128: Setting Boundaries as a Creative

 

Setting boundaries is important for anyone, but energetic + time + relationship boundaries are essential for creatives. Learn what boundaries truly are and the different ones you may need to set as a creative person.

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setting boundaries as a creative

Hello, welcome back to the podcast. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. I just went on a walk right before this, and I'm kind of sweaty, kind of gross. But I want to get this podcast episode out because I actually recorded it yesterday, originally. And then I just, I didn't really like the approach that I took in the episode and I thought about it and I was like, You know what, I'm just gonna rerecord it. It also was kind of long and rambly. So I rarely do this. Like I don't I think maybe once like one other podcast episode I've recorded and then decided to scrap and rerecord. So this isn't something that I do often because I feel like it's better to just put the content out and not think about it too much. But I just wasn't happy with how it came out yesterday. And there's a little bit of a I don't know, I feel like this is one of those things.

 

Boundaries are one of those topics where I want to be accurate with my words. I want to be deliberate with how I'm talking about boundaries. And I don't feel like I wasn't that original episode. So anyways, all that to say I'm recording this one. And yeah, let's let's get into it. Actually, no, just kidding. I have one announcement for you all before we get into boundaries. So I have a podcast update for you. What I want to do is have the last Tuesday of the month, be an advice, q&a type of episode, I'm going to have a form that's that will be in the description of the podcast episode or below the YouTube video. And it's just a Google forum where you can submit your question, you can put your first name if you want, or it will be anonymous, I won't. If you do put your full name, I'm not going to read it, I'll just read your first name.

 

Or again, if you want to be anonymous, that's totally fine. There will be instructions on the forum about this. But basically, it can be anything. It can be any question related to writing a question related to editing, mindset, creativity, creating content, business, even personal questions, if you want to ask me stuff about like being a first time mom, a new mom, or balancing things with writing or finding my agent or relationship stuff, drinking, whatever, anything, sky's the limit. So I want that to be every, like the last episode of every month. And what I want to do is I have a wonderful, amazing assistant who helps me with the podcast episodes and repurposing some of my content and some other projects. She's been an absolute godsend. And I'm what I might have her do is put, when we do those advice, q&a episodes, I'll put in the description, the timestamp for the question so so that if there's something you really want to skip ahead to you can do that.

 

So yeah, look for that the form. And again, I'll have more instructions on the form. And I'm excited. I've done some ask me any things on Instagram. And I think maybe tick tock, I've done it a few times. But I think it'll be fun to have to have a q&a advice episode, because chances are if you have a question about something or you want to hear me talk about something like there's probably someone else that has that same question or was wondering that same thing. So I think it'll be I think it'll be good. I think it'd be fun. Okay, so that's the podcast update for y'all. Let's get into boundaries. Boundaries are a topic that's received, they've received a lot of attention over the last few years, I feel like especially I've certainly become a lot more aware of them.

 

This is not something that was really on my radar before. And boundaries are simply limits or rules that we place for ourselves. And the idea, I don't remember where I read this, I didn't come up with this. So I wish I could give this person credit, but I don't remember why I read it. But I read a description of boundaries that said that they teach people how to treat you, which I thought was so interesting and so accurate. I don't know if you'll remember this maybe last year, maybe 2022. I can't remember Jonah Hill, the actor got in some hot water. Because his what was it? I think it was his ex girlfriend who released some text messages from him. Where he was basically saying, I can't remember the details.

 

But it was something like if we continue today, if you're with me, you can't post pictures online of you in a bikini like I won't allow it I'm setting a boundary that you can't do this in a relationship. You can't post pictures and everyone roasted him for it because that's not a boundary. If a boundary is too telling another person what they can and can't do. That's not a boundary. A boundary is for you. It's a personal rule or a limit like this is this is for me, it's not telling someone else what they can and can't do. It's not controlling someone else. And people call him out for it rightly so because that's incredibly controlling and manipulative. And he was using therapy speak as a way to justify his, his feelings and his thoughts, I guess. So that is not a boundary.

