On Pauses, and Trusting the Shape of Your Own Path

The end of the year came to a close, as it always does, and I’m always glad to start fresh, invigorated by the potential of new goals and what’s to come. Although this year didn’t start quite as smoothly as I had hoped. I write this from my bedroom, fighting off a cold that has slowed the momentum I wanted to carry into January.

Pauses rarely arrive politely.

They often come disguised as exhaustion, illness, or weeks that blur together without visible progress. And yet, perhaps they offer something else…a quiet work, a reflection, or insight you couldn’t have scheduled if you tried.

Over the holidays, I met with friends I haven’t seen nearly enough since moving away from Scotland in 2015. We talked about work, motherhood, new aspirations, and past experiences. As artists, we often tread the delicate balance between sustaining our practices and staying afloat in life: navigating jobs that don’t reflect our deepest ambitions, raising children, or stepping into unexpected pauses that feel like detours from the outside but are perhaps necessary from within.

It struck me how different our paths have been, and yet how resonant our experiences still feel. There is no glove that fits all in this industry, and there is no blueprint for success, or for happiness, however each of us defines it. This certainly applies to artists whose paths may, from the outside, appear interrupted, stagnant, or delayed.

Agnes Martin stepped away from the art world for years, choosing isolation over visibility. Louise Bourgeois raised children and worked quietly for decades before receiving wide recognition in her 70’s! Etel Adnan moved between painting, writing, and teaching, never insisting on a single identity or pace.

None of them followed a straight arc, or moved continuously forward. Yet, their work of course, over time emerged despite the pauses and in many cases aided by them.

Remembering this softens the urge to be disheartened by moments of uncertainty in my own creative life. It widens the definition of a creative life, making room for years that may feel unproductive, for seasons devoted to survival, caregiving, or simply staying well enough to continue.

Reflecting on these conversations, I wonder how we might approach our goals with more tenderness and patience. Our ambitions haven’t disappeared but they don’t need to be rushed back into focus just because the calendar year has changed.

January can bring a certain pressure to produce, declare intentions and to move swiftly, where slowness, more than ever, can feel suspicious. Although for me checking in weekly and monthly throughout the year the pressure packed date of January first has significantly lessened over the years as I usually check in with myself during November and December with eagerness for the new year. Nevertheless, I am sure most of us do want to feel a sense of momentum from the beginning of the year and when new beginnings wind up feeling stagnant or on hold due to illness, financial or logistical constraints, it can feel like we’re falling behind. What if instead these quiet stretches would be felt not as absences but of a different kind of progress? And most invaluably as necessary parts of the path itself?

This year, I’d like to learn yet again (as I keep reminding myself) to wholeheartedly lean into and trust my own timeline, not the imagined one, not the one that neatly compares to others, but the one that is actually unfolding: uneven, personal, and shaped by circumstance.

Creative paths aren’t carved all at once. They are worn slowly, by repetition, by stepping away and returning, and by learning what sustains us, not only creatively, but emotionally, financially, and physically.

There is no single way to live a creative life. Some paths are loud and visible, moving swiftly but often burning out too quickly. Others are quiet, folded around other responsibilities, stretching across decades with long pauses that only make sense in hindsight.

Trusting your path doesn’t mean abandoning ambition. It means allowing ambition to stay alive even amidst multiple shape changes to mould itself around your unique life. It means staying connected to your work, to others, to yourself over any external measure of pace. WHile I fidn it hard to remember most of teh time, we truly risk missing the values inherent in the process while we are too busy measuring ourselves and we may in the process miss how much value we have actually contributed and how far we have come.

If this season feels slow for you, perhaps it is not something to fix. Perhaps it is something to listen to.