This episode is dedicated to anyone who ever got their wish...then realized, "this kind of sucks." It's my belief that this is actually a tremendously positive thing, dressed in a very disappointing outfit. Here's my advice on what to do when you're ready to acknowledge something isn't compatible with your happiness- be it an artistic project or a job.
Cheers to terrible first drafts.
Don't go back to sleep.
xoRachel
Sign up here for monthly blasts and functional woo
Find me on Instagram
Support this podcast on Patreon
This episode is dedicated to anyone who ever got their wish...then realized, "this kind of sucks." It's my belief that this is actually a tremendously positive thing, dressed in a very disappointing outfit. Here's my advice on what to do when you're ready to acknowledge something isn't compatible with your happiness- be it an artistic project or a job.
Cheers to terrible first drafts.
Don't go back to sleep.
xoRachel
Sign up here for monthly blasts and functional woo
Find me on Instagram
Support this podcast on Patreon
Welcome to Audacity Works, a podcast inspired by and dedicated to the working artist, the creative entrepreneur and generally doing the damn thing. This exists on the premise that the world belongs to those who have the audacity to believe that their lives have value. This is for you. Welcome to Audacity Works. I'm your host, rachel Strickland, and this is episode number 57, in which we're going to address when to walk away and when to let go of a project or a job or a career. It just wow, that escalated quickly.
Speaker 1:But first let's have a mini celebration, you know, for me, because today marks 14 whole days that I have been without nicotine. Well, that's not true. I'm on a patch, but without inhaling, you know, harmful, harmful chemicals and vapors into my lungs. For those of you who did not tune in, last week I quit vaping, which is my very favorite thing, or it was, and now I don't do that anymore, and if you've ever quit something that you were massively addicted to, you will know that it's a bizarre turn of events. I got some really nice messages about this from several of you also. Thank you, thanks for thank you for that. I really appreciate it. And so here's something fun. So I'm on the patch. Right, it's going fine Most of the time. I don't hate everyone or everything Sometimes I do, but most of the time I'm feeling pretty good, right.
Speaker 1:But nicotine patches are born generally 24 hours a day and they give you it, says. It's well known that it gives you vivid dreams. But I'm going to say that's incorrect. It doesn't give you vivid dreams, it gives you fucking nightmares. So that's been interesting and I knew this because I've tried this before. I take the patch off before I go to sleep, but there's still. It still happens. It's not nearly as intense as it was when I used to sleep with it on. Why did I do that? I don't know. I think I didn't sleep well for like three months while I was wearing the patch last time, but I just. I find it so interesting because nicotine is a stimulant and even though I take the patch off before I go to sleep now, I'm still having crazy vivid dreams. They do start out more nightmarish at the beginning and it's because, because of the nicotine stimulating your brain, that your brain can't quite tell that it's totally asleep. So your memory keeps working and you know some people use it to lucid dream.
Speaker 1:I don't recommend it. I really don't, if you want to be lucid dreaming, go. I don't. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do about that, but the nicotine patch is probably not your best bet. If I know you and we've ever met in person I've probably had a nightmare about you in the past two weeks and there's what's happening on the nicotine patch. So I just wanted to report that. But things are going well. In spite of that, in spite of the technicolor cave of horrors that occurs in my brain every night, I'm feeling pretty good. So thanks for checking in about that.
Speaker 1:So today's kind of like a two parter request that I got from my friends Mira and Chris. Mira wrote in I that she wanted an episode about how to handle it when you finally commit to doing the art thing you always thought you wanted to do, but then you realize you don't really want to do the work. Like, you get there, you get into the room, you get the opportunity, you're like we're going to do this big art thing a lifelong dream and then you realize it's a serious reality check on what kind of work you enjoy and how you like to work. Mira actually included a really good metaphor. I'm going to read it to you exactly the way that she wrote it to me. Mira writes like when you think you're in love with someone you've never met for years even, and you've built them up in your head. Your cozy home and your children are all there in your head, happily ever after, just waiting for you to get up the courage to ask. And then you finally start hanging out with them and they're actually totally into you and the dreams are possible. But you inconveniently realize that they are boring or dumb as fuck or at best incompatible with your happiness. And I really like the way Mira said that when something proves, at best it's incompatible with your happiness. It's a very useful quote, and happiness isn't a word that I find very useful, but I appreciate how Mir is using it in this context. It's like, in the true sense, happiness isn't well-being.
