I Have a Little Boss Man Who Hates Daydreaming and Non-Paying Creativity, but I’m Retraining Him

Creative will and capitalism don’t always play well together, but that’s okay.

It’s January, which means that there are a lot of life improvement things floating around. Life improvement things are sticky, and so I’ve been thinking a lot about words like “growth mindset” and “growth hacking” and “self-improvement” and “self-actualization”. I’ve been thinking about how we are influenced by the increasingly controversial idea that economies must always be showing greater and greater growth, the aspirational stories we’re told about people who came from a lower place and landed in a higher place, and how we’ve been taught to look at everything from personal to global histories as simple, linear narratives and that we can move from lesser to greater levels of socially agreed upon successfulness along such simple plot points.

It’s a lot to think about, but as a person given to anxiety and self-flagellation, these cultural ideas need to be pulled apart and picked through, and it’s starting to look a lot like bullshit.

I’ve been tortured since early childhood by the idea that my worthiness is tied to my continually striving spiritually, socially, and financially, that each individual…