“Your current set-up may not be aligning with where you want to be”

Creative Career Conundrums is a weekly advice column from If You Could Jobs. Each week their selected panel of professionals from the creative industry answers your burning career questions to help you navigate the creative journey.

This week’s question:

“As a recent grad and someone that’s been in the field for a short stint now, I’m surprised by how hard it is for me to feel passionate again. I used to feverishly make art, but now my creativity is primarily motivated by a fear of failure. I feel a part of myself is missing and I wonder if there are professionals who have overcome and grown from this, rather than given up due to the exhaustion.

How do you coax your creativity back when you feel chronically depleted from the anxiety of work?”

Kat Wong, founder of career change platform Oh Yeah:

Behind your surprise of not feeling passionate about creating, something bigger is at play here. The words you've chosen to describe your scenario are super strong signals: fear of failure, chronic depletion, anxiety of work and exhaustion. Listed together, this pretty much outlines all the blockers to your creativity. And none of them are the primers for creative flow.

There are a couple of things that could be happening here, without getting too personal or knowing your scenario. First, let’s just acknowledge you’ve gone through a massive gear shift.

Getting into an industry after graduating is such a huge new chapter, both mentally and physically, and you’ve only been in the field for a short while. It does take a minute to find your feet and to get your body into gear. It’s a feeling I remember clearly. After two weeks at my first full-time gig after graduating, with daily 8.30am starts on the other side of town, I remember commuting back to my parents' house on a Friday night, exhausted. My dad popped his head in before starting his evening shift, and I exclaimed how tired I was. He literally laughed and said, ‘What do you expect? This is work!’ and bounced out of the house to start his night at the family restaurant.

I’ve never forgotten that.

But here’s the thing, I loved my first job – and felt so lucky to have landed a great gig straight after uni. But I’m sensing your current set-up may not be aligning with where you want to be. Or your workplace environment may not be setting you up for success, especially if there’s a fear of failure brewing. They are both huge blockers to creative motivation. But when you’re in a space that’s aligned with your values where you can feed into the beliefs you stand for, that’s when the magic happens.

The groundwork to get there can be deep, and you need to give yourself permission and space to explore. But whilst you’re in your set-up, you’re gathering data. It’s showing you what does or doesn’t resonate with you. And that is all part of your career journey.

Here are a couple of things to help you explore change. A health check, so to speak. Across a typical week, are you regularly nourishing yourself with things that inspire and feed your creative soul? Or is most of your time now tending to someone else’s bottom line? Do a brief audit and examine how you’re carving up your schedule. I’d recommend reading my previous CCC response, where I share tactics on how to shape your week for meaningful work while balancing the day job that pays the bills.

Once you begin to identify what actually resonates with you, that’s when inspiration rises. Confidence grows to course correct, and so does the productive energy to actually create something that is meaningful to you. Don’t seek perfection when experimenting; slow down, don’t rush. And remember, you define your own barometer of creative success based on your own unique journey story. Start from there.

In answering your creative career conundrums we realise that some issues need expert support, so we’ve collated a list of additional resources that can support you across things that might arise at work.

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