Speaker 1:Now, this is the macrocosm, and we're going to go into a microcosm later with Chris's specific question. But let's take this macrocosm right. You have, you're going into this big endeavor, something that you've probably wanted to do for a long time. You finally start doing it and the work you don't like doing it. You're like, well, actually it kind of sucks. I don't like it. It's not that it's bad, it's just not for me.
Speaker 1:Now, the first thing that you're likely to feel in this situation is, very understandably, disappointment. So I reckon that you're feeling disappointed very, very natural thing to feel and I hope that pretty close on the heels of that disappointment you feel relief, because once you have a realization like this like it can be painful to to, to admit to yourself this thing that I thought was good, it's not that good. That can hurt and there can be plenty of denial around that. But once we've actually gotten there and we're admitting I don't like this, I hope that you can feel relief and that you let yourself feel relief and that you don't, you know, waste too much time trying to blame yourself for wanting yourself to be different in some way. Whatever it's your response, your response is valid. You don't like something. You don't like something. That's fine. So I hope that on the tail end of the disappointment comes a flood of relief, because understanding and acknowledging that something is incompatible with your happiness frees you. It frees you. You are now free to choose something else that is more compatible with your happiness. Congratulations, it's kind of like getting rejected. Congratulations, you're not going to go do that thing. Let's do something else, let's find something else that's a better fit.
Speaker 1:And I think it could be useful here to get a little bit clinical about what it is. What it is about the experience that you don't jive with like this. This isn't sustainable for me. I don't think I could do this for five years and be continuously. You know well, the whole time I think I'd resent the work eventually.
Speaker 1:What is it specifically? Let's get real specific about the work that you don't like. I think, because humans, as humans, we have this strong propensity for categorizing things and putting things in boxes. I know I do and I know I can get a little overzealous with it. Sometimes you're like well, I didn't like doing this thing, so all everything about this must be bad for me and I should choose something completely the opposite in every way. And that might not be true if I took the time to get clinical and be like what about this experience? What about this work and the utility of this work doesn't work for me. And also, what about this does work for me? What are the elements of this experience that I do enjoy? At the very least, consider it an opportunity to get to know yourself more intimately and in ways that you probably would not have gotten to know yourself if you hadn't had this experience and if you hadn't been disappointed.
Speaker 1:This reminds me of this is a Bradley quote. You know an Uncle Bradley quote. Again, something was going on in Bradley's life that he was profoundly unhappy with. He was disappointed, he was angry. So he it's actually a Madison quote he called his brother, my other uncle Madison, and was complaining, and after he complained for a while, he listened for Madison's response. And Madison's response was well, it appears, you have an opportunity to grow. And Brad was very pissed off by that response. He's like rude first, first of all rude, and yet then he saw the wisdom in it and has since repeated it to me thousands of times throughout my life. So thank you, bradley and thank you Madison. And while we're at it, I'll give you an even better quote that is very similar.
Speaker 1:This one is a Bradley original and it's after you're complaining about something, telling about an experience that wasn't so great, bradley will look you dead in the eye and say well, besides that, mrs Lincoln, how was the play? Oh, gallows humor. Oh, I don't care, it's so good, oh, it's so funny. So that was a tangent, but the summary is you get to know yourself better. This is always a good thing, right? It's always good to know more about yourself, not always pleasant, but always, you know, beneficial in the long run. You I'm going to tell you a story now.
Speaker 1:There was a period of time after I was involved in an automobile accident around 2014, which I completely lost the use of my left arm for a while, and you know I rehabbed it over a long period of time, but during that period of time, I had to seriously consider that I might never do Ariel again, and I was a full-time artist. I was a full-time performer as well. My entire identity was so, so deeply entrenched in being a performer and being a full-time working artist that the idea of changing that lifestyle was horrifying. But I was also being forced to consider that as a very real possibility. I didn't know how my arm was going to heal, and one of the things that I considered was going into chiropractic.
