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personal work
May. 10th, 2026 03:58 pmOriginally posted on BlueSky from user Matheus Graef (omiosures.bsky.social):
"personal work is oxygen to the artist. it's non negotiable. like exercising or going on walks a few times a week is a basic necessity to humans. if you forgo the bare minimum for too long, you will crash & burn so pick up the pencil today, now even, and draw something just for you."
I've been thinking about this for the past couple of days, and I think it perfectly encapsulates the issue I've been having with my writing over the last several years. In short, my brain is stuck thinking that EVERY creative thing I work on, whether it's Theadia, a new story idea, a doodle, my daily 750 Words, whatever, has felt like work.
And when everything feels like work, as A recently said, that's when I start getting the Don't Wannas. And I've been getting them hard lately.
The problem is that I've understood this for a long time, and yet every time I want to just do something just for the fun of it -- draw a map, noodle on my guitar or bass, whatever it is -- I start feeling as though I'm overwhelmed with deadlines, assigned reading, and writing term papers I should have started weeks ago.
I think somewhere along the way it just defaulted to that, and I never got around to fixing it because it worked for me all this time. When I started taking my writing seriously in the mid-90s, I had to look at it that way, otherwise I'd have been too easily distracted. I kind of saw it as my 'career' outside of my 'day job' as it were, and I needed to make sure I focused on that if I wanted to make anything out of it. By the time I was writing A Division of Souls, it worked perfectly as a way for me to get this big project done with a daily writing schedule.
Thing is, it's not working these days; in fact it's doing quite the opposite. It could be age and maturity, it could be the distraction of the internets, or it could be frustration that I feel like I'm often repeating myself. Everything feels like a chore or a possible self-published project, and it feels like I've forgotten how to just, y'know... have fun with it. Draw those maps not because I feel the need to be creative, but because I just feel like whiling away the time listening to music and just doodling for no other reason.
So how do I make this happen? Good question.
Maybe I need to make a concerted effort to do things offline, off the computer. Like playing solitaire with a real deck of cards. Like longhand writing. Like sketching. Like learning a new song on my guitar or on my bass. Like catching up on my reading.
Maybe I need to make a concerted effort to rethink how I approach my creativity and just DO it without any plans of releasing it.
Maybe I need to get back to the original motto: just shut the f*ck up and DO it.
"personal work is oxygen to the artist. it's non negotiable. like exercising or going on walks a few times a week is a basic necessity to humans. if you forgo the bare minimum for too long, you will crash & burn so pick up the pencil today, now even, and draw something just for you."
I've been thinking about this for the past couple of days, and I think it perfectly encapsulates the issue I've been having with my writing over the last several years. In short, my brain is stuck thinking that EVERY creative thing I work on, whether it's Theadia, a new story idea, a doodle, my daily 750 Words, whatever, has felt like work.
And when everything feels like work, as A recently said, that's when I start getting the Don't Wannas. And I've been getting them hard lately.
The problem is that I've understood this for a long time, and yet every time I want to just do something just for the fun of it -- draw a map, noodle on my guitar or bass, whatever it is -- I start feeling as though I'm overwhelmed with deadlines, assigned reading, and writing term papers I should have started weeks ago.
I think somewhere along the way it just defaulted to that, and I never got around to fixing it because it worked for me all this time. When I started taking my writing seriously in the mid-90s, I had to look at it that way, otherwise I'd have been too easily distracted. I kind of saw it as my 'career' outside of my 'day job' as it were, and I needed to make sure I focused on that if I wanted to make anything out of it. By the time I was writing A Division of Souls, it worked perfectly as a way for me to get this big project done with a daily writing schedule.
Thing is, it's not working these days; in fact it's doing quite the opposite. It could be age and maturity, it could be the distraction of the internets, or it could be frustration that I feel like I'm often repeating myself. Everything feels like a chore or a possible self-published project, and it feels like I've forgotten how to just, y'know... have fun with it. Draw those maps not because I feel the need to be creative, but because I just feel like whiling away the time listening to music and just doodling for no other reason.
So how do I make this happen? Good question.
Maybe I need to make a concerted effort to do things offline, off the computer. Like playing solitaire with a real deck of cards. Like longhand writing. Like sketching. Like learning a new song on my guitar or on my bass. Like catching up on my reading.
Maybe I need to make a concerted effort to rethink how I approach my creativity and just DO it without any plans of releasing it.
Maybe I need to get back to the original motto: just shut the f*ck up and DO it.
