Hi, it’s Megan Macedo.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what it means to be in relationship with our work. And as I’m trying to go deeper into these ideas and straighten them out for myself, I thought it would be a good opportunity to share some voice notes publicly with you.
I’ve done that in the past whenever I’m preparing for new events or programmes and trying to straighten out my ideas. I often send myself voice notes, and people seem to find it helpful if I share those as well.
So this idea of what it means to be in relationship with your work — I’ve been thinking about it in lots of different ways for years. But I’ve just wrapped up a four-month-long immersion of my Art Paradigm programme, so I’ve been deep in talking about the Art Paradigm with people who are trying, as much as possible, to do the work that only they can do.
And I’m preparing to go into a new cohort next month of my Make Work group, which is a small group of four people where we’re in contact every week. It’s where I get to go inside people’s work with them and inside their creative process.
So as I’m coming out of the Art Paradigm and preparing to go back into the next cohort of Make Work, I’ve been thinking at a deeper level about what it is that we are after.
My work is grounded in the Art Paradigm, which is a process paradigm. So our focus is not on productivity, not on the outcome primarily. That’s what the Business Paradigm is all about. It’s a productivity paradigm. It’s focused on:
What are you producing?
What’s the outcome?
What’s the output?
How can we control that?
In the Art Paradigm, we have a completely different orientation where we are focused on the process of making the work. We focus on the making of the work rather than any specific outcome, where we are aware that we don’t get to control the outcome. The outcome is none of our business.
Our job is to show up to the work, to show up to our process, and then discover what the outcome will be.
And I’m very clear on that. But as I’ve been thinking about that more and more, and thinking about what the ache is that we bring into the Art Paradigm — what is the itch that we’re trying to scratch — the thing that I’m always focused on with clients is helping them to do the work that only they can do. Helping them get clear on what that work is, and then to actually make that work and be able to do it.
And the thing that I’ve been coming back to again and again is that really, we want to feel alive in our work. We want to feel alive in our lives. We want to feel like the work that we have in us, we were able to get out.
But actually, I think it’s all about being able to be in relationship with our work.
The relationship with our work is the thing that soothes us. It’s the thing that keeps us going.
Something I talk about a lot is how we can be sustained with the tiniest amount of progress in the Art Paradigm. If we’re doing our own work, if we’re just making the smallest bit of progress, if we can sense the tiniest bit of forward momentum, we can live for years on that.
We really don’t need a huge amount to sustain us whenever we’re doing the work that we’re built for, the work that we can’t not do.
And I think it’s because it’s the relationship that we have with the work. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what sustains us.
And also, that is the purpose of the whole thing.
The output, the work that we create, the work that we produce, is a side effect. The whole thing is about this relationship.
We ache to be in relationship with our work. We ache to be intimate and connected and up close and in contact with that work that we can’t not do — the work that is born out of our unique experience and makeup and curiosity and all of that.
That is where all of the aliveness is. It’s in that relationship.
So I’m interested in thinking more deeply about that, and thinking about how we enable ourselves to be in that relationship. How do we make space in our lives and in ourselves to show up to that relationship and have the quality of that relationship be what we want it to be?
I think I find it really helpful to think about our work as something we’re in relationship with because automatically we understand some things about relationships that really apply when it comes to our work.
As soon as we start to think of it as a relationship, and the work as something distinct from us, then we start to see how unhelpful it is to think in some of those Business Paradigm ways — thinking that we control it, thinking that we can just show up and dictate:
Okay, here’s what I want.
Here’s my plan.
Here’s how I want things to go.
We instinctively understand that if we did that in any other relationship where there is someone else on the other end of it, that’s probably not going to work out too well. That’s maybe not going to be the kind of relationship that makes us come alive in the way we want to come alive.
And so our work is kind of this other entity that we’re playing with, that we are trying to be intimate with.
I just find it to be such a helpful lens.
Any time I start to feel overwhelmed with the amount of stuff on the to-do list, or feeling like I’ve had all these ideas for pieces of work that I want to create and I’m frustrated with the pace that everything’s going at and I want things to be done — if I remind myself:
Hang on a minute.
The whole thing here is I just want to be in relationship with this work.
It just brings it all back down to earth. It calms my nervous system. It makes everything the right size again. And it allows me to enjoy the process of creating the work again.
Because it’s so easy to feel that pressure that comes from the Business Paradigm around producing and pace and looking at what other people are doing and comparing yourself and all of that.
You can be in a situation where you’re working on a project that you love, but you find yourself not able to enjoy the process because of all this pressure and overwhelm.
So for me, reminding myself that it’s a relationship lets me actually enjoy being in that relationship again, enjoy the process, and be appreciative of the fact that I get to do this.
So if you’re interested in these kinds of ideas and you would find that helpful, I’m going to share these voice notes maybe every day for the next couple of weeks. I’ll just be exploring this idea more.
If you have questions, I would be very happy to hear them. You can email me.
And also, I’ll tell you more over the next couple of weeks about the Make Work group. The new cohort is starting in June. There are two spots already filled, so I have two spots open.
That’s for anyone who really wants to spend the next six months dedicating themselves to a particular creative project.
If you have work that you would love to make meaningful progress with, whatever that ends up looking like, it’s a space where we can come and do that.
You might come with a project that is fully formed in terms of how you’re thinking about it. I’m working on a book — that’s the project I’ll be bringing to the Make Work group.
Or you might have something that you’ve had the idea for for years and you just never seem to find the time for it, or it just hasn’t had the space that it needs.
Or you might come, as people have in the past, with just a hint of an idea. A sense of:
I don’t even know what this work is, but I can smell it. I can taste it. I know some of these themes I want to explore, but I have no idea what form this takes. What am I actually creating here?
And sometimes that’s what makes it difficult to begin.
So it’s completely okay to show up with something like that as well.
One of the things that we do in Make Work is create a container so that you can explore. You can show up with a totally open research project and we can help you find shape with it.
I’ll tell you more about that over the next couple of weeks. If you’re curious right now, you can email me and I’ll give you the basic info.
But yeah, the Make Work group is basically about coming together to create alongside each other.
In theory, we can create our work in isolation, and lots of people do. But what I’ve observed again and again and again — in myself, my clients, and other people I know — is that nobody really creates work alone.
There’s always some relationship or some group or some forum that offers incubation.
I know I’ve been working on this book for a few years now, and it has evolved necessarily again and again and again. It’s getting close now, I think, but it’s been really fascinating to just give it the time and space that it needs to let my conscious mind catch up with what the work is.
But my book would never have gotten off the ground at all without the small, intimate creative groups that I have found along the way.
So if that is something you would be interested in, drop me an email and I’ll get you the information straight away.
But either way, I hope you’ll stick with me over the next couple of weeks as I dig into this idea of being in relationship with our work.
What does that look like?
What does that mean?
What distinctions are helpful for us to think about along the way?
Thank you for listening. I’d love to hear your questions, and I will speak to you soon.