The Work Beneath the Work
Lately, the small pockets of creative time I’ve had haven’t led to anything big or amazing. No sudden breakthroughs, no clear vision of the next thing I’m meant to create. Just quiet bits of time spent sketching, doodling, and letting ideas take shape — or not — without any real sense of them needing to become something finished.
It’s easy to feel like progress should be obvious — a new body of work, a big reveal, something you can point to and say: here’s what I made. But lately, it’s been more about making for the sake of it. Feeding my creative soul with half-formed ideas, messy pages, and the kind of quiet learning you only get when you stop trying to force an outcome. It sounds easier than it is. Most days, it feels like I’m not doing enough with the little time I have available — that it’s slow, and I’m not getting anywhere. But the truth is, this is the progress. The showing up, the small experiments, the things that may never go anywhere. That’s the work too.
Most of those sketches will stay that way — half-wild and tucked away. Others might surprise me later. A few interesting threads are starting to emerge. In fact, this month’s Painted Post print began as one of those small moments — a quiet sketch that grew into something more, something I wanted to share. A reminder that not everything needs to arrive fully formed to be worth making.
If you’re curious, I shared a look inside the first Painted Post here. And if you’ve been thinking about joining in, subscriptions will be reopening soon — a small number of spots, open for a short time only. There’s a waitlist here if you’d like first access when it reopens.
Mostly, I just wanted to share this slower side of the creative process — the quieter seasons of making, where most of the work happens long before there’s anything to show for it. The slower experiments. The sketches that never make it to social media. The hours spent making, simply because you need to, even if no one else ever sees it. It’s not the kind of progress that’s easy to share — but it’s the kind that quietly builds everything that comes after.