Speaker 1:I think I've mentioned on this podcast before that my dad is a chiropractor. I was raised by a chiropractor. He is a soft tissue chiropractor, which is not a thing, by the way. That's not what chiropractic is, but you know he's been practicing for 43 years. So he does what he wants and he's absolutely genius at it and has created a lot of techniques that are proprietary to him. And I knew, like I've always been so fascinated by what he does and I would, you know, I would try to remember things that he did when he treated me and I'd ask him way too many questions. I'm sure it was annoying as shit, but I just I wanted to learn everything about it.
Speaker 1:And then I was at this weird stalled-out point in my life like maybe I'll go to chiropractic school, I can learn chiropractic, then I can learn what dad does, and maybe I can do that and I'll just and that will be my new life. And I was pretty serious about this possibility. I visited Palmer chiropractic in the San Jose area of California. I was in frequent communication with their admissions officer. He was a really nice man and he gave me a personalized tour of the campus, which was beautiful, you know, gave me all this free shit, like a flash drive that was branded and stuff like that. So I did get pretty far down the rabbit hole.
Speaker 1:But when it came down to it, the reason that I didn't pursue chiropractic wasn't the hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. That didn't really worry me, but it was the idea of actually being a practicing doctor that I didn't like. It's almost like I wanted the knowledge but I didn't want to be a doctor. It's like saying that I wanted to become a physical therapist, just so I would know how to treat myself, my friends and my family, but I wouldn't actually want to be a physical therapist in practice and that wasn't going to work out for me. Like if I was going to go to chiropractic school and be $250,000 in debt to be a doctor of chiropractic, yeah, afterwards you're going to need to be a doctor of chiropractic. And that was the final reason was like I don't actually want to do the work, I just want the knowledge and that's not going to work out. So, as you know, I did not become a chiropractor.
Speaker 1:By the way, my dad was very relieved that I did not follow in his footsteps. He didn't want me to, in case you were wondering, but I did not have the forethought at the time to be clinical about my decision. It was kind of like a big Wide-view lens looking at my life and my possible futures and like, well, nope, I don't want to be a chiropractor. So let's just continue being a working artist for another decade, maybe longer, maybe forever, let's see who can tell. And I wish now, looking back on it, that I had been a little more clinical With that choice and like what about this?
Speaker 1:Do I specifically not want to do, and what are elements of this that are Exciting to me and that could have been good information? But you know I I didn't do that at the time, I was 30. So let's say that you're in this situation and you've realized I don't like this work. This isn't as good as I thought it was going to be. What do you do? Well, hopefully you can free yourself from that situation, because there's no reason to make yourself miserable doing work that you don't like doing. But what if there are Are extenuating circumstances? Well, those are going to need to be negotiated with.
Speaker 1:Now there are the way of looking at being under contract is. It tends to be pretty black and white, like, well, you need to finish out the contract, and I tend to be more on that side of things. I err more on the side of I want to fill. I want to fulfill what I have, I've promised to do in the contract, what I'm contractually obligated to do. But I I don't think that that's always a good idea and it's only because, like I've had I've had students, I've had friends who've confided in me. Like this contract that I'm in la sucks, like I am miserable, I don't like the environment, I don't like the way that we're being treated and they would ask me for my advice. Like I don't know what to tell you, like you're gonna have to make a choice For yourself on whether to finish out this contract or not or to break the contract. And Most of them broke the contract and I was just like a little bit like I. I hope this doesn't affect you poorly in the long run. It didn't, it didn't. Sometimes my friends and my students are just braver and cooler than me and no better. In this case, my black and white thinking about contracts Might not have led me to the best place, but they weren't afraid of it and they did it anyway and Ended up being the best things for them in all cases that I can remember. Remember all cases that I can remember. So that's really the macrocosm, like big cosmic things that are happening. I want to take this to a microcosm level now.
Speaker 1:My friend Chris wrote in a really similar question, right? When do you know when it's time to finally let go of a project, detaching yourself from something that hasn't gone anywhere? Chris goes on to say this comes from me working on a pinata for a week. I'm not happy with it. I woke up at 3am this morning to realize I've over complicated the whole thing and I should just trash it and make the easier, more fulfilling one I have in mind. I know it's time to let go and stop pouring my effort into attempting to make it better. End quote. So Chris totally answered her own question. Right, there was nothing but conviction at the end of that story.
