The Comfort of Competence

Hey divas, 

This past week has been, frankly, a shit show. 

Just about everything that could go wrong at work… did go wrong. All week. No breaks. Fires to put out and frantic emails and back-to-back pings on Slack from the time I woke up to the time I went to sleep. 

Then, on Thursday, I got a call from Pottery Barn letting me know that my Friday morning furniture delivery would have to be rescheduled to Monday. No biggie. Except when Friday morning rolls around, I get a notice from Pottery Barn that my order is out for delivery, and I have to be at my cabin in the next hour, or they won’t deliver my furniture. A hasty shower and breaking the speed limit for half an hour, and I beat the truck to the cabin. 

Only for the truck to not fit in the driveway, meaning I had to load the (excessively heavy) furniture into my own vehicle, one piece at a time, drive it up to the cabin, unload it, and then assemble it all myself. So much for paying for white-glove delivery!

I get home, exhausted, and have to get back to work to put out yet another fire. But as I get out of my car, I drop my favorite coffee cup and watch it shatter on the garage floor. 

At least I have a vacation in a few weeks to look forward to! In Mexico. Where cartel violence has recently reached unprecedented levels in vacation towns. Our plane tickets and Airbnb are non-refundable, it turns out. When it rains, it pours… Father, Son, and Capital One, I guess rerouting to a new destination is worth losing a few dollars if it means peace of mind and being able to actually unwind on vacation. 

With everything piling up, I got to the weekend and felt a mismatch between my values and my actions. On the one hand, I’ve journaled quite a bit about creativity and art, which are of the utmost importance to me. On the other hand, I have been so mentally and emotionally underwater that I’ve not been particularly capable of focusing on the kinds of creative acts that I’m trying to prioritize. And while I fear this newsletter will become my weekly whining about how hard it is to reclaim my attention and artistic spirit, it feels warranted to say that, with everything else going on in my life, the level of effort required to focus on my writing has just been out of my reach. 

What has been within reach, though, is thinking like a product manager. At this point in my career, I can go into PM-mode on a moment’s notice. Who’s the customer? What are the customer’s problems or challenges? What are the gaps that are currently underserved? It’s a reflex for me to think like a PM most days, and I’ve even started to find comfort in the methodical approach to building products that aligns well with my creative efforts. Everything can be broken down into its parts, and when you push yourself to always go back to your most important outcomes, you start to see the threads holding all your overwhelming plans together. It becomes more digestible to work on projects when you see them as a series of unified steps with clear boundaries and outcomes. And, there’s something to be said about the sense of effortlessness that comes from getting in consistent repetitions, as I have with the product skillset. 

So, I turned that Gantt-chart-loving, PRD-writing energy toward this newsletter. Writing– the part that I feel in my bones– is where I get my energy and what I find most rewarding. On its own, the writing is rewarding, but I really want to build an audience and connect with others who are walking a similar path. That means promoting my newsletter. Which I hate. Seriously. Posting about this newsletter on social media stresses me TF out, even though I know I can’t meaningfully grow my audience without doing so. 

Enter the PM skillset. Within an hour, I had a functional PRD for what it would look like, for me, to streamline the parts of the growth work that I hate. And it didn’t feel like work. It just felt like I was taking that mental roadblock that’s been nagging at me– shit! If I write this, I have to promote it on social media or nobody will read it!– and breaking it down into those small steps and a sequence of deliverables that I can tackle. The annoyance of having to engage with social media started to melt away when I replaced it with the curiosity of asking myself how I might address that challenge. 

For all of AI’s flaws, turning that PRD into a functional prototype that I could play with was pretty kick ass. I’m not sure what I’m going to call this app yet– either something like “Newsletter Growth Hub” or “Dear God Please Don’t Make Me Think About Social Media for More than Ten Minutes at a Time”– but I’m excited to see how it improves my workflow and helps me shake of the social media scaries. 

Fingers crossed that this actually helps me improve my distribution and how I think about promoting my newsletter on social media channels without going down too many rabbit holes and pissing away my time mindlessly scrolling. 

Whether or not it helps is to be seen. But what I realized from this process is that creativity isn’t an all-or-nothing game, and there’s something to be said about the comfort of competence. 

I wasn’t creative in the way I wanted to be, but that doesn’t mean the week was a total loss. I still created. I still put time and energy into figuring out how to get closer to my creative goals, even though I wasn’t in a place to commit to the heavier part of the work. 

The fact that I was able to compile research and draft a PRD, even in a mind-numbed state, was also eye-opening. Doing so didn’t feel like work. It didn’t feel like it took considerable effort or willpower (which last week’s issue confirmed is likely not a finite resource). After all, I do it every day! That got me wondering: what happens when I write every day? Will it also start to feel effortless? Easier? 

Probably. Oh, shit. Guess that means I need to try writing every day. Amazing how that always ends up being where these ruminations land. 

Best,

Blake

PS– I won’t tell you where I’ve rerouted my vacation to since it’s going to be a surprise for my partner. What I can share is that it will be warm, beautiful, and cartel-violence free. 

You need to be reading fiction. It’s so fu**ing good for your brain and spirit. So, let me recommend a book that I think every creative person should read: The Great When by Alan Moore. 

The Great When is a story about stories. Without getting into spoiler territory, it follows a young man who comes to possess a book that shouldn’t exist in our universe. It’s a gripping read, a little weird, and, at times, quite funny. Moore presents readers with vignettes at the start of the novel that leave you wondering what the hell is happening, but then, later in the text, the pieces will click together in such a satisfying way. 

What I really appreciate about The Great When is that it’s not necessarily an easy book to read. At times, you’ll find yourself having to stop and re-read passages to orient yourself and stay with the plot. But those challenging passages are such a treasure trove of language. Moore excels at creating a sense of motion through his writing, and as you read and re-read passages, you find yourself moving through the ephemeral, fragmented world he’s created. 

I am terrified of living in a world where scrolling has fully supplanted literacy, so I am going to start drawing attention to organizations that I support and donate to that are aligned in fighting the good fight against living in a technocratic hellscape. 

Today, I’m highlighting Fairplay, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending child-targeted marketing and protecting children from the commercial pressures of the digital age. Fairplay runs the Screen Time Action Network, a coalition of practitioners, educators, and parents, and organizes the annual Screen-Free Week campaign each May.

In honor of this issue of the newsletter, I’ve made a $25 donation, and would encourage you to consider doing the same!

If you know of a deserving organization or individuals in this space, please let me know. I’d love to spread the love, cash, and spotlight! 

Let’s be honest. This newsletter is gold, you love it, and you feel inspired every time you read it. But, just in case, here’s another nudge to do something that ignites your creative spark. 

Prompt: What does springtime feel like? Don’t describe the weather, either. Draw, paint, or write what springtime feels like to you. Whatever medium you choose, don’t edit yourself or overthink it. Just set a timer for fifteen minutes, get started, and don’t stop. Write or sketch fast and by hand. See where you end up. When you’re done, share what the experience was like for you– bonus points, share what you produced!