2025: The Creative Failure
Shouting into the void.
As the year comes to a close and everyone reflects on past months and their goals for the future, I’ve been faced with the brutal reality that I have achieved a near-complete creative failure.
Now, don’t get me wrong, 2025 wasn’t a terrible year for me. I ran my first half marathon, went to a bunch of live events, got promoted at my job, got comfortable enough on my motorcycle that I took it on the highway, still spent time with friends and family – these are all things I wanted to accomplish. I was working my way through almost everything I wanted to be checking off my to-do list. But at the same time, I completely lost myself.
When I think of creative failure, I don’t think of it as something that is quantifiable by the number of views I get on a post, or the money I bring in from selling my art. I don’t even think of it as the amount of art I produce. I’ve had good years and bad years for all those things, even as someone who is arguably still somewhere near the beginning of their creative journey. For me the failure was a complete stop to my creative ventures. Everything was on pause for the majority of a year. It eventually got to a point where I had to ask myself “How did I even get here?”
See, I had never intended to pour 100% of myself into any one thing. I went into a STEM-based field because I got bored when only focusing on my art. At the same time, I couldn’t give up the art entirely because it’s quite frankly the only thing that could keep me sane. For a few years I achieved a pretty good balance, but in achieving that balance, I got too comfortable – I got happy.
I always found it harder to paint when happy. Maybe that’s just a sign of an unhealthy relationship with my work, but it’s the truth. When I was painting, it was because I needed it. The outlet of painting was something to quiet my mind when I was struggling with my mental health, or simply too stressed by whatever was going on in my life. Whenever things sort of levelled out, I didn’t really feel the need to create. By the end of 2024, things had started to level out.
And then work took over my life. There was a period of a few months where I ate, breathed and slept my day job. I was waking up in the morning, logging on, and then suddenly it would be way past when I’d intended to go to bed. I was drowning in work, and I didn’t feel like a person anymore.
When things finally started to slow down again, I’d reached a level of burnout I don’t think I’ve experienced before. I couldn’t even really log on to Instagram to look at what other people were doing because it just made me feel even more removed from the work that I was missing. Somehow everyone else seemed to be doing what I couldn’t. And I know the internet isn’t real, but the reality of it is that the posts on there are at least a sign of progress, a sign of effort. I had nothing to show, and no energy to try.
I had always prided myself on being someone that could do it all – I could work in engineering, and make art on the side, and go out with friends, and travel, and have every hobby under the sun – until I couldn’t. That’s the problem with growth, I think. If you keep your foot on the gas for too long without looking where you’re going, you eventually run out of road. Something had to give. I never thought it would be my art, but that’s the way things went in 2025.
To a degree I had never experienced before I was separated from my art. I abandoned my Instagram account almost entirely. My DMs went unanswered. My website became – and still mostly is – a barren wasteland full of projects at least 2 years old. I was creating nothing most of the time. When I was creating, I wasn’t happy enough with what I made to share it. I abandoned some pieces that were at 90% completion for no explainable reason. Opportunities came my way and I just let them pass. I sent out a record low number of applications for art shows, and the idea of taking on a commission made me want to crawl into a hole and die.
One of the never-finished projects of 2025
In an attempt to claw my way back into some kind of creative headspace, I started and failed “The Artists’ Way” at least 3 times. I think it was a bit above me to be honest. A little too spiritual, a little too distant from the way I’d found my creativity in the past.
I told myself I was taking a break. A hiatus to take some creative risks and try something new. But with no concrete plans, I found myself slipping further and further away from my art. Eventually, the balance I’d achieved the year before had been thrown off to such a degree that something had to change. I began painting again more regularly, whenever I had a bit of time or energy. I forced myself to send out one application for one show, and thankfully got in. It was enough of an encouragement to get me started making plans.
So the only question left is: what’s next?
For the first time in probably 7 years I’ve been itching to write. Maybe because it’s a creative outlet that’s lower pressure for me. Nobody’s expecting anything from it, least of all me. I’m going to be documenting a bit of my creative process over the next few weeks and months, in some formats I’ve never tried before. The logic here is that if I’ve already hit my creative rock bottom, it’s got to be all uphill from here, right? (*fingers crossed*). This newsletter is the first step. I hope you’ll come along for the journey.
