Why pushing your creative boulder up the hill is the point (not the problem).
- Sisyphus’ eternal and meaningless boulder rolling parallels the unending frustration artists experience with creative blocks.
- There’s an absurd joy that comes with the steady process of failures that pave an artists road to their masterpieces.
- By adjusting our attitudes and taking practical steps to value and even ritualize the smaller steps of incomplete art we enrich the artists’s path with meaning.
I.
You're only as good as the next piece you put out. Nothing matters except the next web comic, serial novel chapter, or ghostwritten sound track. At least that's how my relationship with my art used to work. Creative work comes with the poignant realization that nobody cares about what goes into making your art. They only care about results. So it's easy to get bogged down in a product over process mentality. But this mindset often made me hate my art leading to me wanting to take breaks from it. Something that I loved like it was a part of my liver since childhood becomes a mechanical aspect of my existence, and even a part of my existential dread. Lo and behold, I suddenly need escapism from something I used to love so much I could never get enough of it. Something that used to be my escape.
Albert Camus, philosophical father of absurdism, might have something to say about how this misguided priority actually takes away from the quality of the artist's life, and their ability to create meaning in their creative lives. He wrote The Myth of Sisyphus inspired by the ancient Greek myth. The king of Corinth was something of a troublemaker. At one point the wise guy chained up death so no one had to die. Why didn't I think of that? Zeus punished the king by damning him to an Underworld punishment where he eternally rolls a boulder up a hill that rolls back down the hill every time. His endless boulder-rolling is never-ending and meaningless. Which is how often artists feel about creative block. It doesn't matter how many times you've conquered it. You know you're going to come back to it. Maybe because creative block is a natural tension between an artist and a blank canvas. Most of the time it leaves you with imposter syndrome, and in the worst case scenario it might just cause an artist to put the brush down and take a break from their passion. But Sisyphus' hands calloused from millennia of labor can teach us about the never-ending artist battle with creative block. We must imagine Sisyphus happy not in spite of the grind, but because of it.
The very paradox of creative life. We artists, much like Sisyphus, are tasked with rolling our own boulders--8 bar loops that never get fleshed out into song sections, illustrations that resist completion, and poems that rebel against their final stanza. Social expectations are quick to make you feel like these are failures, or something to be overcome rather than a part of the process. But Camus offers a radical counterpoint: what if the act of pushing the boulder is the masterpiece?
Completed work gives us meaning while incomplete work makes us feel like we're not doing enough. Maybe I'm too lazy, maybe I'm not that talented, maybe all that skill-training was for nothing. But Camus' Myth of Sisyphus confronts this existential void--the chasm between hunger for meaning and a universe that inherently offers none. For artists, this void echoes in the studio: the gap between vision and execution, and the silence where inspiration should hum. Yet an artist can't be reduced to the sum of their works. Likewise, Sisyphus is superior to his boulder where his rebellion becomes his embrace of the climb rather than a struggle against it.
In a cyber climate of algorithmic applause and instant gratification, this philosophy is revolutionary. The modern artist is critiqued to genuflect at the altar of outcomes from likes and follows to sales and accolades. The sacred chaos of process is dismissed at best as an accessory, or at worst as a fault or a weakness. But we don't have to appeal to the gods of social expectations. What if we rebelliously, like Sisyphus, reclaim the studio as a temple of what Camus coined "absurd joy," where the act of creation itself is the offering?
Make no mistake, I'm not here to cure artist's block. I'm here to help you reframe the struggle as your most faithful collaborator. Here we'll wield Camus' wisdom to alchemize frustration into freedom. To find purpose in the unfinished, and to remember to laugh when the boulder comes rolling back down for the umpteenth time.
II.
Camus uses the word "absurd" to refer to the tension between our human need for meaning and a universe that offers none. It focuses on the futility of searching for meaning in a universe that is incomprehensible and indifferent. The stars in the sky aren't trying to tell us stories about zodiac signs, but humans will attribute meaning upon the stars. It's a part of what makes us creators of our own universe. While it offers us no relief in the way of meaning it leaves that duty to us. Meaning isn't something that grows on trees. You can't increment meaning through a series of investments on a finance app. Meaning comes straight out of the hearts of people like us. Which is why meaning isn't something we can find looking outward. The only place that meaning comes from is the conscious observer.
