Navigating Uncertainty and the Creative Life
As artists, we often want to live beyond clearly-marked career pathways: slipping between disciplinary boundaries, weaving together different professional roles, juggling multiple forms of self-expression. I say this as someone who shows up to my work each day as an inextricable mix of singer, poet, educator, songwriter, health scientist.
The multifaceted creative life can be rich and fulfilling. And. It also means facing the difficulty of forging our own paths. How do we build a career? Where do we invest our time and energy? Will it be worth it?
Truly, one of the most common themes in a creative life is uncertainty.
Massive Uncertainty
My own career path has been shaped by transformative moments of uncertainty. One of the most profound was when major depressive disorder forced me to leave the work I’d dreamed of since I was a child: touring as a singer/songwriter. I took what I thought was a “break,” hoping to heal, but eventually came to the excruciating realization that I’d never be able to return—not if I wanted to get and stay well.
During that time, my initial depression deepened with grief over losing the music career I loved. And all of this was compounded by massive uncertainty about the future. What would I do instead?
Fresh off the road and deep in depression, poetry was the only thing that could interest me. So after some wild google searches, I found myself applying to a graduate program in poetry.
I’d learned about the very concept of this degree just two weeks before the application was due. I’d never considered going back to school for anything. But there I was, overnighting an application packet full of song lyrics and CDs. I didn’t expect to get in.
But—
I did.
And then, I had to decide: Is this worth two years? Will I really not tour for that whole time? What am I thinking? Where will this lead?
Massive. Uncertainty.
I couldn’t have known that this on-a-whim grad program would lead to my work in the juvenile justice system, to a published book, to my passion for research, a PhD, and ultimately to my work now in public health.
Here’s what I did know: Saying ‘yes’ was a way to answer the questions that loomed over my depression: Why does poetry reach me, even here? And, What might this fact MEAN?
What I found was that, in the midst of uncertainty, a guiding question–an overarching, inquisitive pursuit–can provide direction.
Looming Questions
We tend to spend our time looking for answers, for certainty or proof. But poet Rainer Maria Rilke points to the importance of questions:
“...have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves… Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them…Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”
To me, “loving the questions” means realizing that questions aren’t a frustrating detour off the main road of Certainty. The questions are the main road.
And questions are the world in which our inquisitive nature makes sense. They’re a sea that our creative selves know how to swim in.
I’ve found that my own reactivity to uncertainty is calmed when I reframe uncertainty as the point of life, of creating. “Love the questions.” What happens when we decide to ask not, What do I want to achieve?, but rather, What do I want to know?
This posture of curiosity holds the door open. The map zooms out, and you see that there are many ways to get from here to there.
So what is your guiding question?
If you don’t yet have one, I’ll quote one of my poetry professors: “Follow the obsession.”
Follow the Obsession
Creatives are researchers of the human experience. There are often ideas, images, dreams that we “obsess” over—turning them over and over in our minds, or teasing them out through our craft. They’re not necessarily constant throughout our lives (mine certainly haven’t been!), but they can point to the questions we’re living but haven’t yet put into words.
In the midst of my grad program in poetry, I found that everything I wrote centered on the same general topic. I was haunted by questions about how the religion of my youth had shaped and harmed me and others. Something about the space or structure of grad school made these questions come rushing out. I’d been a touring songwriter for a decade at this point, but I’d never written so much in my life!
Meanwhile, each of my peers was writing about all kinds of things… and I started to grow self-conscious about my focused subject. I worried I was failing myself by failing to explore more ideas.
But when I raised these fears with one of my professors, he just shook his head and shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. Follow the obsession. You have a lot to explore here. It works itself out.”
Follow the obsession…It works itself out.
I interpreted this as, You find where you’re headed by going.
Every poem is a bridge to the next poem. Every line blooms into the next line. You learn what poetic doors to knock on, what nuances to explore, by writing the next word.
My professor was right. That “obsession” turned into my first book.
And this stepwise approach to poetry applies to the broader creative life. Every action is a bridge to the next one. As another mentor once told me, “I don’t know where everything is headed. We can’t know. I just do the next thing.”
Do the next thing.
So what’s your guiding question?
Note that a guiding question is vast enough to accommodate many paths and directions. It allows the creative life to be less about a specific answer (eg, a particular role or achievement) than about exploring, expanding, learning, and iterating.
After my grad program ended – (you know, the one that overhauled my life) – I wound up founding an arts program for justice-involved girls. I kept studying pedagogy and rhetoric. I taught literature and writing to all kinds of students, in all kinds of spaces. I put out another record. I got a PhD in Public Health, and forged my current roles.
None of this is what I expected. I didn’t set out, years ago, to land here. Uncertainty followed me the entire way, and it still does.
What these varied steps had in common was that they were all ways of pursuing the guiding questions that burned in me as a performer, as a teaching artist in juvenile detention, and as a human with a history of depression:
“Why is it that humans can communicate about difficult experiences via the arts, when we can’t communicate about them otherwise? And what does this mean for our health, our health systems, and even our social norms?”
FINDING A GUIDING QUESTION: AN EXAMPLE
For one client I worked with, their first question was, “How can I make my living as an artist?” When we zoomed out, the driver of that question was a core desire to spend more time making and sharing art. One of their guiding questions became, “What is it about art that makes me (and many others) want to spend more time with it?” Obviously, not everyone who asks the first question will arrive at this same curiosity. But for this individual, the interest they articulated in research and advocacy guided their next steps.
I’m grateful to find myself, years later, living my way into some answers.
In the midst of uncertainty, in the midst of the many ways in which your work and life could unfold, follow the question. Peel it back, and follow it again.
And if the idea of a guiding question doesn’t resonate, there’s likely another North Star you can identify: a value, interest, dream, or obsession that looms. Whatever it may be, take a step towards it… And allow that step to guide you to the next one.
Do the next thing.
You get where you’re headed by going.
START FINDING YOUR OWN GUIDING QUESTION...
… To help get you started, I created a FREE WORKBOOK to help you brainstorm and experiment toward the questions that will help you forge your own creative path.
Click HERE to grab your free ‘Finding Your Guiding Question’ workbook!