No Niche. No Audience. Just me.

Reclaiming creativity from the grip of fear, ego, and overwhelm

The old blog is dead - I was never really consistent with updating it. And every time I wanted to (re)start again (and again), I miserably failed, overwhelmed by the many questions - should it talk about work? about me? about what I care about? Who's the audience? Who should the audience be? Should it be on Medium, Substack or Wordpress? Should I build the blog myself so it feels more like me? I don't even know anymore what I want to talk about. Actually, I have nothing to talk about. All that I can say has probably been said, so why bother? But why do I have this urge to sometimes blurt out something to the world? Should I write a book instead? But about what? Who's the audience?

And then we're here. Finally. I suffer from overwhelmization - I know it's not an actual word, but it's funny to make it even more overwhelming. Anyway, the way it affects me is always the same loop:

1. New idea - or taking one from the Big Drawer Of Ideas

2. Engage creative mind into an amazing exploration of all the possibilities

3. Think about what it takes to get everything done and particularly focus on the difficult parts that require reflection

4. Feel overwhelmed

5. Back to 1

The funny thing with this kind of loop is that it should be easy to defeat as it's staring at you, but I believe that engaging in creative mode provides enough dopamine to perpetuate the loop. I know about visualizing goals, building discipline through small habits and blablabla. And they work. But sometimes when you're looping, you're looping.

This blog has been one of those loops. What has changed that I'm currently writing instead of overthinking? See - the overthinking is, I believe, also due to an inherent fear of being judged. That's why the brainstorming part is so fun - because it's free of ego. When you get into "let's build it" mode, you suddenly include an audience - and with that the feeling of being judged. The attack of the ego - even if unlikely - triggers counter measures of protection. The whole mighty ego sabotages the operation as status quo is where we feel safe.

Except that the status quo means no growth - more than that, it means premature death by lack of capacities to adapt. If you haven't read the book Antifragile, go and get it - in a nutshell, complex systems can become antifragile when they improve upon being submitted to stress. Think muscles, immune system, and the way we, as humans, learn pretty much anything - through trial and error. To learn and master anything you need to submit your brain to new information, so those neural pathways get created. By the way - and I'm gonna digress one more time - have you noticed that learning is not such a linear process? To me learning feels mostly like bumping my head stubbornly against the wall and almost enjoying it but also having to manage frustration and then to "trust the process" that, eventually, it's gonna get easier. And it always does. Except for the Mousse au Chocolat, for an unknown reason it never got easier and I'm still struggling to make a proper one.

So let's backtrack a bit, to learn a new skill we need to fail until eventually it clicks. And iterate, sometimes for years, going from many failed attempts to maybe one mildly successful improvement from time to time. Now it gets quite clear that ego is the enemy, as if we start judging and doubting ourselves, wondering what others would think, we interfere with the learning process. Imagine a baby learning to walk. Now imagine the same baby pondering on each step if he's gonna fall, or if mommy is gonna judge him for falling one more time, or which exact movement his leg and foot should be doing.

Unfortunately the self-consciousness that we develop at the end of childhood will, most of the time, interfere with our natural capability to learn. Depending on your education, your mileage might vary here. As far as I'm concerned my parents made me attach my self-worth to my school results. That's quite shitty because, you see, those kinds of beliefs have a tendency to get internalized so deeply in your personal narrative that they become who you are and changing them would be an attack to your integrity. Yet it's not impossible to change, but it's difficult - most of the time because we have this need for security, which means sticking to what we know works. Until it doesn't and then LA FIN.

Ok we're getting close to what just happened - and by that I mean, how did I manage to write this post and to publish it even when my fragile ego threatens me that I'll certainly make a fool of myself. Amorphous Retaliation Time. ART.

I decided to tackle this blog like an artistic endeavor. And that represents a shift of MINDSET. As I'll probably talk about in another post, I have a deep passion for systems, particularly for complex systems - and while I'll skip the theory for now, it's almost impossible to talk about systems without talking about Leverage Points in the system - or how can we influence how the system works. Now I'll encourage you to read "Thinking in Systems" from Donella Meadows - this book changed something profound inside of me in how I think about the world, about work and about myself. The author who researched the system thinking topic for decades came up with a list of leverage points by order of impact - you see most of us have a tendency to try to fix systems by fixing the symptoms rather than the cause. Most of the time we are actually unable to think holistically enough to understand the root cause.

So, Donella Meadows had this idea that in any system, the most powerful way to influence it isn’t by tweaking little things like metrics or processes, but by going after the deeper stuff: the **paradigm**. That’s the invisible lens through which we see the whole thing. And even above that? The power to **transcend** paradigms completely — to realize that no single worldview is The Truth™, and to be able to shift between them when needed.

When I started looking at my creative blocks through that lens, something clicked. I realized I’ve been stuck in this quiet, stubborn paradigm where my work only matters if it gets seen, liked, shared, clapped for. And somewhere along the way, that turned into a kind of identity trap — like if the work doesn’t land, then maybe _I_ don’t either.

And that does something to you over time. It builds up. Layer by layer, it becomes this heavy, clunky armor — the kind that’s supposed to protect, but ends up limiting every movement. It’s not even cool medieval knight armor; it’s awkward and squeaky and makes it impossible to turn your head.

It’s creative **sclerosis**. The slow hardening of freedom.

At some point, to keep creating, you have to break out of it — not with some elegant insight, but with a _crack_. With noise. With messy retaliation.

So here’s what I’m trying: instead of treating this blog like a product that needs to serve a market or live up to some imaginary “should,” I’m treating it like art. And art doesn’t care if it’s been done before. Art doesn’t worry about SEO or niche fit. Art just _shows up_. It says what it needs to say and moves on.

That shift — from “What will people think?” to “What do I feel like making today?” — it’s subtle, but it changes _everything_. Not just the writing, but the energy behind it. The tension drops. There’s room to breathe again. The ego quiets down (a bit). It feels more like play.

And that, actually, ties in with something that, one my favorite thinker of all time, Alan Watts, talked about — the idea that life is **lila**, cosmic play. We’ve turned everything into a serious business, including creativity, like we’re trying to finish the song instead of just dancing while it plays. But the magic is in the dancing. The making. The showing up — especially when it’s messy.

The wild part is: you usually can’t see the paradigm you’re in until you step out of it. But once you do, it’s like flipping on the lights. Suddenly everything downstream shifts — the goals, the pressure, the definitions of success. Even the small stuff. It’s all connected.

So yeah. That’s why I’m writing this post. Not because I figured it all out, or because I suddenly know my audience or niche. But because I’m trying something new. A different game. One where the making itself matters. Where Amorphous Retaliation Time means throwing a little chaos back at perfectionism — and creating anyway.