Sustaining a creative life when the well runs dry
Surviving and learning to thrive amid flood and drought
This past July, for the third year in a row, the part of Vermont where I live was punished with torrential rain and devastating floods. Roads were destroyed; homes, businesses, lives washed away.
When it stopped raining, we had endless sunny days in August, September, and October. Our moods shifted from kid-like summer-vacation joy to delighted disbelief, to concern. We took fewer, shorter showers and bought bottled water to fill our Camelbacks and coffee pot. We let yellow mellow.1
Like most of the state, our county was in severe drought. Felix checked the water levels in our spring-fed well weekly.
Too much. Never enough.
The same can be said about my career reinvention, my midlife reinvention, my post-menopausal becoming—whatever phrase the algorithm prefers these days, it’s all the same.
It’s been seven years since I left my job. Some days my pivot from corporate marketing to creative writing feels light and sunny, and some days there’s a deluge of “shoulds” that nearly washes me away.
I was surprised by my FOMO when I first left my job. It wasn’t the office-mate camaraderie or paychecks that I missed the most; it was the sense of purpose and achievement. I no longer enjoyed doing the work, but at least in a goal-driven, productivity-measuring culture, I could be assured I had value.2
Six months after I quit—no new job title, no business launched, on the surface, nothing accomplished—I watched the cows chewing spring grass in the field behind my house and worried that people might think I’d gone out to pasture.
My fear of not “adding value” stemmed (stems?) from decades of cultural conditioning, working and living in patriarchal systems. Add to that the all-caps messages from the purpose-industrial-complex led by Instagram influencers, myriad self-help podcasters, and the personal development books I listened to on my daily walks.
I only wanted to make a creative life, which in my heart always looked like May Sarton writing in the morning and tending to her New Hampshire garden in the afternoon, or E.B. White plucking out simple, elegant essays on a manual typewriter from a shed near the coast of Maine. But that is not how it goes in the digital age.
You must write every day, and …
You must have a platform! You must develop multiple streams of income! You must make videos, host a podcast, differentiate, and be a valuable contributor to the literary community.
I was all in. Then I was all out. Then I was all in again. I’ve written about the round-and-round so much, there are too many posts to link here. Check out the archive!
Just this summer, I decided to double down on this Substack—rebrand, post more, tack on a few bells and whistles. Ideas and advice were everywhere. If only I would do x and y and z, and, and, and, my success would all but be guaranteed.
It doesn’t rain, but it pours.
In early October, perhaps triggered by the dust that had collected on every windowsill and every page of my untouched manuscript, I cried and ranted to Felix. “I don’t have time for the one thing I want to do! I’ll never finish my book! I’m not writing…. wah, wah, wah.”
Felix had run out of his usual patience. “Figure it out!” He snapped.
I had been whining about this a lot.
You know those movie scenes where someone is flipping out and frozen at the same time until someone slaps them hard across the face and they come instantly to their senses? It was like that (without the physical slap).
I’d let algorithms and a flood of profit-driven promises poison my well. And still, I drank and drank and drank until the well was dry.
A spring is fed from the bottom up. Groundwater flows deep beneath the Earth’s surface, slowly making its way through the soil and traveling along fractures in bedrock. It eventually emerges to feed rivers, ponds, and wetlands—a life source.
Like water, creativity and contentment are natural resources. If cared for, renewable and powerful. If not, then vulnerable to abuse.
Someone else’s definition of purpose or any measure of success that can be charted on a dashboard does not feed a creative, authentic life. Not for me.
The rain returned at the end of October and continued for the first two weeks of November. There’s snow on the ground now, and the well is slowly refilling.
Work hard. Be brave. Believe.
Catherine
p.s. 👇❤️
Call for Guest Essays
I’m incredibly excited about my guest essay series, Moments of Change. I want to platform women’s stories—the real ones, the messy, raw, hilarious stories, revealing stories that validate our feelings and create connection.
Like this one from Maura J. Zimmer ! Can you imagine taking up competitive speed skating in midlife!?
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IYKYK, this water conservation measure. “If it’s brown, flush it down. If it’s yellow, let it mellow.
To quote Don Draper, “that’s what the money is for.”