#3: On following your creative compulsions

Notes on winter, self-analysis, and Esther Perel.

Hey everyone. I’m back after an unintentional holiday hiatus. As far as I’m concerned, winter is a time to indulge creative compulsions, and that’s precisely what I’ve been up to. I stumbled on this TikTok video from Rue Yi that sums it up perfectly:

“People are really interesting when they have well developed senses of interiority, and you get that developed by following your compulsions—specifically your creative compulsions.”

While winter has its downsides, (commuting in the snow, seasonal blues, the inability to go on long, aimless strolls without contracting frostbite, etc.) I love it. Whenever I mention this to someone older, I’m told I’ll hate it when I’m their age. While it’s possible that my affection for the winter will wane with the onset of arthritis, and though it’s true that my current circumstances allow me to curb many of the season’s inconveniences, I think winter (post-holidays, at least) gets a bad rep. I’m also happy to report that

Angelina Hazzouri

is a recent convert, so it’s a matter of time before the PR problem gets fixed.

My theory: people feel prohibited by the limitations of winter when they ought to lean into them. Summer is a time for being in the world; winter is a time for being with yourself.

This isn’t a case for avoiding people. I recently read Derek Thompson’s "The Anti-Social Century” in The Atlantic and share his concerns about the detriments of an increasingly atomized society. We are, of course, in desperate need for more third spaces, more opportunities to form meaningful relationships and to build community. Less time in front of a screen, more time in the world.

That said, there's a difference between aimlessly scrolling social media and following creative compulsions, even if they involve a screen. The former is a passive, mind-numbing surrender to an algorithm; the latter is a conscious cultivation of curiosity. One dulls the mind, the other sharpens it.

When you do emerge into the world, you'll forge more enriching connections, fueled by a trove of material and insight. I often think of Adam Mastroianni's idea that “good conversations have lots of doorknobs,” rejecting the giver-taker binary in favour of conversational affordances—things like digressions, confessions, or bold claims, that invite response. Cultivating a vibrant and dynamic interiority by following creative compulsions is the key to having the sorts of conversations that feel like a seamlessly improvised dance.

To return to the original point: interesting people have interests—and what better time to invest in them than against a backdrop of falling snow, nestled in crisp sheets, with a steaming cup of tea or, better yet, a Negroni by your side? (I'm all for combining hedonic pleasures with eudaemonic ones.)

My bedside hibernation station. The ideal weeknight bedtime sequence: read, podcast, sleep. (Struggled to get into this book though.)

Few things are more peaceful than embarking on a creative quest of your own choosing. It might sound pretentious, but I’d argue that following your creative compulsions is a sincere pursuit in a world where art and culture are often reduced to aesthetics or worse, class performance. There’s beauty in being taken by something, just for the sake of it.

Living in the digital age lets us indulge every whim, but this ease also flattens and fragments our relationship to what we consume, rather than fostering depth. Oddly, I’m reminded of the scene in And Just Like That, where Carrie and Big go through their alphabetized record collection to pick an album for the evening. There’s something charming and intentional about this ritual, like revisiting the archives of a collection, and by extension, a life (those who’ve seen the episode will catch the irony!).

So, maybe you’ve been wanting to dabble in French cinema: make the plan to start with Rohmer’s Tales of the Four Seasons. Curious about psychoanalysis? Create a reading list of your own design, shifting course as your interest evolves. Maybe you want to reread Sally Rooney’s oeuvre to see whether the present version of you relates to her books in new ways. It might reveal how you’ve changed or stayed the same. I’m reminded of “Becoming You” by Joshua Rothman in The New Yorker which categorizes people into “continuers” and “dividers” to answer the question: are you the same person you used to be?

Self-knowledge requires openness, but it’s not about endless permeability. Honing our creative compulsions and sense of self is as much about discernment as it is discovery. Take wine, for example. After years of choosing bottles based on labels (still fun, I admit), I’ve decided it’s worth refining my preferences. When it comes to red, I *think* I enjoy medium to full-bodied wines with smooth tannins and balanced acidity, but without heavy oak. If that sounds like you, give this one a try.

When it comes to personal style, being thoughtful and specific about your likes and dislikes is key to developing a refined sensibility. It ensures you circumvent the boundarylessness that leads to overconsumption and overwhelm. On that note, I’m obsessed with the closet cataloging app Indyx. It may require some upfront time investment (even as someone who is delighted by organization, it seemed like a lot at first) but trust me, it’s so worth it! I give the app credit for how good I’ve gotten at packing. Spend your next snowy Sunday setting it up, reap the benefits forever.

All of this is to say that in our precarious world, burrowing away into a quiet and focused place, into the practice of cultivating something, or simply into a good story, can be both grounding and utterly mind expanding. I truly believe it is one of life’s greatest pleasures to transcend yourself whether in relation, in conversation, or through art.

