Weekly Blog: Forgetting to Celebrate

This week’s blog was nearly titled; I’m not angry, I’m disappointed. That felt somewhat melodramatic, even if that is exactly how I felt. “Forgetting to celebrate” feels more like I am about to launch a LinkedIn teachable moment destined for the infamous Reddit of LinkedIn Lunatics.

However, while I did forget an important date and I am upset with myself for that, I am going to focus on what I have really forgotten about lately; that is celebrating little wins along the way. An anniversary date is a celebration, and I am someone who likes to celebrate such momentous occasions as it being Tuesday for no other reason than it feels good. It’s not that I haven’t been celebrating stuff, of course I have.

What I haven’t been doing is celebrating what I have done, my wins. This year I have gotten back in love with the process of creativity. My flat is one big creative mess; it is chaos truly befitting the ADHD mind that lives there. Autistic me is having a quiet meltdown while ADHD me is having a party. Instead of truly pausing to appreciate what I have built, I have, like past iterations of myself, said, “that’s great, onward”.

This year I have tried to move away from project managing myself, away from milestones and progress tracking. I have deliberately steered away from productivity, habit tracking and measuring. It was metrics that pulled me into a funk, and I realised that metrics would also keep me there. My creativity is not a process to be optimised, my workflow isn’t a tool for looking busy and productive, it is a way to actually create. Create things I am proud of, that I enjoy, perhaps, even to create what I would like to find in the world and be the change I want to see.

I don’t have a pitch deck, presentation or GANTT charts to instantly prove that I am working. The tools I use, or should I say the tools I am going to use and have yet to develop will exist to help me and me alone. I don’t have to report, so I need to not fall into the trap of using tools designed for a different, corporate, world of which I am not a part.

Instead, I need to follow the advice of my post-it note that says “where is the madness?”  Something I definitely need to keep to the forefront of my mind because I love to get into systems and processes, it’s the ‘tism, m’lud. Part of not falling into the person as corporation trap is remembering to celebrate wins, not in a pizza at the office way, but genuinely. This is my journey, I get to stop, smell, take photos, write a poem about and even, with permission, pick the flowers that are along my way.

It has been a big year, and I have good cause for celebration. The last few weeks I have been measurably productive, yes, but more than that, I have been enjoying myself. I haven’t written as much poetry as I would like. However, I have pushed the needle on other things that support my writing, helping to banish the ever present imposter syndrome that seems to be epidemic among creative people. I have been able to do these things because I am not feeling as ill as I have at other times this year, and I am truly grateful for the respite of this.

So, I hope you join me in remembering to celebrate the small wins, the “I’m grateful it’s Tuesday’s” and anything that makes you smile, do it because you still can. Until next week: Keep on, Keeping on.