Surviving 2020: A Guide for Creatives
2020 has been hard on everyone. But it can be absolutely disasterous to empathetic creatives who need a news cycle relatively free of drama and an even emotional keel in order to do their best work. But there is a way to salvage what’s left of one of the worst years in living memory. Here are a few tips.
CREATE
You’re a creator, right? Create. The act of creation is very freeing. It keeps your head in the game and out of the problems of the world. It forestalls entropy. It puts something positive back out into a world that desperately needs your art, whether it knows it or not.
CHOOSE YOUR BATTLES
We all think we can fix things, even if it’s just in our own little corner of the universe. You’ll be tempted to fact check your racist aunt Gladys when she posts an easily debunked Bill Gates vaccine hoax video, or call out an anti-masker on Twitter. But think it through. If someone thinks that masks and affordable healthcare are tyranny, but actual tyranny is just another day at the office, do you really think a five minute conversation with you on Facebook is going to change their mind? If they think they’re too American to catch covid but they won’t go to Walmart without packing heavy ordnance, they are already so fundamentally broken that a clever online retort from you isn’t going to fix them. If anything, it makes them more entrenched in their nonsense.
Not that it is of no use sometimes. You might change the mind of someone reading it. Just pick your battles. If everyone can be civil and remain friends, afterward, frank discussions about the ills of the world can be healthy, even constructive. Just don’t get into it with every Tom, Dick and Harry on the Interwebs.
STOP DOOM SCROLLING
You’ve got things to do. Art to create. You’ll only waste time doom scrolling on social media. Facebook is little more than an app that tells you which of your family members and old high school buddies are Nazis in exchange for showing you ads for stuff you Googled five minutes earlier. Use it sparingly, if at all. Show off your wares and move on. You’ll gain nothing but heartache at the willful ignorance and stupidity of your fellow humans otherwise.
FIND YOUR JOY WHERE YOU CAN
Let’s face it. Everything is a pile flaming crap. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t little pockets of joy to be found. Find your joy and embrace it, in whatever form it takes, or how vacuous and silly it might seem to anyone else. Do you love Baby Yoda? Me too! Baby Yoda is awesome. Don’t listen to the Baby Yoda haters. They have no souls. But don’t stop at Baby Yoda. It can be a TV show, a movie, a book, a comic, an anime character, a beloved hobby, whatever. Dive in with gusto. The world will still be waiting on you and your art when you are ready to come back.
CULTIVATE AN INNER LIFE
We live online so much now that it’s easy to take the real world for granted. Get offline for a bit (or a lot). Go for a walk. Go hiking. Go camping. Read a book (print or ebook). Put on a record album (remember those? They still make them!). Unplugging gives you a place in the world that is all your own, a place where the online haters and Nazis can’t follow, a place where you can’t be monitored endlessly in order to show you ads. It’s about having a place in the world that exists whether or not you post a picture of it on Instagram or write about it on Facebook.
There you have it, a few tips for coping with the ass end of 2020 a little better. I hope you find something in these tips that work for you. I’d love to hear what you think. Have other tips you’d like to add? Put them in the comments. Peace.
