The big picture
In my quest for unbridled creative joy, I got an important lesson in motivation and self-acceptance.
Do you ever find yourself day-dreaming about a simpler time? For me, the daydreams tend to come in the form of wishes for a pureness I haven’t felt since grade school.
In art and English classes, teachers showed us foundational concepts then assigned prompt-based projects — draw a landscape with a foreground, middle ground, and background; write an essay about an alligator who lives in a swamp — and leave the rest up to experimentation, to sheer process. The only necessary outcome was to turn in the project.
As adults, we don’t get those opportunities. Sure, there are chances to create without caring about the outcome, but societal expectation is ever-present, asking: Are you sure you want to use your time for that? Isn’t a waste of energy? Your resources are meant for real life, not the imagination.
And then there’s social media, a hazy cloud that that says our creative pursuits are worthwhile only when they’ve been beloved and consumed by the masses. Otherwise, creativity is simply an exercise in self-indulgence.
And yet, when I’m in it — when my fingers move in tandem with my brain — time seemingly melts away. The trying tends to create a feeling of ease, but to get there, I have to show up. And that, almost always, feels like mammoth task.
It requires hardly any thought at my day job, where I write and edit on deadline for Business Insider readers. But when I want to make something just because I want to try it, it’s hard to convince myself that it’s worthwhile. I spent the end of 2025 and most of this year wrestling with this difficulty, hoping I’d muster up a near-daily creative writing practice because it’s what I want, to no avail.
So when I got an email about a beginner drawing class for adults in my neighborhood, I stopped in my tracks. I remembered that I had free will, and could use it to do something creative and outcome-free.
$302, six classes, and dozens of graphite drawings later, I realized I thrive off of structure and mentorship. Soon after the last day of class, I told my therapist about my lack of novel-writing progress and how I felt like my own worst enemy.
My therapist agreed, but not in the way I’d expected. She said I could help myself more. Instead of trying to fit myself into the box of “regimented and self-starting writer,” I could toss out the idealized version of me and work with who I really was: Someone who wants to create among structure, camaraderie, and a bit of guidance.
Last week, I got another email. This one was for an online writing course. $350 to be taught about something I already know how to do? I tried telling myself it would be a waste, but also wondered what would happen if I just went for it.
I thought about drawing class. The pictures I made weren’t perfect or even great. What they were, though, was the sum of who I was in the moments I created them: The extent of my effort, curiosity, and fellowship in those 3-hour classes, distilled onto a few pages littered with graphite and pastel.
Yes, this was the feeling.
Routine Breakdown
🥁 Presenting 🥁 a brand new Crygest column! Here, I’ll walk you through the routines I use to make life’s craziness a bit more manageable.
How to pack for a long-weekend trip in just one carry-on suitcase:
Open your notes app or grab a pen and some paper. We’re list makin’, baby!
At the top of your page, note the high and low temperatures for the trip and the duration of your stay. It can also help to list any activities you have planned (ie: hike, beach day, museum day, shopping in town, cooking class).
List out the general items you need for the trip, based on the above. Perhaps there’s rain in the forecast, so you’ll list “rain coat” and “umbrella.” Maybe you’ll be walking a ton, so you write “gym sneakers” and “fashion sneakers.” For this part, I also list how many of each item I’ll need, like “tank tops - 2x,” and more obvious items like makeup, skincare, and socks.
Pick 3 colors to act as your core palette for the trip. Construct outfits by cross-checking your itemized list with your color palette. Here, remember that mixing and matching is your friend! We’ve got limited space in this puppy. This time, I went for various hues of blue, green, and black.
Compress the goods into packing cubes or, if you don’t have any, try the roll method.
Bonus tip! I list out pre-trip action items on my sheet so I can see everything in one quick glance.
Here’s the packing list I made before my recent trip to Puerto Rico:
Fuck, that’s good
✨ A brief list of media that fed me this month ✨
This month, the list is just one article — by me! At the start of the year, I set a goal to publish a story in a local Philadelphia outlet.
For The Fitler Focus, a newsletter that covers happenings in two of Philly’s Center-City neighborhoods, I wrote about a direct-to-consumer bra brand betting on Rittenhouse Square for its first store location. You can read it here:
As Elle Woods would say, “We did it!”
Thank you to The Fitler Focus for this fun opportunity.
Read more from Crygest
Crygest is written by the real-life journalist Julia Naftulin, with help from her heart, brain, and fingertips. AI will never be used to create this monthly publication.
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Love the "temperature" tip! I'm so adding that to my travel strategy!
Ahh reading this helped me with something I've been dealing with lately.
Like your novel, I've been trying to put together an album and I have been bouncing back and forth between using Ableton to dictate every note I want played and the piano which I am very familiar with since all the notes are right in front of me. But I recently got kind of burnt out with it.
But my brother is in town and he restrung my guitar and I have been picking it up and having so much fun playing it. I've also been listening to Noah Kahan's new album which is totally different than what I have been listening to and wanting my album to sound like. I might be writing and playing more with the guitar and that's kind of how I started writing my album in the first place.
So yeah I learned I sometimes gotta take my self out of my element and try to find the fun in it again to keep me going!