NOW WHAT?
EPISODE 018: NOW WHAT?
Inevitably we all get to a point, hopefully frequently enough, when we finish what we’re working on, and we let it go, and we’re left with a hollow space, an emptiness that leaves us asking, “Well, now what?” What do you do then? Let’s talk about it.
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FULL TRANSCRIPT
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about endings, specifically that feeling that comes when whatever you’re working on or even whatever phase of life you’re at, ends. When you get to the end of the pavement on a project and you ship it and you’re standing at the edge of the ragged unknown, looking into the vast land in front of you and thinking, Well now what?
I’ve had more moments like this than I care to admit. I remember feeling it when I knew my comedy career was winding up, when the joy had left and I’d started to feel a new hunger, for something more but…what? I’ve felt it at the end of relationships, or most recently at the passing of my father a year ago, and I’m left with this empty feeling, like the presence of an absence. I feel it now too, after identifying as a humanitarian and travel photographer for a dozen years, I’m now feeling like the tide has changed. I’m not sure I want to keep getting on airplanes and spending weeks on end in places that feel less and less like home. But if not that, then what? I have nothing but speculations and suspicions, a collection of maybes and what ifs. This podcast is one of them. So is the book I’m writing right now. But after years of coming to this familiar place, this liminal space which isn’t quite an end and isn’t quite a beginning, I’ve got some ideas.
I’m David duChemin, and this is episode 18 of A Beautiful Anarchy. Let’s talk about it.
Music / Intro
Every time I finish a book or a project, or launch some new thing, there’s this wonderful moment of release, a mixed feeling of relief and joy, and a bit of loss too, knowing that the thing I’d worked on so hard, that has consumed my thoughts and even my affections, as well as my scorn, at times, was gone. Like this constant companion with whom I worked for months or even years has just vanished. There’s something quite wonderful about seeing the work of your hands, heart, and mind, go out into the world, when it stops being just a possibility in your mind and becomes a tangible thing. An album, a book, a painting, that new thing to which you can sign your name. But if I’m right in saying this feels like release, I think it's often followed with an anti-climactic sense of being without an anchor, like the boat’s been untied from the dock and it could just drift forever if you let it. The freedom very quickly gets replaced by something less desirable. I don’t know if you can identify with this. This is the problem with you and I being so separated by time and space. If we were sharing a drink or a meal I could see your head nodding in agreement, or the look in your eyes that says “this guys needs medicating”
But I’m going to gamble that it’s similar with you, that you and I aren’t so different. I’m going to assume that you’ve been there before, asking “What now?” No matter what you make in your creative life, there is an equivalent of the blank page. It is a daunting thing for something so simple and empty. I think it’s the emptiness that makes it so. When it’s empty there is so much possibility, but the moment you put your first mark on it you say, I’m starting here. Of all the places I could begin, I choose to start here. And from that moment on, each choice feels like a movement into fewer possibilities and each move carries with it the risk that it won’t be the right move. So we end up sitting there, chewing the end of the pencil thinking, “What should I do now?” or "Where do I go from here?”
Assuming you’d rather be moving forward than stalled there with your angst and that feeling you get in a dream when you’re trying to run but you can’t get your legs to move, like you’re up to your waist in butterscotch pudding, the answer to those questions is “where do you want to go?” and if that’s not clarifying, how about “where is your curiosity leading you?” These days the standard reply seems to be “follow your passion!” but I’m beginning to believe that passion is a fuel, not a direction. Passion is a kind of momentum, but it’s not a point on the compass. So it’s not particularly good advice. It’s freeing, but not helpful.
There are better ways to determine your trajectory, and so much of it depends on our personality and the point we’re at in our career and life. Circumstance, too. It’s amazing how our plans change on a dime. In 2011 I had all kinds of 5 and 10 year plans, and then I had an accident in Italy, and shattered my feet and it all pivoted so quickly. Suddenly my plans for the coming months and years all got scuttled, and I was lying in a hospital bed thinking “now what?” And my questions changed from following my passion to considering my possibilities.
Possibilities are points on a compass. What’s truly possible right now is a good start when asking “What next?” because my passion, lying there in that bed, the thing that I most wanted was to be walking down the street on any corner of any city in the world rather than lying there hoping the nurse wouldn’t trip on my catheter tube again. But that wasn’t going to happen, not then, so what could I do? I could write. I could write all day long, or as long as the painkillers let me before things got all head-foggy. And in that time I wrote some of my most heart-felt articles, and a book that was mostly coherent. Given the drugs I was on, I call that a win.
But it’s not always so clear, our possibilities often seem less obviously constrained by circumstances and I’d argue that can be a more helpless feeling, creatively speaking, than being stuck in the bed from which I couldn’t move. The constraint of being in that bed, the decision made for me, was tremendously freeing in terms of my creativity. So if you’re asking, “what are my possibilities?” and the answers are too many to be useful, then consider better questions.
I don’t want to tell you which questions to ask, but “where am I needed most right now?” or “where can I bring the most value?” might be a good start. “What would I start right now if failure weren’t an option?” is another. What one thing can’t you stop thinking about? What one project scares you the most or demands the most of you? Start steering in that direction.
