consuming content, and accessing mentorship to proudly replicate what’s already been done, my yearning is now elbowing its way in and demanding answers to questions like, ‘What’s all my doing and learning adding up to? What do I see differently that can be of use to others? How can I uniquely express what I know now and why it matters? How is my personal story infinitely universal and worthy of being told? What’s the mark I’m here to leave?’

I don’t know how to answer these questions because I’m not sure what I want to create (shockingly, it’s not actually 1970’s pop). I tell myself that a true ‘creative’ or ‘artist’ - someone who effortlessly arranges wildflowers as host gifts, finds gems vintage clothes shopping, curates charcuterie boards with an eye towards color and shape, and appreciates the fine craftsmanship of an antique armoire - would make space to let inspiration emerge and then they’d boldly tell the world what new medium has answered their call. But I fill space with to-dos and answer calls that contribute to my revenue, ignoring my longing’s recurrent whispers and staying stuck in a swirl.

I’m also not certain that pursuing my currently unclear, not entirely necessary, vague creative pursuit would be ‘worth it.’ I like creating when the purpose is clear and attainable: nourish my family, earn an income, nail it for halloween. Do I really want to get up at 5am, miss a morning workout (which will contribute to further perimenopausal decline according to Dr. Stacy Sims), and commit to the Artist’s Way’s morning pages before the chaos of the day begins, only to discover I'm too tired to create much of anything? Am I really going to somehow find time to start a podcast which requires me to buy equipment, speak into the abyss, and hope 2-4 listeners find me in the saturated marketplace? Does it make sense for me to curate a TEDx talk about being in relationship with humans when we all know Susan and Esther have researched the shit out of the topic and nailed it on stage? Will my efforts be ‘worth it?’

Honestly, I’m not sure.

But, it reminds me of my favorite Zen story written in the gorgeously watercolored children’s book, Zen Shorts. It’s the one about the farmer whose horse runs away. The neighbors pity his loss and tell him, ‘Such bad luck,’ and he simply responds, ‘Maybe.’ Later, his horse returns to him accompanied by three wild horses and now the neighbors exclaim, ‘How wonderful!’ And the farmer, again, responds, ‘Maybe.’ The story keeps going with incidents that are seemingly bad but enable good things to happen, and ones that are good but enable bad. Since we can’t know for sure if lucky breaks or adversity are how they seem, the moral of the story is: maybe it’ll work out, maybe it won’t, but keep chugging along nonetheless.

If I layer the wisdom of Zen on my life I recognize that maybe the discipline of morning pages would annoy the shit out of me because I’ve got major discipline fatigue as a working mom. But maybe it would be the best part of my day. It’s likely true my podcast wouldn’t garner the attention or revenue of Julia’s (who’s infinitely wiser than me), but maybe, through the rigor of recording, I’d find my voice in unexpected ways. Maybe I’ll never navigate through the black box that is TED and find an audience, but maybe some talk I write will morph into a workshop I create and I’ll learn my creative longing never intended me and TED to partner in the first place. Maybe.

So I find myself in what I call ‘maybe purgatory’ where I vacillate between being profoundly inspired and utterly demoralized by creative pursuits depending on how much sleep I’ve gotten.

To claw my way out of purgatory, I’ve found the best mechanism is to notice where I’m seething with envy. And, as it turns out, I seethe a lot.

I’m seething with envy at my friend, most recently a VP of engineering. She’s using the time and freedom a recent layoff afforded her to write a romance novel with a menopausal protagonist who my friend’s been conjuring up for years in her imagination. She joined a writer’s group, investigated agents, and has been using intimate moments with her partner to clarify which subtle movements of the head or hands amplify sexual tension. Damn her for seeing a niche opportunity in the book industry, for believing she’s the one to bring her character to life, and for being giddy with curiosity about the process, not the destination. So envious.

And I’m envious of another friend. A recent deep dive into his ancestry surfaced questions without answers and obscure family lore. He began to see a TV series coming together in his mind that somehow combined history, horror, and satire. Library of Congress visits and family interviews led to late-night writing sessions and a 13 episode season outline that he’s looking to showrun and produce. Can you believe the gall? There’s the courage to believe that this story will find an audience and the conviction that he is the one to get it on screen. Desperately envious.

Or there’s the woman I used to work with whose professional life has followed a similar trajectory to mine. She‘s fascinated with all dimensions of human behavior and has used her training to help people listen and learn from each other more skillfully. She wrote a book that popped up in my Good Reads recommendations because the algorithm knows this content is my jam. What it doesn’t know is that I could have, should have, would have written THAT book. And, in turn, I could have, should have, would have been on book tours, done university commencement addresses, and been on global conference stages giving keynotes. How dare she do the thing I’ve been threatening to do, but haven’t done or made any efforts towards, and reap the deserved (but not guaranteed) rewards? Really envious.

If we tune into the nuances of our envy, I believe it can suffocate us with shame or be a portal to our aliveness. When I’m brave enough to be with it, my creative longing’s whispers get louder and walk the maddening tightrope of being both specific and mysterious. So, creative longing, it sounds like you want me to write what I’m honestly feeling and coming to know, share it widely to feel expanded human connection, not give a shit what the outcome is (because that’s a certain creativity killer), and embody courage and wonder in new ways. Got it.

Listening to my envy doesn’t cure my writer’s block, alleviate self-doubt, give me more hours in the day, or make a creative playbook appear in my inbox. It does, however, offer a few additional breadcrumbs to follow on an unfolding journey that has no clear destination. And, ignoring it may guarantee I become an unfulfilled Mary Oliver cliché:

“The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.”

I trust I’m not alone in my creative longings, that others also struggle with the gratification and grief of performing others’ lyrics when unwritten melodies are brewing within us. And I trust that many of us grapple with the tension between our deep longing and limited capacity or confidence, between our ‘creative uprising’ and our need to make an income. There’s no dearth of demands that keep us focused on tribute band responsibilities and the courage to be creative doesn’t guarantee Sweet Caroline-level success. It’s no wonder we dampen the longing. But I think amplifying it does guarantee more connection to our deepest selves. So while there’s no seamless or assured transition from cover band to my own band, I want to pay attention to envy and honor the wonder my longing’s yapping at me to embrace - because then maybe, one blog post at a time, I’ll find my way. Maybe.

(In other news, if anyone’s game for a fun night out, Super Diamond’s showtimes listed here!)