Stop worrying what your friends think

A big creative block for me growing up was the fact that the people I knew would see my creative work. I played music and wrote songs when I was in school, and I often wrote about my experiences with people I knew. It felt like a constricted creative environment, weighing what I could say or should not say based on how I imagined people would react. 

I let a lot of that fear seep into my work as time went on. The funny thing was, the more time went on, the fewer people I knew cared about my work. When I was in school, friends and family and bullies and crushes listened to my songs because they had to. As I got older, I realized that when given the choice, people only engage with art that feels like it’s made for them. I write about freelancing. Most of my friends aren’t freelancers. I can write freely without my friends in mind, because it’s not for them. 

If you create a work of art, particularly something robust and lengthy, you don’t need to worry about people you know getting upset by it. The chances of someone you know engaging with the whole thing, and reading into every word and metaphor is low. People are too busy for that. 

This isn’t to say that nobody will engage with your work. People will. Other people. People just like you. This just gives you more freedom and to create something more meaningful for a specific kind of person, instead of pulling your punches for people who won’t engage anyway.