Speaker 1:She doesn't say she woke up at 3am, you know, chewing her lips off in anxiety about whether or not to start over. No, she says I woke up at 3am to realize I've over complicated the damn thing. It wasn't an anxiety, it was a realization. She already had the answer and somehow conviction does tend to visit us at 3am, which is sublimely irritating, but it it's also pretty useful. There's a utility in that. So Chris totally does not need my help with this question. She already knew. She knew at 3am. The realization was there, the knowledge was there. It wasn't really a question. It was a knowing, and luckily, chris trusts herself and she trusts her instincts, at least in this situation, strongly enough that she already knew what to do and she knew she needed to start over. And at the end she sent me a picture of the pinata that she did end up making and it was a hundred times better than the one that she decided ultimately to give up on. But she trusted her instincts and that was the right call. Now, what would have happened if she kept working on the? I don't know. I don't know who cares, it's not what happened, so we don't have to worry about it.
Speaker 1:Now, and this was a very lovely microcosm where it gets tricky for me personally, as when projects have been going on for a while. Take books, for example. I have several friends who have written books, whole-ass books y'all and then ultimately decided to start over from the beginning and write the book all over again. And me having the issues that I do have with being consistent with my own creative writing not talking about morning pages, I'm talking about actually getting things written down in book format and to me, to someone with my challenges around that, the idea of just trashing an entire book and starting over from the beginning was bonkers. I was like what are you, are you sure? Are you sure you want to do it? You can't salvage anything Like no, it would be too complicated. I learned a lot from writing the first draft and it's time to just. I want to start over, get the new draft done.
Speaker 1:And there was so much conviction in what it was that they were saying that I was the one having anxiety for them. They didn't have anxiety about it, they had already decided, they had made the decision. They had a realization, they had conviction. I didn't, and for me to inject doubt into the situation would have helped no one. So they trusted their conviction and I trusted them. And then I got to read the final version of the novel and you know what? It was a fucking triumph. I didn't read the first version of that novel. I do have another friend who a totally different friend, totally different novel wrote the first version of the novel. I loved it Completely, rewrote it, made a whole new version of the novel. I didn't like the second version of the novel. Does that mean it was the wrong call? Of course not. That's my opinion. That's just my opinion as a reader who cares. If you want to start over, start over. If you want to walk away from a project, walk away from that project.
Speaker 1:I think I've mentioned before that our ideas of failure, and in this culture, are bizarre. Like a couple can be married for 30 years and then they get divorced and we call it a failed marriage. That is bananas. That is bananas. 30 years is not a failure. 30 years is not a failure. What something has to last in perpetuity, forever, for it to have any value? No, don't think so. So I think if we can be aware of that and keep that in mind as we zoom out and look at our lives with a wide angle lens, then we can make better choices, and not out of some nonsense like, oh, I don't want it to be a failure, stop it.
Speaker 1:You better be thanking your lucky stars for every failure you have had the good fortune to come across, every divorce, every first draft you had to trash, every humiliation that you had on stage. Honestly, those things are not as much fun to live through as a triumph, but like they just teach you so much more and you get to know yourself more and you get to understand your discipline and your craft so much more when you fuck things up and when you realize this wasn't a good fit. Tend to get a lot more useful data out of that kind of situation. So, in summation, whether it's a microcosm project or macrocosm big, big project or a career, go ahead and feel relief or feel whatever it is that you're feeling, but hopefully you'll feel some relief as well. Number two get clinical about what are the aspects of this that you actually did like, what did work for you and what are specifically the aspects that did not work for you. Let's get data and you know. Finally, congratulations, this is good news. It might not feel good, but it is good news. It's good things to know, looking at the time.
Speaker 1:Now I'm going to wrap this up, I wanted to say thank you, thanks for letting me talk into your ear. We're going to be recording guest episodes soon and I'm lining those up for December and January and we'll then trot them out slowly. But if you have requests, whether it's just solo, just me myself, or request for guest episodes, I'm always happy to hear from you. I am on Instagram at Rachel Strickland Creative, or on Patreon at Rachel Strickland Creative, and I got to say a shout out to my patrons, thank you so much for standing with me and making this and so much more possible for me and for the work that I put out into the world. Thank you Until next time, my friends. Congratulations on your shitty first drafts and don't go back to sleep.