Then what is the point of scratching your 8th failed composition idea? How is another crumbled piece of paper thrown in the trash a part of what gives you power as an artist? Well it creates distinction between the artist's vision and the chaos of execution. You are not the result. You're the artist. You're more than the sum of your works. And a part of what gives your vision depth is all the flawed angles around your drafts that pave the road to your magnum opus. By stringing out that pesky melody for the hundredth time or drafting the same chapter you can't seem to move on from you are seeing your own vision through more dimension. Your vision is like a block of marble before the sculptor touched a chisel to it. Your vision itself is something to be sharpened before it makes the perfect mark in your work. And through a litany of failed works you hone your eye or your ear to better envision the lofty heights your work will ascend to. Because the drafts that didn’t make the cut were supposed to sharpen your mind not harden your heart to the craft. Sometimes attitude is a skill issue. It's like Camus used to say.
"The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart."
That's where perfectionist notions become a toxic enemy to the artist and their creative block. Societal myths of "masterpieces" and "genius" trap us in cycles of despair. When, in fact, the breadcrumbs of failed unfinished projects is the umbilical cord feeding our gestating vision. And the baby is hungry. Rebel against these social expectations with absurd joy, and choose to create anyway. Even if the work feels futile. Even if there's seemingly no reward. Sometimes it's hard to see how your greatest work as an artist is yourself. A piece that you're never finished with until the last brush stroke meets your deathbed. And you are the most important element of your entire art career. You get the ethereal opportunity as a creative to artistically improve the paint brush that is your own mind. By pushing through endless Sisyphean failures through your life as an artist you better prime yourself to meet the expectations of your highest visions. But those creations will never be born without their gestative process.
III.
Well now that our priority has been reoriented from destination despair to a process first approach let's get serious. What practical steps can we take to reframe "failed" drafts or discarded projects as necessary iterations of our work and vision? Try directly pursuing what you felt was a meaningless and discouraging process on purpose instead of accidentally finding yourself in that space with frustration. Try setting a timer to create a "disposable" piece daily–burn, delete, or bury it. Personally, I like fire. There's something sacred to me about a daily ritual creating one thing when I wake up that goes straight into the fire. The detachment itself lends itself to curiosity instead of frustration. What am I going to throw away today? What are my hands and eyes going to behold before me in a solitary witness before the flames take my work away to the heavens?
Let the celebration of the "useless" bleed into your sketchbook doodles, experimental mediums, or the way you invoke the spirit of spontaneous play. Set aside time for the part of your artistic life that society has told you isn't valuable. Make it a part of your daily morning ritual. By the time you get to the piece that has a deadline you've already embraced the part of your process that had you struggling, and you've shifted your mindset to a effortless flow state enjoying your craft. Because before you tried looking for the masterpiece you looked for the master artist. There's an order of operation that births your greatest work, and you've finally stopped struggling with it and begun to embrace it.
Sometimes external validation is toxic to the pursuit of your highest works. Algorithmic likes, follows, sales, and achievements become the oppressive lords in your creative real estate. Reject the gods that undermine your creative purpose. They aren't feeding the lifeblood of your work. Only you can do that by reducing the friction between your imagination and the reality you carve it upon. And that process is going to come with some unfinished work. The gods will have to deal with that. In that spirit, it could be beneficial to build an environment like a Sisyphean studio so to speak. A curated time and space where metrics don't matter. Put the phone on do not disturb. Cut off the internet to the computer. Don't let a single notification detract you from the pursuit of your pieta through its foil: your incomplete work that you did for the fun of it.
IV.
By enjoying your work for its own sake you stop objectifying it, and by extension you stop objectifying yourself. An artist nor their work are a means to an end. They're an end in itself. And through childlike wonder of the process we escape the slings and arrows of external validation. We begin to ask ourselves, am I judging my work by the wrong gods? Should the gods be every finger that dips into my recipe to judge the taste, or should the amount of fun we have cooking the damn thing be the god of our creative space? Creative block isn't an obstacle. It's an invitation to remember how to have fun doing what you love.
