Over the course of this newsletter’s lifespan, my levels of organisation behind-the-scenes have greatly varied. I’ve had seasons in which I’ve maintained a well-stocked spreadsheet, full of content ideas and scheduled my posts well in advance. Just call me Jacqueline Carlyle. Then there have been long stretches when I’ve flown by the seat of my pants. I’m sure I’ve come close to losing Léo with the number of times I’ve sent her a frantic last-minute text asking for a cartoon on an incoherent theme.

I’m somewhere in the middle of those extremes right now. I have a healthy list of ideas, but for reasons that will be revealed at a future date, I can’t write them yet.

So just for today, I’m just going to write something joyful for a change.

Lately, I’ve felt the tingle of creative excitement creep over me again. For too long now, possibly the longest stretch I’ve known, I’ve felt creatively depleted. I’ve resented my work and struggled to muster the energy to do things that I once loved. And now, that drive is back. I know it’s not fashionable to be a girl boss anymore, and I did just write about my pledge to do less this year, but this isn’t about grinding. My enthusiasm for hustling has not returned (and I don’t particularly want it to, either) – it’s my need to create that’s come back to me.

I recently heard creativity described as “existential problem-solving”. A perfect definition for something that to me, feels so fundamental to my sense of self. It also was a timely reminder that creativity and productivity are not the same things. I’ve been guilty of getting confused about that distinction myself, especially recently. Creativity isn’t quantifiable in the way that productivity is measurable. Where creativity doesn’t have a clear endpoint, productivity is all about the destination; you optimise in order to get somewhere in the most efficient way possible. It’s the difference between walking to the post office in order to get your steps in while running an errand, versus taking a spontaneous meander for no reason other than exploration.

The relationship between the two is fraught, at least for me. I’m not a messy, chaotic writer. I have a notepad on my desk that says “write drunk, edit sober” and yet I couldn’t think of anything worse than writing drunk. I don’t write into the late hours, amid a stack of crumpled papers. I operate best in order. I like plans and schedules. And for the most part, pursuing productivity helps my creativity. But too much routine and planning don’t work for me, either. Because sometimes my need, and even enjoyment of productivity, co-opt my ability to be creative. In trying to optimise for my most creative self, I hamstring my very ability to be creative.

A few years ago, I wrote about how creativity can’t be hacked. How you can’t optimise your way out of the messy parts of making stuff.

When we feel overwhelmed by our volume of work, rather than setting a boundary, we turn to convoluted prioritization systems. When we can’t focus because we work in overstimulating office environments, we drown out the distractions with white noise rather than ask for downtime. It’s not surprising, then, that so many of us feel so stressed and burned out.

Neurologist Alice Weaver Flaherty has found that this external pressure to be constantly creative tends to backfire. Contrary to the popular saying, necessity is not the mother of invention, she says: Fear-based problem-solving is not nearly as effective as harnessing the more positive, deeper, and desire-driven motivation of frustration.*

“Necessity is driven by danger, and if you don’t get what you need, something bad happens,” Flaherty explains. “Frustration may be exquisitely painful. You may really want something, but it’s driven by desire. When you don’t get it, you’re back where you started.”

But who would actively seek out creative frustration? In comparison, hacks are undeniably attractive. They suggest that there’s some simple solution to the thorny problem of creativity, a system or tip that you might post on Instagram. Like confusing nutritional advice that taps into our physical insecurities, these hacks niggle at our intellectual aspirations and anxieties.

Looking back at that piece, it was full of great insight (not from me, mind, but from the experts I spoke with, especially Flaherty, quoted above, who has had hypergraphia, a compulsive need to write, which resulted in the bestseller The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block, and the Creative Brain.)

What I realise now is that I wrote that piece because I needed to read it. I knew that creativity couldn’t be hacked, but I desperately wanted to be wrong about that because I too wanted a shortcut to a creative nirvana that doesn’t exist.

The return of my creative urge has made me think about an age-old question: why do we create? Answering that makes me think of my grandfather. He’s an artist. A textbook one, in my opinion; he paints in a studio at an easel, in a blue overall covered in paint, sometimes holding a palette. He even has a beret, although I don’t think he wears it while painting. Many years ago, he had a black cat who resided in the studio, living off fresh kidney meat my grandfather would buy him from the butcher’s.

My grandfather is a chaotic artist in so far as his studio is a mess. It’s teeming with stuff. Every surface is covered in something; an old photograph of me as a child by the river, a stack of yellowing gas bills, a piece of fishing line. I worry about putting something down in there for fear the void will suck it up. But there’s also order. My grandfather is a man of routine. He goes to his studio on a schedule, leaving home after breakfast (always porridge) and coming back in the mid-afternoon. I’ve never known him to wake in the middle of the night, taken by the muse, and paint in the early hours.

In sheer output terms, my grandfather has been incredibly productive. There are over 500 paintings stuffed into his storage room. But he’s also told me about the many times he’s gone to his studio to just sit there and not paint a single stroke. Sometimes he tinkers with the admin of the studio, cleaning brushes, fixing frames, paying his union dues. He gets stuff done.

It’s cold in Romania right now and in March my grandfather will turn 94. When we spoke last, he was upset because he’d not been able to make it to his studio. He’s been working on the biggest painting of his life. I joked with him that I’m not sure how I’m going to be able to hang it because my house doesn't have tall ceilings.

I’ve never asked him why he paints. I know the answer: he has to. That’s why he feels out of sorts when he can’t go to his studio. But what I don’t know is why that work can only happen in that studio. My grandfather’s studio, while full of his painting materials, isn’t a painter’s utopia. It doesn’t have much natural light. At this time of year, he has little choice but to paint under harsh strip lighting, which often flickers. He’s had that studio for as long as I’ve known him, which is 34 years. He never painted in his flat, even after my grandmother died. Maybe it’s out of respect to her, she preferred his dirty paintbrushes to stay out of the house. Maybe it’s a habit. Maybe it’s a belief that the muse is in that studio.

There are the things we do in the name of productivity that we keep using because actually work. And then there are the superstitious things we do in the name of creativity; we don’t know why they work but they just do, and it’s in that unknown that magic happens.

I sat down to write something joyful. What came out might not seem that joyful. But the point was that I sat down to write for no reason. I wanted to write for the sake of writing, to let words I didn’t know I needed to put down on the page flow through me. I write for lots of different reasons. Sometimes I write because I need to say something. I also write to work stuff out. Today, I wrote to go somewhere; to spend an hour in my grandfather’s studio, while I can’t be there physically and neither can he. And that brings me more joy than I can find the words to capture.