I’ve spent 5 years of my life primarily focused on one documentary. The intensity of the work ebbed and flowed but for most of 2014-2019 I spent most of my time consumed by this task. I still worked a full-time job, made a bit of space to hang out with my partner and friends, and occasionally did other creative jobs, but in retrospect I can easily identify that I experienced creative burnout once we were done and the film was on the festival circuit.
As we all know, the pandemic made us all zoom lifestyle experts. All business up top, pyjamas below, cats in the background. The number of times I’ve said ‘you are on mute’ peaked in 2020. The privilege of being able to work remotely, while living in a country where life remained relatively safe as long as we stayed home and masked up meant that for a lot of us, we were suddenly faced with a lot of time. The space of the pandemic, removed from the requirement to go out and do things was fraught with the two major directives from social media.
If you don’t come out of this quarantine with either:
— Jeremy Haynes (@TheJeremyHaynes) April 2, 2020
1.) a new skill
2.) starting what you’ve been putting off like a new business
3.) more knowledge
You didn’t ever lack the time, you lacked the discipline
I don't know who needs to hear this, but you don't have to use this time to try to do everything you've always wanted to do ever and you're not a failure if you aren't using this as "extra credit" time.
— René Brooks | Black Girl, Lost Keys | ADHD (@blkgirllostkeys) April 1, 2020
It's a pandemic, not a productivity contest.
It takes time to work out how to function in the world as an artist with no capital. To learn how to set boundaries and keep them. To not accept every job, say yes to every unpaid opportunity for fear that there won’t be another. Am I working because of ‘the man’ or am I working because I want to create? Am I working because there is a global pandemic and I don’t know where my next source of income will be coming from?
When your creative output is both your paid work, but also your passion, it’s quite hard to not always be working. Especially if through your creative practice is how you deal with difficult circumstances. The lack of nuance on Instagram often means we are hearing a false dichotomy as an absolute. You are either a capitalist, workaholic who should be ashamed or an unproductive, pathetic loser who can’t capitalize on the free time.
I read (aka listened to the audio book) How to Not Always Be Working: A Toolkit for Creativity and Radical Self-Care by Marlee Grace which had me all the way up until it started suggesting crystals could help me. That part aside, it did offer some interesting ways to try to extrapolate work from not work. I ended up with long lists of what is work and what I consider not work. The defining characteristic of not work, was that it wasn’t performative or public.
Once I realised 95% of what I was doing outside of sleeping was in the work column, I attempted to move towards a better balance. I think the freedom to create for no one, that wasn’t work, that wasn’t on a deadline or for a client was what finally started letting my creative energy come back. I’ve made some terrible paintings, bad writing, shit photography that won’t see the light of day but it was fun to do and had no value of productivity to it, other than the act itself.
So now, I know how to not work, how to cycle through the shame of being able to work, the desire to work and then actually working and then wanting to never work again. On the other side of the pandemic, after flaggilating myself for not being productive enough I have slowly begun to work on new creative projects.
In one, I’m exploring the relationship between the arts as a mode of healing and the coal industry ravaging a small town that sits on the brink of literal and metaphorical collapse. Another is trying to unpack queer temporality and climate nihilism in a comedy. And another is a horror which is a Videodrome Meets Poppy experimental project with multiple shooting formats.
I’m busy, and as the calendar starts to fill up to its pre-pandemic level I am hoping to be able to retain some of the downtime and nonwork that has been so useful to me. But hey, capitalism is a bitch so for the right price, I’m sure ill pick up my camera and go to work.
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