Rekindling the Flame

Restoring Love of Craft Through Self-Compassion

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As adults, we often abandon the spontaneous, joyful creativity of our childhood due to mounting responsibilities, external judgments, and the pressure to monetize or perfect our art.
Social expectations and fears of being “uncool” or “unproductive” push us further from our intrinsic motivation, fragmenting our sense of self and sidelining the playful inner child that once created freely.
Passion fatigue can arise when art becomes purely habitual or work-like, so experimenting with new techniques, constraints, and micro-creative sessions helps rekindle the spark.
Distinguishing the artist from the art—rather than over-identifying with finished pieces—cultivates self-compassion, combats perfectionism, and reminds us that the process itself is our core motivation.
Ultimately, reconnecting with our inner child’s sense of wonder and authenticity revives creative self-compassion, allowing us to rediscover the pure delight in making art for ourselves.

One day you're going to wake up and everything you've saved from your childhood will be able to fit in your pocket. Some of us don't have a single material relic from our childhood. As the years unfolded we've become whoever we needed to be to pay the bills. We've worn many work hats, but the same burnout hangs over our heads.

In the fight to stay above water we have a lot to be proud of ourselves for. Time after time we've scraped together the rent when we didn't know how we'd get it done. Our personal lives have been a rush of personalities mosaically coming in and out of our lives as we shift, adapt, and overcome to the changing economic landscape around us.

You used to like painting.

What happened to that?

When did you stop spending time doing something that lit you up inside so much? Was is the work-related stress? Isn't that what your escapist hobbies were supposed to help you cope with? Now, as an adult, all you can think about is money, and your hobbies don't help you pay any bills. Not with that attitude at least. For that matter, you don't even know what direction your inner child went. What's your favorite cuisine right now? Your favorite music? Your inner child never hesitated on the answers to those questions. Maybe in departing with your creative loves you've disconnected with a part of yourself.

Why do we fall out of love with our art, and how to we rekindle the spark in our relationship with ourselves? We'll explore how that love is abandoned through the slow drift, how the wrong environment creates passion fatigue, and how to reimagine creativity as self-compassion.

I.

When you were a child you didn't need inspiration to enjoy art. Hell you couldn't even spell it. Before you knew the struggle of keeping up with rent or working through difficult relationships, you knew yourself. There was no need for pretentious self-help books, petty habit trackers you kept up with half the time, or one-on-one coaching sessions with a fake guru selling you a few creative words of encouragement. No, you just did that shit. You had fun. You loved it. You were happy.

The sage wisdom of your inner child was something called intrinsic motivation. You may have gotten wiser with age, but one thing your inner child will always have over you is having the sense to enjoy your life without a care in the world. You didn't need a muse because you had the spirit of spontaneous play. Something neuroscientists have pointed out is critical for brain development in young children. But more than its utility it became a creative nest for your imagination. There's nothing in this world you need to reconnect with yourself more than that inner child. No number of gurus, self-help books, or even this article can replace that connection with the part of yourself that doesn't need the least bit of advice on how to have fun. But this article might be able to show you how you left this person behind, and how you might be able to reconnect.

Because after the height of your creative reign over your imagination you began to take small steps back. When you became a teenager you developed the psychological ability to perceive yourself from the perspective of your peers. That was the first time you learned that some of the things you like aren't cool. They might even be a bit cringe. Nothing kills ambition faster than being told something you love isn't worth loving.

While that might seem juvenile at first you would grow up to continue letting other people tell you what priorities are worth keeping. As your responsibilities began stacking you couldn't deny the voices of co-workers and maybe lovers telling you activities that aren't bringing you closer to becoming a millionaire are childish and should be left behind. If you can't monetize it into a payroll dispensing corporation, or at least get the social currency of feeling better than other artists then you're convinced it's a worthless masturbatory activity because no one else values it. Those insecurities fed your toxic misplaced perfectionism, self-esteem, and instilled a fear of failure now that you can't perceive your art outside the context of who will applaud and validate your efforts. Nothing to be ashamed of. We all go through it.

