When Nothing Is Going Right, Let the Work Save You

Love the process

To the deep thinkers,

Welcome to the Deep Thinkers Newsletter: A collection of essays dedicated to going beyond the surface.

If you’re new here, check out the Deep Thinkers archive.

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The concept of overnight success has poisoned the collective consciousness.

Everywhere you look, people laud and deify prodigies and geniuses. The hunger for those 15 seconds of fame has never been stronger. And with the influence of social media, we are now exposed to more of these flash-in-the-pan success stories than ever before.

Spend just 30 minutes online and it'll be impossible to ignore.

The influencer of the week. The musical artist who comes out of nowhere thanks to a TikTok trend. The young entrepreneur who is shaking up an industry.

But as is the case with many things on the internet, you can't trust what you see on the surface. Yes, some people capture lightning in a bottle—finding success with little effort.

But what is closer to reality is the artist who toils away for years with little to no recognition. Or the musician who works during the day and spends every night in the studio. Or the entrepreneur on their fifth business and struggling to make ends meet.

When we rely solely on outward appearances, all we see are the results. And this obsession with results leads many people to abandon their work. They see followers, readers, or views another person gets and become discouraged. Instead of creating freely, they work under self-imposed pressure to achieve results comparable to their peers.

It’s unfortunate—love for a craft without the looming shadow of success seems rare nowadays. It's as if there is a nagging itch to make something more of our art. As if the very act of creating can’t possibly be enough.

Perhaps spending too much time online is zapping the artist of their genuine love for their work. For even the most self-assured person, spending too much time on the internet—soaking in the lives of other people—will affect the way you see yourself. It can warp your self-worth and damage your relationship with your art. What often follows is the sting of envy and insecurity.

So, I wonder if the only solution is to go full "monk mode" and isolate ourselves from the internet. Perhaps.

But what about those we see in person? Our family, friends, peers, and colleagues? What about Gerald from down the street?

The internet adds fuel to the fire, sure. But the problem doesn't start and end with the internet. The problem is where we place our attention. If we can learn to shift our attention away from what others are doing or what they seem to have, and back to our own work, then we stand a chance of remaining focused and encouraged.

Sometimes, that's all we need to see our journeys through to the end.

So many people want success without putting in the work. Laboring away in obscurity and failing repeatedly isn't something most people want to sign up for.

This is why the concept of overnight success is such a problem.

In a typical overnight success story:

• We don’t see the failures or the sleepless nights.

• We don’t see the times someone had to start from scratch, fighting off despair.

• We don’t see the moments when they became their own source of strength, creating and sharing work that goes unnoticed.

Instead, we see results and then compare what we have to what it appears another person has. And as someone somewhere once said, comparison is the thief of joy.

When you dig into what an overnight success looks like, it actually takes many nights. Some go years with little to no return on the time they spend on their work. For some, decades. Nobody reads their work. Nobody watches their videos. Nobody listens to their music. Some, those fortunate enough, see the fruits of their labors in very tangible ways. For some, the recognition never arrives. Such is the nature of a life devoted to a craft that relies on the attention of others.

The salve to the sting of this realization is the love of the work. It's the appreciation for the labor that provides deliverance. It is the cure for the envy, that follows comparison.

When you begin from the baseline of loving the work you do, then the recognition and success are extra. That is the beauty of finding something that you would do even if someone gave you a billion dollars.

When you truly love your craft, motivation isn’t something you need to search for or summon. It flows naturally, driven by the pure joy of creation and the desire to keep improving. You do the work not for applause or recognition but for the fulfillment it brings, for the way it allows you to express yourself and connect with something larger. You do it for its own sake, and that is motivation enough.

When writer's block hits and I need to extract the words like a rotting tooth, the one thing that helps me is remembering that it is a privilege to sit and write.

Writing chose me, but it takes two to tango. Every day that I sit and face my word count, I meet my dance partner on the dancefloor.

The cure is always the work.

As Bonnie Friedman said:

"The antidote to envy is one's own work. Always one's own work. Not the thinking about it. Not the assessing of it. But the doing of it… [T]he work itself. It drives the spooks away."

When we fall in love with the process, enduring becomes a natural response. Learn to love the process during the years of obscurity, so that when you finally receive recognition, it won't be the admiration keeping you satiated.

Remember that public admiration is fickle. It comes and goes, and not a single soul is immune to its wayward nature.

When it is the love of your art, of your work, that keeps you in motion, then the years, or even decades, spent laboring seem like a straightforward trade.

Consider someone like Samuel L. Jackson. He had been acting since the 70s before getting his big break as Jules in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. Now he's a household name.

That's how it goes for many people—you must show up and create, even when it feels like nobody is watching. Because you are getting better, you are making mistakes; you are preparing yourself.

One of the many hurdles to focusing on your work is comparison. When we are constantly comparing ourselves and our work to others then we lose appreciation for who we are and what we bring to the table.

Your art is an expression of ourselves. It is the bringing to life of our own inner world. So the very idea of comparison and competition in spaces such as these is absurd.

To be clear, I am not talking about finding inspiration in the work of your contemporaries or idols. When a book, film, or album inspires us to create, that is collaboration. It is a way to honor the work that inspired us.

When we are inspired, rather than working from a place of desperation with hopes of one-upping, we create from a place of love and joy.

If we must compete, let us compete with ourselves. With each project we take on, let us challenge ourselves to honor who we are at that moment. Let us be a little more vulnerable every time we sit with our work. Let us give a little more of ourselves as we pour our spirit into our craft.

There is nothing more you can ask of yourself.

It's hard to be a creative person in a world where it seems that the only way to be happy is to make money from what you create.

Not everything you do will make you money. Sometimes, the joy from the work is payment enough. It is this same joy for the work that keeps the envy and jealousy away.

Work without hope or despair. Simply do the work—for days, months, years, even decades. Do the work because it's the only thing we have control over. We can't control what people do and don't like once we release it into the world. But you can control your work ethic.

Even more, you can control your sense of wonder about yourself and the world. Be curious and excited about learning and trying new things.

When you live your life from a place of curiosity, then you worry less about what everyone else is doing or what success looks like this month.

Like the prolific Stephen King wrote:

“Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.”

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What I’m into this week:

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On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft by Stephen King

My art is my writing. It is how I express myself, and how I make sense of everything going on in my mind, heart, and spirit. And as a writer, doubt is always in the background. Nudging me to quit. Pulling me away from my work. But a book like this is one that all writers should turn to when they need something to help them move forward.

“Whether it’s a vignette of a single page or an epic trilogy like The Lord of the Rings, the work is always accomplished one word at a time.”

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Thanks for reading. If this post resonated with you, I’d love to read your thoughts in the comments below.

Much love,

- Jon ♾️