My creative work got the scraps

For too much time, I gave my creative dreams the worst version of myself.

I’d do my emails first, browse the web, then the admin, then the client work, and by the time evening rolled around, I was staring at a blank page with the energy of a deflated raccoon.

The fiction I wanted to write got pushed to “later,” and later, for some reason, failed to show up.

I told myself this was sensible, practical, and adult. But when I look back, it was also a form of self-betrayal. I was treating my deepest creative desires with disrespect.

My creative work will never demand attention the way a client deadline does. It won’t send angry follow-up emails or threaten consequences. It just sits there, waiting, while I give my best hours to everything else.

And then one day I may realise years have passed, and the novel I’ve been meaning to write is still in a folder and the stories are still bouncing around in a back room in my skull.

I had to learn that how you treat your creative work reflects how much you respect yourself. When you keep saving it for last, you’re telling yourself it doesn’t matter.

Eventually, this became too uncomfortable not to notice.

I started giving my creative work the first hours of the day, when my brain was still fresh, and my inner critic was still half-asleep. Not the tired hours, and not the day’s foggy leftovers.

It felt selfish at first, like I was stealing time from the “real” work. But the real work got done anyway, and I stopped feeling like I was abandoning a part of myself every single damn day.

Your creative dreams deserve your best hours.

That’s really not indulgence.

It’s simple self-respect.

If you’ve been struggling to take yourself and your creative work seriously, you might like my book, The Art of Self-Respect.

It’s 25 habits that rebuild how you see yourself, covering everything from protecting your time to stopping the people-pleasing that keeps you small.

This is an unusual book, about practical action steps that change how you see yourself, how the world treats you in return, and how that translates to a positive spiral upward.

Try it.

Grab The Art of Self-Respect here (includes 3 bonuses you don’t get anywhere else) →

Peace,

Alex

p.s. my latest post-apocalyptic short story is up on Story Cabin (subscribe there for my fiction :))