And there's plenty of good reasons to take a break from your art when life presents real and valid obstacles to your schedule. Pursuing a higher education to land that dream job, shifting careers to explore a new profession that might be more compatible with your life and sensibilities, and even the necessary sacrifices that come with starting a family can all lead to your art taking a back seat. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's no need to feel guilty about the pieces of yourself you retired to make space for other parts of your life that really matter. Just come back once in a while.

Leave your inner child with your babysitter, the subconscious, from time to time while you take on adult responsibilities. But much like a child you leave with a babysitter, you gotta come get your kid. Instead of viewing it as a sacrifice to your art think about how those burgeoning life experiences can feed into the messages you're able to convey with your art. Through the blood, sweat, and tears you've shed to hold up those values you've been maturing a voice that doesn't get to speak too often. And when you sit in front of that blank canvas, empty piano roll, or open dance floor; it's time to let all of that out.

The slow drift from being able to access the flow state as easily as you did as a child is a necessary part of life. Your identity is a fluid thing that shifted depending on what life demanded from you. And I know life has demanded a lot from you. A part of Carl Jung's philosophy of psychology is that our psychology fragments over the course of our development. That under the social pressure of maturation we've become who we needed to be. And the only way to become whole again is to take your power back from answering the call of social expectations, and remembering to answer the voice of your inner child within.

No one else knows best about the path to happiness and fulfillment than the irrational bubbling child within you that knows how to simply enjoy life instead of wrestling with destination despair. Purpose and meaning are the business of adults. But we all have some psychological needs that are irrational. Like the need to be happy, relax, and enjoy our lives. There is no extrinsic purpose to those values. They are the end in themselves. They're intrinsic motivations.

brown rocky mountain under blue sky during daytime — Photo by Neroli Wesley / Unsplash

II.

Passion fatigue, on the other hand, could come from the opposite extreme. Maybe getting a little too much time with your art. It's similar to work-related burnout, especially if you're creating art professionally. But it's born from a persistent feeling that the creative act is becoming more of an obligation than a love.

Even if you're not creating professionally you could still develop passion fatigue through your repetitive schedule and process. Going through the same motions every day would turn anyone's outlook into a blurry malaise of same old same old. Especially if every time you approach your art you're coming back to the same process instead of experimenting with different angles at your craft. When your artistic life gets a little dull you know it's time to mix things up.

For many, the answer to how you'll mix it up might be something only you can answer in detail. As an outsider who writes blog articles I might be able to offer some abstract help that you could run with. There's a concept called habit-stacking that makes it easier to shift habits by linking new habits to older ones.

For example, if you're a musician that has a habit of practicing guitar by playing scales repetitively while watching Netflix you could try adding the habit of playing without distractions. You already have a habit of picking up the guitar, and that's great. Instead of reinventing the wheel to rekindle your love of the instrument you could just use that guitar practice as a reminder to be habitually more present and mindful. By turning off the TV and switching the phone to Do Not Disturb you can add another layer of habits that feed the creative environment that strings out these melodies.

Micro-creative sessions are another way to mix up your imagination hours. If you're an illustrator keeping up with commission deadlines try making time for short bursts of creativity outside of the obligation of your work. Starting your day with brief doodles that come with no expectation of going anywhere could not only free your mind to draw for yourself instead of the consumer, but it could also inspire future work down the line.

Passion fatigue is often born from an imbalance between obligatory discipline and free-spirited imagination. While you've honed your craft to a point that you can swing consumer demand in record time, you've turned your process into a machinic production line. But that discipline doesn't need to be the foil to your creativity. By leaving room for imperfection and curiosity you create space for the creative environment where art is born naturally. Although you might be the best at your current process, there could be other ways of getting to your destination. And you might find some of those scenic routes inspiring in and of themselves.

