#86: On future anxiety, criticizing your partner, and comparing yourself

Good morning!

I’m back this week with my monthly advice column, Dear Baby. Thanks so much to everyone who wrote in—I got so many great questions it was hard to pick! Weirdly two out of the three I ended up choosing concern having kids (which I have not done, lol). But I liked them because both got at something pretty universal and I don’t think you need kids to relate.

1. I found out I am pregnant in October and was not prepared for my mixed emotions. My biggest fear is losing my independence as it relates to my creative life. Do you have any advice for me?

2. I criticize my partner constantly, and I don’t know how to stop. Why am I doing this?

3. I just had a baby and it hasn’t been as hard as social media made me believe, and now I feel like I can’t share my experience without invalidating other people. Is this the problem with social media?

As usual on Tuesday I’ll be dropping my advice podcast, Dear Danny. We’ll be airing and answering questions we received via voicemail!!! So fun. Thanks for calling in (802-404-BABY). Some people requested Danny’s advice specifically. Brave souls…

Okay let’s get started:

1. On being anxious while pregnant

“I found out I am pregnant in October and was not prepared for my mixed emotions. My partner and I were planning on kids but in our minds it would be a bit later, after we traveled some. I am a writer and a creative (visual artist, editor & founder of a lit mag, musician, and fiction writer). I also have a full-time job at an online university. I know how wonderful having this child will be in a new-kind-of-adventure way. But my biggest fear is losing my independence as it relates to my creative life. My creative work has been my baby for so long and I am absolutely terrified I won’t have the time or energy for it when the “real” baby comes (on top of my full-time job). I talk to myself every day about how I will make it work when the baby arrives, and yet I am having little luck believing it and continuing my creative life. Do you have any advice for me? I could really and truly use it.”

While I can’t speak from the experience of balancing a baby and a creative career, I can speak from the experience of worrying about a problem before it arrives. And I can tell you (as you probably know) it’s mostly useless. Your concern is coming from a good place—a self-protective instinct to hedge against a negative outcome—but the reason it’s not helping is because you don’t actually understand what the problem will feel like, or how you’ll feel facing it. And that’s because it’s not happening yet. When it happens, not only will you have a lot more information about what the challenge entails, but you will be a different person. You’ll be a mother. You’ll also be someone who feels slightly differently about everything than you felt before—and that’s not just because of your status as a parent, but because you’re alive. We are always changing, shifting our view and priorities, feeling differently about things that we felt strongly about a year ago. That lack of continuity can be painful, but I think it can also be useful in these scenarios. Because it means that you are not currently the person who will be squaring up against this balancing act. At least not entirely.

Obviously what you’re describing is a reasonable concern (I share it/fear it)—especially given your creative output, which seem impressive bordering on impossible?—and I think some level of anticipation will be useful in terms of preparing you for it. By deciding to have a child you’ve knowingly invited this particular puzzle into your life (while also eschewing the puzzles that might accommodate the alternatives, like having kids when you were older and more tired, or not having kids at all and wondering what-if). It totally makes sense to me that, while you’re pregnant, you would spend a lot of time anticipating the challenges associated with your choice. But try not to mistake your desire to not be caught off guard with an ability to see the future. We almost never know exactly how things will pan out, or how they’ll feel when they do. I think this is especially true when it comes to such huge life transitions like the one you’re going through right now. Not only do you not have enough information yet, but there isn’t much you could do even if you did. Because (again) it’s not happening yet. I’ve found that oftentimes when I reach the moment that I actually have to make a decision I’ve been fretting over, the decision isn’t actually that hard. It’s a good lesson in learning to trust that you’ll know when the time comes.

Believe me when I say I would be feeling the same way though. So I’m just telling you what I would tell myself: You’re ruminating. You’re on a repetitive loop of worry and it’s ratcheting up your concern versus abating it. Your creativity is intrinsic to you; it is not defined by your output. It will be there all the time, changing and expanding as you do, even if you put its more literal iterations aside for a while. The time and energy to make creative work comes and goes. If I’ve learned anything from my own experience with it, the trick isn’t to force the flow, it’s to learn how to breathe through the ebbs. To appreciate what the offbeats lend your creative life, which is so much more than we tend to realize or appreciate.

In River of Consciousness, Oliver Sacks refers to these offbeats (fittingly) as a gestation period. “Creativity involves not only years of conscious preparation and training but unconscious preparation as well. This incubation period is essential to allow the subconscious assimilation and incorporation of one’s influences and sources, to reorganize and synthesize them into something of one’s own.” I don’t think you’re nuts for worrying about this. It’s a concern most of my friends and I share. But if I can offer one bit of tangible advice, it would be to reframe your time away from your creative work, whenever it may arrive, as a kind of gestation period for creativity to come. I have no doubt that this whole experience will give you more ideas than you thought possible. Trust that one day you’ll know just what to do with them.

2. On criticizing your partner

“I criticize my partner constantly, and I don’t know how to stop. I wouldn’t say I’m cruel—I try to make comments thoughtfully and with the goal of helping him improve in different ways—but I know my critiques are annoying at best and mean at worst. I would never treat a friend or colleague this way, and people describe me as sweet and kind. As much as I try to think before I critique and stop myself from doing so, I can’t help but offer my unsolicited feedback on nearly everything he does—pointing out if he says something awkward in a conversation or if he could’ve done something better. Why am I doing this? Do I criticize because I love him and want the best for him, or could I not love him as much as I think I do? Or do you think this is a personal issue that doesn’t have much to do with him?”