What do you do when you’ve lost the point of why you’re doing something?
Perhaps you’ve made something more complicated than it needs to be.
Or veered from the original concept, motivation, or desire.
Or maybe found yourself caught up in the outcome, the audience, the result instead of the joy of the process.
In other words, you feel like you’ve let go of the thread.
This is a part of the creative process we’re not often privy to. We simply see the output of others, the finished piece, or the accolades, but rarely the doubt, the undone, or the flailing behind the scenes.
How do people navigate these fallow, lost, uncertain periods?
How do they come back to the point?
How do they rediscover the thread?
Lately, I’ve been asking myself these questions, and in the most recent episode of the Dailyness podcast, I share where I’ve landed.
For anyone who has felt caught in perfectionism, comparison, or inertia, the episode is a gentle reminder that creativity is a cyclical process of forgetting and remembering the thread that stays with us. As William Stafford wrote in his poem, The Way It Is:
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
Each podcast episode is shaped by a daily writing and observation practice I’ve kept for over 1,000 days as a way to deepen presence, connection, and attention. Here’s the latest batch with notes on finding joy, revealing opposites, and letting it grow.
Monday 5 October
Overheard: “Being in two minds keeps us stuck.”
Tuesday 6 October
After listening to David Sedaris read this short story by Miranda July, I linger on the theme of postponing disappointment.
While on the one hand, postponing can be avoidance, on the other, it can offer hope. We can hold onto some things, turn them into a talisman, or even a lifeline. When we realise something is too late, that we’d waited too long, or that the opportunity has indeed passed, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s all been for nothing—perhaps the postponement of one thing meant we did something else, or we avoided what would have been an even greater disappointment.
Wednesday 7 October
I’m walking down a quiet street in Beechworth when I see what looks like a little shrub begin to waddle. Getting closer, I realise it’s an echidna. I watch as it crosses the road, curling back into a ball amongst the native grasses. How easily I could have missed such a delightful sight. How often we mistake things for other things. How often we don’t really see what’s in the periphery.
Thursday 8 October
You send me a song and it sounds familiar. I scroll through my Shazam list and there it is, “Nausicaä (Love Will Be Revealed)” by Cameron Winter. I remember listening to it in that cafe around the corner from you, just a few months before I met you. How wonderful to think that we never know what’s just around the corner from our lives.
Friday 9 October
I’ve told myself I’ll work on a new podcast episode every week, but instead, right now, I’m procrastinating on Instagram. I check my DMs, and my brother has sent me a reel. It’s the late Glen Hansard reflecting on his time busking:
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