Defeatist (laudatory) - Why Am I Making This? Issue #31
Hey everybody,
It’s Julien. Artist. Welcome to June/July/August: the Summer Gauntlet. If you’ve been here for a while—and most of you on the newsletter list have—you know this is my least favorite season. But I am cautiously optimistic about this summer on a personal level, because I have a new window AC unit. Last fall I dropped my old (horrible) one out the window when uninstalling it, which was a blessing in disguise. (Nothing was damaged besides the air conditioner and no one was injured.)
You haven’t heard from me since March: I have been enjoying my quarterly newsletter cadence. It has given me a break from overthinking my creative practices and goals or lack thereof. I needed this break very badly (I just skimmed some of my old newsletters and they are DAMNING - I have been saying I need to take a break for two years and have constantly failed to do so). But it is still helpful to me to write a letter to you all every now and again!
I went to the wedding of one of my best friends a few weeks ago. Many members of her family read this newsletter (hi!) and told me at the wedding how much they enjoy it, which I was extremely flattered by. This partially inspired me to write an actual arts-update this month rather than another short note. I will still be on this quarterly pace until September, but I might do monthly newsletters again after that. We’ll see.
This year I think I have finally succeeded in removing almost all pressure from myself in terms of creative pursuits. This total removal of pressure is probably temporary, and I’m fine with that, but it’s been a good and needed break.
I’m not sure how to segue into the title of this newsletter, but in the spirit of removing pressure from myself, I will simply not come up with a neat segue. I have been thinking a lot about how, like the Pokémon ARCHEOPS, I have the ability DEFEATIST, which lowers all my stats by half when I am below half-HP.
In all seriousness, I am a pretty defeatist person, which I think is why I tend to give up on my creative projects. (I have done this over and over; with my video game ideas, with rug-making, with painting and making a “body of work”, the list goes on and on.) When the going gets tough, I just give up.
Honestly, I’m not mad about it. I seem to have this combination within myself of being an ambitious person who is also quite lazy and would rather not do much of anything. Being ambitious gets me into situations where I am miserable because I need to do too much work, and being defeatist gets me out of those situations, which is a good thing for my general well-being.
A friend of mine was recently pondering how to deal with feeling burned out at work while also enjoying having responsibility for important projects. A difficult situation. I am never in this situation, because I do not enjoy having responsibility for important projects. In fact, I gave up on a professional pursuit of one of the things I cared most about (studying philosophy) because it was too important to me, and having responsibility surrounding it was not enjoyable. (My HP was lowered to below half and I became useless in battle.) DEFEATIST strikes again.
I do sometimes have lingering regret about all the things I have given up on. But ultimately I think I give up when I’m making myself unhappy, which is a good thing. And giving up isn’t permanent, either. So it’s really all fine. Even in my unpressured creative state, I’ve been doing creative things, just… only things that I feel pulled to do by my whims, and nothing that I feel like I “should” do. I’ve gone to a bunch of life drawing sessions and I think I’m finally not too bad at drawing people, which is very exciting to me.
But mostly, I’ve been making a lot of useless pottery. I stick with pottery through good times and bad because there is a long waiting list to rejoin my pottery studio if I give up my membership, so I keep going.
This has been a huge blessing, because I just make a bunch of random stuff even when I’m not inspired because I need to use up the 25 pounds of clay that I get bimonthly with the pottery studio membership. Now that I have decided not to care about making things that people might want (such as mugs, useful dinnerware, etc), I have gone back to my real bread and butter, the thing I love making most in pottery: small illustrated pinch bowls.
In the past month or two I have made about 40 tiny pinch bowls. Sometimes I hear that voice in my head saying I “should” make something more useful or that I should try to improve my skills, actually learn to throw properly, etc etc. Thinking about doing any of that makes me feel tired, so I let defeatism take over and immediately give up on making anything useful and just make a bunch more pinch bowls. Frankly, this rules.
Here’s a bunch of photos of the pinch bowls.
Talk to you in September.
Love, Julien
P.S. Silksong isn’t out yet. Fingers crossed it’ll still be out in 2023.