Balancing the Scale
As a casual hobbyist, I dabble in many different things: writing, coding, drawing, ... all of which also take different forms: game development, zinemaking, ... I have my other hobbies: reading, gaming... There are also numerous amount of responsibilities you are expected to assume as an adult, such as dealing with neverending bills and repairs on top of your day job. I also want to maintain good relationships with people I care about. We only have 24 hours a day! For some, maintaining one hobby is difficult enough. How would you juggle multiple things? How would you choose what to do in a given day? How would you rotate them?
First of all, I invite you to take a look at my manifesto so you know where my stance came from. Basically, I consider casual creation a lifestyle: it's part of me, and part of me does not go away just because I fail a streak at something. My goal is not to make something good, or be "productive", whatever that means, but to sustain a life of making in the sense of drawing boundaries so I can see myself doing this comfortably for as long as I breathe.
From this vantage point, frequency and consistency in the short term cease to matter. In the long term, they build upon themselves even if you only tackle one project at a time (even one project a year turns into 60-80 projects in a lifetime). As long as you keep working on something (instead of worrying about lost productivity and missing opportunity, which tends to snowball into big fat nothing that depresses you even more).
Some of you might notice that I have fewer blogposts this month compared to the months before. I spent most of the month learning how to paint, and my days didn't magically become longer when I decided I wanted to do that. I have the same amount of mental energy to expend, so something must give. But that doesn't mean I stop writing entirely. I can always return when I feel like it. When I did my one game jam a month last year, my readings took a hit. I didn't stop reading. At the end of the project, I picked another book instead of overthinking it. I mostly follow my whim because I'm confident I would circle back to everything, even if something takes precedent now. After all, they are all part of my life.
But to make something part of your life, you have to get used to doing them. You have to "make them mundane", the way you make your beverage of choice in the morning. If you decide to pick up multiple hobbies at once, it's easy to see where it might get overwhelming. When you can fit small amount of writing inbetween your chores, when you can pick a pen up at the end of a workday and scribble something for five minutes, then you may add a new thing into the mix. You don't have to be good at it, but you ought to make the moments casual. To stop worrying that you are not improving, to stop expecting your results to be worthy of an award soon, to stop demanding from yourself to be 'professional' (because you're not, unless that's where you want to be and we're playing a different ballgame).
How do I choose to work on what? Usually I peruse my idea book or browse the prompts in upcoming jams/creative events like Inktober. Sometimes I have a good image of what to make from a prompt I like, most of the times I just toy around and see what could work. Or just do them. After all, no one could stop you from making three different artforms out of a prompt. Sometimes time (or energy) is the limiting factor. I can knock a mini fiction in half an hour, I can't do a painting in the same amount of time. I definitely can't crank out animatics within the allotted time. The more you do something, the better you are at gauging what you can do and where to fit a certain project in. A weekend project with a game engine I know inside out? Doable. A weekend project with a completely new engine? That might need some reconsideration. Maybe I should just bust out those colored pencils and call it a day.
Sometimes, I learn something new and I go through periods of intense activity in one thing: back to back Visual Novels, back to back paintings. Back to back novella. This is not a problem. With time, my interests wane and I pick something else. I don't worry that I would shrink my capabilities to this singular lane. If anything, what I learn from all my creative dalliances is this: the confidence you get out of finishing something is accumulative, and all arts build upon one another. I won't suddenly forget how to pick up a brush after months of doing nothing but coding. I won't suddenly forget Python syntaxes after months of writing. Am I going to be so much better if I pick a "specialization" and focus? Maybe, but that's not why I'm here.
Sometimes I do have more concrete goals like "I want to make two zines this year". I have made enough things to keep the goal somewhat reasonable, and I have fairly good track record of hitting them. However, I give myself grace if I fail. There is no exhibition to chase. I can just make more. Again, my goal is to do this for as long as humanly possible. It might not be the same for you (but give yourself grace anyway).
You are still alive, and therefore capable of starting, stopping, and starting again for however many time it takes. Feel free to explore your various interests and follow where they take you. If things get overwhelming, you might have overextended yourself. Decision paralysis? Maybe you have too many art supplies. Fatigue? Maybe you have to scale back on your projects. Fear? Pick one thing for now and do it until you can do it without letting the results cloud your mood, and only then add more to your creative habit repertoire.
We have a long road in front of us, walk steady.