Frivolous Friday: Creating for Joy

Last night before I shut down my computer and headed up to bed I decided I was going to publish a post here today no matter what it ended up looking like. I’ve been in a funk of not showing up very well for myself when I set goals lately. I’m working hard to follow through on smaller things I set out to do in order to regain some momentum and trust in my word to myself. I am learning that can’t show up for others like I truly want to until I learn to do so for myself first.

So today, showing up looks like this…

I have loved writing for as long as I can remember and creating in this space has been such a fulfilling experience for me. It must be noted that in my ideal world, I would post here every week. Maybe even more – like two times a week! But for whatever reason, I haven’t been able to make that a reality. I’ve got lots of excuses – and some of them are truly legit. This season of life is chaotic and demanding. Covid and quarantine life have kept me in an unpredictable tailspin from week to week. Most evenings I find myself collapsed on the couch after the kids are tucked into bed – I’m exhausted, burned out, and exasperated.

The last thing I feel capable of doing by then is to wrap my brain around creating words that other adults will be interested in reading!

But as I dig deeper, I am realizing that there are a lot of other underlying things coming to light. Somewhere along the way I seem to have invented some complicated internal pressures surrounding my own personal expectations here. I subconsciously decided that what I create here must be profound, inspiring, relevant, and/or significant in some magically quantitative way. And if my inner critic deems the content here a “miss” for those criteria, then the quality of what I am creating must also be as much.

If you read my August goals post, you know that I’ve been doing some difficult introspective work on my procrastination lately and fears I have that are associated with it – really trying to gain clarity around “why” I procrastinate like I do. One main reason I believe is that the pressures I have invented (mentioned above) have stolen some of my joy of creating in this space. I carry a lot of fears in my back pocket: The fear of not doing enough. The fear of failure. The fear of not being good enough. It is not fun to feel as though your creativity is not profound, inspiring, relevant, and/or significant enough. And when the qualifying markers for “enough” are a mystery (or over-rated!), the expectations to succeed become overwhelming.

So I’m working to create a positive shift here. I want to bring back the joy.

I’m looking to lift the burden of subconscious pressure I have brought upon myself here. I want to give myself permission to write pointless, random, and even shitty posts here if I feel so inclined! Hopefully you’re not reading this thinking, oh great – now she’s TRYING to write shitty posts! Ha! I think what’s important for me here is loosening the reigns and releasing self-imposed restraints that hold me back. To write and share with bold creative abandon. Creating for joy and not worrying about the SEO, the layout or readability, the cohesiveness, how important it is, or even the big picture.

Because creating for joy is actually incredibly important, profound, inspiring, relevant, and significant work.

Frivolous can be defined as not having any serious purpose or value. I would like to hereby deem today “Frivolous Friday” (because I always love a good alliteration!). Let this be an opportunity for all of us to choose to create just for the fun of it. Where the process and the result are not tied to any expectations other than simply JOY.

What better reason is there for us to do what we love?