Why do I feel bad if I don’t finish an essay? Well, I don’t get the psychological rewards that come with shipping. But why not? Why am I so fixated on the outcome instead of the process? Could I rework my concept of what I’m doing, such that I appreciate myself for the hours I put into my creative process, rather than the outputs that come out of i

The equivalent of “breaking out of the underworld” for me in my writing is roughly “breaking out of my existing model”, or maybe even “breaking into a new ideaspace”.

But the meta here is, even my failures teach me something about myself and my process, if only I’m able to be open enough to actually pay attention to them and actually learn from them.