The story I want to tell is about the moments in our practices when doubt weasels its way into our brains. Call it intrusive thoughts or an everyday moment of self-doubt. At the end of the day, if this feeling steals your creative energy, you can call it a problem.

Doubt finds its opening in the cracks of rejection, sneaking in when validation is absent. For those of us who work in solitary practice, be it as a software engineer coding an application in the quiet or soft techno rhythms of headphones or a painter slowly and deliberately building up a masterpiece that will grace a beautiful wall, given fortune's good tidings, or a composer building the layers of an opera, these solitary creative pursuits are not without their moments of questioning.

We may have internalized the truth that no success, no victory, and no validation even, comes without a share far greater in size of rejection. We may know this in our bones, but that does not mean that those moments of doubt don't occasionally set us back, particularly when we have days or even weeks where our mental health is not at its peak. Perhaps it's just wintertime, and we have some winter blues, or it's the toll of the routine we've built for ourselves and the amount of structure we must employ to keep ourselves marching to the rhythm of our own drum and to the goal that we see ahead of us. Whether it's winter blues or the toll of our structured routines, these doubts can steal our beloved studio time right from under our noses.