 

What I want to do in this episode is go over some examples of boundaries that are related to writing and creativity, but then also just your time and your energy, because all of those things are incredibly important as creatives, it's not just boundaries around your writing time, let's say, but it extends to relationships, it extends to boundaries that you might have to set about your time, how you spend your time, generally, your relationships, etc. So what I want to do is talk about some time boundaries, some energetic boundaries, and some creative boundaries. So the idea of a time boundary, what I what I say with what I mean, when I say this is a limit or a rule, a boundary that you set for yourself on what you're saying yes to in your life, and what you're saying no to. We are incredibly busy people all of us. And time is the only limited resource really, that we have. It's something we can't get back.

 

So I think it's really important, especially if you are in a busy season of your life, where it feels like you're stretched too thin, and you don't have time for your creative projects, to ask yourself how you are spending your time, are you spending time on things that don't matter anymore? And maybe they did once but they don't anymore? Or maybe they never mattered, but you felt this sense of guilt or obligation to say yes to them. I'm gonna give you an example of this that's sort of relevant to writing. When I was living in Nashville, I had a co worker who asked me to join her book club, because she knew that I was a big reader. And I was so excited because I had a book club when I lived in DC.

 

Sam and I lived in DC for a couple of years before we moved to Nashville. And but I lost that book club when I moved because it was in person. And so then when she asked me to join this book club, I was like, Yes, this is great. This is so exciting. The problem with the book club, everyone was welcoming, everyone is very nice. But the problem with book club is that most of the people, almost everyone who lived in the book club lived on the other side of town, like very far away. And it was after work. It was on a Friday. Usually, I think maybe we had some Saturday ones too, but it's usually on a Friday. And it was like a seven hour thing. Like it was an incredibly big time commitment. People would get there have dinner, have drinks, and we they'd be there till like 11 or 12. At night. Like it was a it was a big commitment.

 

And that might sound great to talk about books that long and to hang out with people that long, but it was very draining for me. And it felt odd when I made comments about like, oh, I should probably be getting home after like the three hour mark or something. I felt like I was kind of, I don't know, intruding on their space a little bit. And again, everyone was very nice, very welcoming, but it just didn't feel like a great use of my time. It was draining for me to be at an event that long, you know, even a Saturday, like a Saturday where it was an all day thing, or it felt like an all day thing. That's that's a big commitment. So anyways, I just I found that I wasn't enjoying it as much as I had expected. But I said yes to this coworker, and I felt so bad that she invited me I was the outsider coming in, they had all been welcoming to me. And I was after maybe six months, I was gonna say, No, I don't want to be in this anymore. So I put it off. And I left. I put it on for longer than I should have.

 

But I finally was like, You know what? Life's really busy right now. I think I'm just going to have to dip out a book club for now. But I appreciate you all letting me join. And that was that was it and I felt so much better. It felt like a weight had been lifted when I stopped going, which again, it did kind of surprise me because I love book clubs. I loved my book club in DC but it just wasn't the right fit for me energetically, my time. All of those things. So that's an example of like a time boundary that you might have to set and being protective of your time for me Friday nights.

 

I don't like to do anything on Friday nights. I get home from work well now I'm home, because I work from home. But I just like to decompress from the week. I like to order -- I will order takeout. A watch something. I'll just like scroll my phone for an hour. Maybe I'll read but I just want to be lazy and decompress. I don't I don't like to plan things on Friday evenings, because that's my time to recharge and decompress during the week. And so having a really intense commitment on Friday nights like that just doesn't work for me and I have to be protective of that. It sounds like a small thing. But it's really, it really has a big impact on my life I have found.

 

Okay, the next I'm gonna give you another example of this with friendships with relationships because it's a time boundary. But it's also an energetic boundary. I have this friend that I made in Nashville who was an incredible girl like I was drawn to her because she was very outgoing and seemed very fun. And I think that she is a really wonderful person and has a lot of amazing qualities. And that's what drew me to her. And it was one of those things where I met her, we started talking, and I immediately felt this connection to her, you know, that spark that you get with someone like a new friend. It's similar to dating actually, which is kind of funny, but so we hit it off right away, and we went out to dinner one night, and it was like a two hour thing we talked. And it felt easy with her.