Here are some things I’ve consumed this week that are fittingly on-brand:

“The Illusion of Him” by Lee Tilghman

Lee captures the anxiety of early dating so well: the longing, the projection, the unease that comes from budding connections. I needed to know what happened so badly that as soon as I hit the paywall I absolutely had to upgrade to a paid subscription. I devoured the entire piece in one sitting, before even making coffee—and that’s saying something! Lee articulates the frenzy of being consumed by a love interest with such precision. She’s very sensible, so she didn’t go nearly as far as the women in these books, but I was reminded nonetheless of Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux and Willful Disregard by Lena Andersson.

While I relate to the impulse to pathologize—be it limerence, overcorrection, or some other psychoanalytic concept—I wonder if, at times, for those of us with a reflexive and rigorous tendency toward self-analysis like Lee, there’s value in resisting?

“Against Self-Actualization” by Adelle Waldman & The Metropolitan Review

I loved this meandering book review meets philosophical exploration. I’m fascinated by self-actualization as a concept, but simultaneously skeptical of schools of thought that overemphasize self-sufficiency. The idea of independence has always struck me as dubious, and I believe the greatest growth happens when we’re in relation to others.
These days, it feels like self-actualization is being commodified by every guru and celebrity but I like that this piece offers a simpler, less rarefied alternative: relational joy. Also, it made me want to read Susan Minot.

But learning to be more careful about not falling for jerks is not the same as learning—or trying to teach oneself—not to need anyone, not to need romantic love at all. And yet wide swaths of our culture have, it seems, embraced the idea that the desire for love and romance is something we should strive to overcome, or master, in the name of something like self-actualization. In fact—if we’re being real—we ought to acknowledge that self-actualization is a concept as little grounded in evidence as the belief in religious miracles, in that I’m pretty sure no one has ever witnessed self-actualization or knows what it looks like in practice. Rather, it always seems to be just around the corner, slightly out of reach, something this or that influencer or celebrity is about to attain now that he or she has finally realized this one new “truth” and has only to apply it, for all the pieces of their life to click into place. At least happiness in love—if rarer than we might like—is something we’ve all seen with our own eyes, if we haven't experienced it ourselves.

”Tell Me Why It Hurts” by Danielle Carr

I’ve been curious about The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van der Kolk for some time, so I read the text preview to see if I should add it to my list. The first few pages disturbed and intrigued me. To say the least, the statistics on abuse, assault, and violence are staggering. This led me to a profile, which was quite a trip. It made me think about how naming something can offer both liberation and damnation; does it provide a framework to make sense of your suffering, or doom you to be defined by your diagnosis? Of course, as always, it can do both.

What about when the term is as broad and amorphous as trauma? Does it provide a kind of relief for individuals who could not, in their conscious memory, ascertain the particulars of what happened to them, even if there was a subconscious, embodied knowing? Or, has this categorization been pushed beyond its intended purpose, a kind of catch-all explanation that, because of its pervasiveness, has come to say nothing at all? All of this made me think of empathy as a concept, and the question of whether understanding is a prerequisite for empathy. If you’re interested in this sort of thing, I’d recommend Leslie Jamison’s essay collection The Empathy Exams.

“Is This Worth a Second Chance?” from Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel

I love EP and her podcast generally, but this new episode was one of my favorites. I listened with my eyes closed right before falling asleep, and I was so taken by the intimacy, it felt like I was eavesdropping.

On the surface, the couple is exploring whether or not they should give their eight-year relationship a second chance, a year after it ended. But on a deeper level, they’re negotiating big, universal questions about love and connection. In my opinion, this is Esther at her best. She navigates their dynamic with particular deftness, knowing precisely which strings to pull, when to offer an insight, and when to sit back. There’s a moment when she asks him to respond in Dutch and have her translate it into English as a way of encouraging more active listening. I was struck by how she leveraged literal language to navigate the complex metaphorical language of connection. Though I couldn’t understand a word, I surprised myself by how tender I felt towards both of them in that moment.

Related to the idea of self-analysis, I also wondered about its limitations here. In facilitating greater self-awareness, would Esther actually catalyze a change in their dynamic? To what degree will they overcome entrenched childhood wounds? And if they do, will their desires actually shift as a result of that self-understanding, enabling greater harmony between them?

An essay collaboration/conversation between David Roberts & Laura Kennedy

This was such a wonderful and necessary conversation (and not just because of Laura’s delightful accent and manner of speaking). So often, these discussions remain confined within silos of social and financial class, generations, cultures, etc., so their collaboration intrigued me. David was born into generational wealth, while Laura comes from a working-class background. They talk about how the legacies they each inherited produced distinct obligations and opportunities and how their notions of success and identity have shifted with age and experience. Despite their differences, they share a similar—perhaps universal—struggle: to self-actualize amidst the various systems and structures that have shaped them in the first place.