All of those might be clarifying questions, in the sense that they might give you hints about possible next steps. But here’s the thing: I suspect it probably doesn’t matter where you decide to begin, as much as it matters that you begin. That boat I mentioned, the one in which we can feel adrift at times, it needs to be moving to steer it. So start anywhere. Put the brush on the canvas, write a first line, put as many irons into the fire as you can and see which one burns brightest and excites you the most. We often cling to this notion that we need to know where we’re heading in order to get there, but if we wait until we know where we’re heading, many of us will never get out the front door. Furthermore it’s just not how the creative process works, iterative and evolutionary as it is.
We’re so bent out of shape about what the next step is that we forget how speculative this all is. And if you take that step and it leads to a dead end, better that you get there, find that out, and change course with some speed. But don’t get in a flap about it being a mistake, it’s just a detour and it could contain the piece you’re missing right now to head in the direction that will eventually feel right.
If you’re feeling directionless right now, you’re not alone. I don’t mean that in an abstract way. I’m right there with you, I’m not exactly drifting, I’m heading somewhere, because I’m doing my work, daily sitting down to write. Making my recordings. Making photographs. The boat’s in motion but do I know where? I don’t.
I’m at a place of transition right now and asking “What next?” often enough that it’s starting to feel like a mantra. But I’m not asking it helplessly, and I’m not waiting until I have answers before I get moving because it’s only in doing the work and exploring the places that work brings me to, that I have any daily sense of my progress, and slowly I see hints of direction. Clues of what might be around the corner.
But they are only ever hints. Even when I’m sure I know what’s next, even when I think I’ve got it all figured out. Because we never really know. And you asking the question, “Now what?”is about as honest a question as any artist every asked. But only if you then go looking, step by step, for the possible replies. Waiting for it to come to you is a long wait for a train don’t come.
I wonder why we value certainty so highly and act a little embarrassed by the very idea that what we’re making right now is just play, just some wild and speculative experiment? When did the creative life become so focused on ideas like mastery that we forgot to engage in the kind of play that alone can lead to that mastery?
So much of this is about perspective and the questions we ask ourselves. Could it be that when we say “Now what?” or “What next?” it just not a complete question? Do we mean “now what do I do that’s a guaranteed success? What do I do now that will take a little less risk and bring the most rewards?” Does that more complete question give you a sense of why you’re so paralyzed?
But is that why we create in the first place? To get the most reward for the least work and risk? I don’t know why you do what you do, but I’ve got a feeling it has something to do with the making itself, not because the world needs more photographs but that you need to make them, not because there is a lack of good music, but a lack of yours and the magic is in the discovery. That’s the reward. If that’s the case, the time spent wondering what our next steps might be can be dark and feel lost and drifting.
Here’s a segue for you. They say when you’re feeling thirsty it’s already a little late to start drinking water. You should have been drinking all along. The same is true in creativity. Coming to the end of a project and then thinking, “now what?” with no ideas waiting in the wings to begin playing with, is when we risk losing momentum and all the connections that seem to carry over from project to project, the little sparks that die out if we let them.
This is why your notebooks are so important. Some people keep journals, some use programs like Evernote. I use both. I also use my iPhone camera and make photographs and screenshots all the time. Anything I see is fair game. I use my voice memos too, when it makes sense to, and I clip all of this into this messy collection of thoughts and what-ifs and questions so that when I finish a project I have possibilities waiting for me, the signs of which are often already right there in my journal as I become aware of the approaching end, which by the way, almost never takes me by surprise because I figured out a long time ago that I work best with deadlines. I know it’s not romantic, we like to think the muse can’t be tamed, but I will work her like a rented mule to get my projects done on deadline. I work best that way. A deadline and a production schedule is an excellent constraint for me. What the ending looks like is often so different than what I imagined, but when the ending comes is never a surprise. Unless it’s early, that happens a lot these days as I learn to manage my time better and get more disciplined about doing my work. And if I know when my projects end, I know when the next one begins, and I plan for it. Or I try to. I’m a work in progress as much as the things i make are.
"Now What?” is an invitation to begin something that is yet-unknown, with hesitant, speculative, steps. But to do it now. The word is implied by the question. NOW what? Don’t put it off. The key part isn’t the what, it’s the now. The what will change, it’ll reveal itself to you as you put the first words down, make the first photographs, start the sketches. It doesn’t have to be a good start, it just has to be a start.
Thank you for joining me. If you’re enjoying A Beautiful Anarchy I’d be so grateful if you’d leave a review on iTunes or where you choose to listen. If you’ve got comments or questions I’d love to hear them, you can get in touch by sending an email to talkback@abeautifulanarchy.com. I publish A Beautiful Anarchy 3 weeks out of 4, but you can get your fix on those 4th weeks by subscribing to On The Make, a monthly kick in the creative pants sent straight to your inbox. You can subscribe by going to ABeatifulAnarchy.com, scrolling to the bottom of the page and telling me where to send it. I’ll also send you a copy of my short eBook, Escape Your Creative Rut, 5 Ways to Get Your Groove Back, and every month I’ll draw the name of one subscriber to whom I’ll send a signed copy of my book, A Beautiful Anarchy.
Thanks so much for being part of this, take care.
Music in this episode: Acid Jazz (Kevin Macleod) / CC BY-SA 3.0