You know what I love? Making up words. My fave right now: ‘Procrastowomble’. A hybrid between procrastination and womble (in case that wasn’t obvious).
The thing about procrastowombling is that you are, in fact, doing something supremely useful. You aren’t just procrastinating and you aren’t just wombling. What you’re doing is pootling* with purpose. Procrastowombling.
procrastowomble
verb NZ 🔉pro-crast-o-wom-bell.
A necessary part of the creative process where one looks to be doing nothing but is, in fact, marinating, cogitating, ideating in a Very Important Way and should be left alone in silence with tea and biscuits.
And this is why I love the made up words. We get to decide what they mean.
Which brings me to another that could do with some tinkering:
Professional.
Now that’s a word that gets our creative neurons in a twist like a bunch of springtime spritzy llamas.
And even though we might throw our hands up and say, “what even does it meeeeean?!”, we still somehow hold this idea that looking a certain way, communicating a certain way and showing up a certain way is ‘professional’, and all these Certain Ways are something we are not.
I realised this week, in fact, that I, myself, had fallen under The Professional Illusion. What a turdfest. I didn’t mean to. It happened silently and insidiously because of too much time tuning my earballs into people talking about “growth” and “hooks” and “content buckets” and “social media induced heammorhoids”.
Alongside that, a sample of my illustrations were submitted to Simon & Schuster’s ‘Design Department’, and I imagined my little drawings sidling their way through the big glass doors of The Devil Wears Prada while I waved at them encouragingly and chewed on a pencil by the water cooler, texting all my friends that I was fiiiiiiine.
Cue narrator, Morgan Freeman: But she was, in fact, not fine.
(I’ve also never stood beside a water cooler. I have definitely chewed a pencil.)
The good news is:
After a brief period of eating cake, I dealt myself back into the game. But not their game (those amorphic, professional people *out there*). Mine.
As Rage Against The Machine so eloquently described, I needed to take the power back.
As wanky as it sounds, I needed to stop doubting myself, follow the thread of my inspirations and show up for everything- the potential critiques, my social media, my newsletter, my work, my life– in the way I’d like to live it:
Like one huge, colourful, hope-filled creative project.
The thing is, I really do believe that as creative people, everything we do is an extension of our creative work. Everything is our creative work. And if it doesn’t feel that way (and we do, indeed, want it to feel that way) but things have got sticky or stuck or stagnant, the question we need to ask is, well, what are we doing to change it?
And for a few days, I realized that my answer was: not much.
Yes, I’d been lamenting the social twatwaddle that seems to be such a necessary part of having any kind of business at all these days. But if I was going to be in the arena. If I was going to prance around with my bits online, I’d like to make sure I’m having some good old-fashioned fun there while I do it.
So, I decided: 30 Days of Public Enthusiasm.
This is what I’ve called the next month of my adventures here online.
Yes, I’m building a business, and yes, I’m asking it to do all the usual things we want of our business life (please be generous, helpful, lovely and please make money because my children are ridiculously expensive).
But if I’m going to spend a lot of time doing this, then I want it to be fun. And I can rely on it being fun because I’m being hyper-focusedly, ridiculously intentional about it.
I think, as creatives, we really need this. We need our work to move us, even if we are showing up in spaces and places that aren’t built for brains and body’s like ours. We need to include the weird, the wild, the silly, the humorous, the beautiful, the hopeful and the generous inside our idea of what our public displays of our work are, of whatever is ‘professional’ requires.
We really do get to make up our own rules and then we get to play to them.
Fun, joy and delight are rules of mine.
So let’s get really clear about this:
The idea of what’s professional and what’s not? You get to make it up.
Whatever yardstick you’ve been measuring yourself against is only good for snapping in half and whittling woodland animals or making one of those attractive carved flutes that you can pull out and impress people with at potlucks.
Your razzle dazzle is the best of you. We want it above, below, through and alongside all your making-ness and sharing-ness.
And if necessary, we want you COMPLETELY unprofessional.
Give it to us whole-arsed.
From my enthusiastic self to your creative heart,
xx Jane
*Pootling is SUCH an excellent word. Whoever made that one up deserves a medal.
PS. If you’ve added some intentional jazz-hands-fun-ness to the way you work or something you’re making, comment and tell me about it. Maybe we can make a Wall of Public Enthusiasm and spread the glitter round.
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