One hard to swallow pill about artistry is that it gets old. While newfound techniques and workflows feel novel at first, they grow stale over time. You can't just write the same novel or album over and over again. Stagnating as an artist feeds passion fatigue in a way that can demoralize creative pursuits leading to you wanting to move on from your craft completely. Think about how you as a person have evolved and matured over time. You're not quite the same person you were in the 8th grade. Love, loss, and grief have punctuated the person life has molded you into becoming. If your art doesn't grow with you then you'll leave it behind after the novelty wears off and the creative honeymoon ends.

So what led to all of that internal personal growth over the years, and how do we reflect that in your craft? Well the person you became was molded by the obstacles that stood in your path. Teenagers in high school convinced you that your clothes weren't cool so you developed tastes more unique to you. Your bosses started giving you more impossible deadlines so you became the workaholic that could meet those work constraints. People that you loved pointed out how your shortcomings affect them, so you rose to the challenge to become who they needed you to be.

Likewise, your imaginative creativity works on a neuroplastic network that thrives on the walls that try to seal them into a box. Try creating new constraints or parameters for your art to give the activity a fresh feel. If you've written all your songs guitar first, try starting with the produced backing track first and try writing guitars on top of that. If you've spent the last several months writing a fictional novel from your protagonist's perspective, try writing a chapter from the perspective of their antagonist.

Even if it doesn't go into the final cut it could be a worthwhile exercise that might inform how you edit the perceptions of your protagonist. Maybe one of the reasons artist block is so common when staring at a blank canvas is because there's too much potential. Frozen by option paralysis your imagination stares at the blank page like a deer in the headlights. But as soon as you start applying limitations or constraints on your work the creative side of you begins working out how you're going to cross this road elegantly.

woman covering face with both hands closeup photography — Photo by Jacqueline Day / Unsplash

III.

One of the biggest mistakes of the artist is to overly identify with their work. Creating healthy boundaries distinguishing the artist from the art is the first step to seeing creativity as a form of self-compassion. The resulting art doesn't speak to the insatiable process that went behind it. And it doesn't begin to speak to all of the silent struggles you've pushed through in life to hold on the precious ritual of your art. Much less could it speak to everything about who you are as a person.

You, the artist, aren't the sum of your completed works of art. They are a function of what you do. Don't objectify yourself for the final result. As perfectionism and imposter syndrome sink their teeth into your psyche it's healthy to remember the process isn't an obstacle to your work. Your process is a lifestyle. And you, as the artist, are a part of the process. The way you eat, sleep, breathe, and love are all the unseen and unheard foreshadowings of your craft being realized. Even the small romances between you and your craft like doodling, journaling, or musical improvisation that you perform for no other reason than masturbatory enjoyment are meaningful because they represent a relationship between the artist and their craft. And if you don't love what you do it's going to show in your work.

Being present with your process is more important than the destination despair in anticipation of your pieta. Sitting with your false starts, revisions, and redrafts aren't an obstacle to the final piece. They're the stepping stones on the path to your masterpiece. Forget the fucking masterpiece. The process is everything. It's why you do art at all. Not for the validation of the opera house or the gallery. Do it for you. Because a long time ago, before you knew how to perceive the expectations of classrooms and auditoriums, you knew how to just enjoy yourself. And therein lies more inspiration than anything you could find in a muse. Maybe the real muse is the inner child you've been hushing since people began sticking their finger in the pie of your artistry to taste test and suggest what should be added or taken away from it.

Self-compassion is the foil of the inner critic. When self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy come knocking on our door it's wise to greet them with a party hat and confetti. Like a 5 year old that touches paints for the first time stuck in awe over the colors and textures smearing across the canvas your portal to healing the slow drift between you and your passion lies in the sense of wonder you abandoned for familiarity. And by over-familiarizing yourself with the same old process and the same old techniques you've lost the backbone of your imagination. Which wasn't complicated. It was just you being captivated by the world around you. If you can pick that habit back up and fuse it with the skills you've picked up since then you'll become an unstoppable artist. Just don't forget to romance yourself once in a while.

by Derek Guzman

Independent journalist in tech, art, and philosophy

Restoring Love of Craft Through Self-Compassion

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by Derek Guzman

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