Accomplishment Blues

You’ve completed a project, met a deadline, and now, as the work meets its audience, you feel nothing. You’ve numbed out and you don’t know what you’ve made, let alone if it’s any good.

In this post, I reflect on my own recent experience of seeing a project to fruition to see if there’s anything I can share, if you find yourself feeling a similar way.

On 1st May, Sex on Stage, Performing the Body Politic was published. This is a book I have co-edited with Lynn Sally. Every Monday afternoon for over four years, we met on Zoom, creating the dream book we wanted to see realised in the world with our dream collaborators. Our contribution. It felt like a long slog, but finally, the book went to print. It took a lot, though, at every stage.

Any feelings of pride and accomplishment on my part would make total sense. This is a dream manifested. And yet I find those feelings elusive. If I can accomplish something, my subconscious seems to say, then it’s not that big a deal. Like, pride dissociation.

Here’s how I’ve been trying to fill in that emotional gap. I keep my author copies of the book to hand, to keep it in touch. If you see me out and about, I’m probably carrying it in my bag; you’re welcome to ask me to have a look. I’ve been talking about the book. Now that it’s reality it’s much easier to share the details and describe what the book is, the impact we hope it will make.

We’re now in the promotion and publicity phase, and we will be for a long time. We’ve had book launches in London and NYC with contributors coming to read, talk about their chapters and also in NYC, we had performances too. I went to both launches, and the whole of May churned up my feelings. I talked about them to trusted friends, and I also began to examine my feelings too. I’ve been journaling my feelings and trying to see what kind of fears might be hiding. I’ve set my intention to seeing what is going on here, rather than panic and bury my head in the sand because I can’t understand myself (an old MO of mine). I’ve built quietness into my schedule to give my feelings room. While I don’t completely understand my completion dysphoria, I have found some clarity around my apprehension. In the mix there’s been: fear it’ll be the last project I do, fear that as an editor my labour is invisible, fear it won’t lead to anything else.

Here’s my emergency checklist for not letting those fears dominate:

• How can I be in my body? What exercise, touch or physical experience can I have to soothe?

• How can I let my emotions come to the surface? Quiet time, journaling, having a little cry.

• How can I alchemise lostness into foundness? What does my feeling of lostness want or need?

• How can I acknowledge my accomplishments? Talking to others about the project and listening to their responses. Noting down positive insights or screenshoting positive messages.

• Gathering together all the gold fragments that emerge from this process, my self-insights and positive comments into a folder on my Google drive I can access on my phone and laptop.

• Capture the gold, shuck off the pain and doubt that arises.

When I work with artists as a mentor, all the discordant feelings are welcome with me, especially the ones that don’t make sense. When we take a look at those feelings together, we can see that they often cover over big hopes and dreams. If we keep hold of the tender feelings, and we see what‘s underneath them, we can often find such deep information and direction for future projects and career planning. I hold onto these tender visions so you can bring them into the richness of your creativity, as I hold my own angst and turn it into gold.