Second post of the day – to satisfy the scientist-researcher part of me.

Yesterday, I thought finishing would feel like sunshine. Today, I finished. And drew a turd. 💩 And I couldn’t help becoming curious about what had actually happened. Why did reaching the end of something I’d worked so hard on not feel like the moment of triumph I’d imagined?

It turns out my experience isn’t unusual and apparently, there is quite a lot going on here.

1. The post-completion letdown

When we work towards a goal, anticipation and momentum become part of the experience. We imagine how it will feel when we finally get there. Then we arrive, the striving stops, and the emotional payoff we imagined doesn’t necessarily arrive with it. Yesterday, there was sunshine. Today, there was page 38. And a turd. A bit of a letdown!

2. The distance effect

While you’re making something, you’re inside it. The work is tangled up with your thoughts, decisions, doubts and discoveries. Finishing creates distance. Suddenly, you can look at the thing itself rather than simply thinking through it. Yesterday, I was the writer. Today, I was looking at the writing. Those are different perspectives.

3. The messy reality of a first draft

A first draft is, inconveniently, still a first draft. After weeks of thinking deeply about something, it is surprisingly easy to expect the first completed draft to look more finished than it actually is. Ideas emerge at different times. Arguments change as you write them. Some sections strengthen while others suddenly look less convincing. The mess is not necessarily evidence that the process has failed. Sometimes the mess is the process.

4. The usefulness of stepping away

Stepping away isn’t necessarily avoidance or abandonment. Distance can be part of the work. When we return, we aren’t quite the same person who left. We have interrupted the mental loop and created the possibility of seeing differently. Which is why my next step is not to immediately fix everything I dislike about the paper. It’s to leave it alone for a while. This feels deeply uncomfortable. But perhaps that discomfort is part of the practice too.

5. Incubation

In creativity, deliberately stepping away from a problem is known as incubation. A break can allow ideas to settle, reduce fixation and help us return with a different perspective. So leaving the paper alone may not mean I’m stopping the creative process. It may be part of it.

6. The expectation gap

And then there is the gap between what I thought would happen and what actually happened.

I finish the paper → I feel amazing.

Instead:

I finish the paper → I look at it → “Oh. That’s a turd.” 😂

Perhaps the problem wasn’t finishing. Perhaps it was the story I’d attached to finishing. I had imagined that page 38 would give me certainty. Instead, it gave me information. I had finished the draft. I hadn’t finished the work.

What makes this even more interesting is that I accidentally documented both states. Yesterday, I took a photograph of a heart in my coffee, with sunlight falling across my journal and the paper – Anticipation. Today, I drew a turd. Post-completion Reality.

It’s obviously not a scientific experiment. But it is a tiny piece of observational data from my own creative process.

And perhaps that’s what creative practice really is: making something, stepping away, looking again, and learning to see.