 

But then when I got to the end of the two hours, when I was walking out to my car to go home, I realized that over the course of those two hours, 99% of our conversation was about her, she was going through something she was she was having a hard time. And so I was there just listening to her, I was offering support, I was like I'm here, you know, whatever. Like we got into it for being new friends, we really got vulnerable right away, which I like, I like having friendships that go deeper anyway. But, and I thought to myself, hmm, okay, this is something to watch for. But like, you know, she's going through a tough time, this, this probably isn't how she always is.

 

And I started to notice that every time we would hang out, it was like that. And if I tried to volunteer something about my life, or tried to say, Yeah, you know, actually, like this funny thing happened to me and blah, blah, she would just It was like she was waiting for her turn to talk, she'll go. So like I was saying, this guy that I was talking to blah, blah, blah, it was always a crisis with her, there was always something that she had to unload on me. She even called me one time in crisis, before a yoga class, and I ended up missing the yoga class and getting a late fee for, you know, not canceling in time, because I was on the phone with her, like, counseling her through this crisis that she was having.

 

Now, I want to be very clear that it is is people go through shit. And I'm happy to be there for friends and support them. This is not like, I'm not saying that I can't, you can't be in a negative place. If you're my friend. Of course not. I don't expect people to be upbeat and positive and whatever, all the time. But this was a pattern of always being in crisis, always venting to me. And it was not reciprocated. She was not interested in my life. She was not interested in anything about me really. That's how it felt anyway. And I had had one or two situations like this in the past where I'm pretty introverted. And I think I have attracted a couple of extroverted friends who just latch on to me, and they're like, we're friends now, which is great. I love that I love extroverts. And I like that it's easy to become friends with them, because I don't have to do a lot of work. And it just it.

 

Yeah, it makes the process kind of easy to to make a new friend. But I have had one or two times where similar situation has occurred where I think that these people realize that I'm vailable, and I want to support them. And I'm a good sounding board for things. And then they they just sort of dump all their stuff on me and leave and they feel better, but I don't. So I started to step back from this friendship, because it again, it just didn't feel good. It didn't feel good energetically. And she was always in crisis, there was always a drama going on. And it was just, it was sucking energy out of me. So I started stepping back. And then eventually I had to have a conversation with her. Because she kind of confronted me about it.

 

And I did not I didn't handle it the best. And in hindsight, I can look back and see how I should have handled it differently. But I've grown a lot since then I would do it differently now. But I basically told her what I was feeling that you know, it feels like a one sided friendship. It feels like I'm just here for you to vent. And then it's not reciprocated, and that doesn't feel great. And she -- I could tell she was hurt, which makes sense. Rightly so. I mean, I'm sure that was not easy for her to hear. And we parted ways. And I think I ran into her maybe once after that. And again, I wish her the best. I think she's a great person with so many amazing qualities. That's what drew me to her but I had to set that boundary and like tell her you know, it doesn't feel great when you do this.

 

And the boundary was essentially like I if you're going to continue to act this way and just dump all this on me and we if we're going to continue to have this one side of sided friendship, then I'm not going to, I'm not going to continue this because it doesn't feel it doesn't feel good, it doesn't feel respectful. It doesn't feel like an actual friendship, it just feels like I'm a sounding board for you to dump all of your problems on at 24/7 whenever you want. And I want to give you another slightly different example of like an energetic boundary that applies more to writing because this is something that I was really aware of.

 

Before I started querying, for sure, but when I started querying to find my agent, the first time around in 2019, this is something that I really became aware of, there is so much media out there about how terrible the traditional publishing world is, how difficult it is to find an agent, what a terrible process. Querying is, how anyone that works in traditional publishing is the gatekeepers, the you don't make any money, et cetera, all these different narratives. There are a lot of problems in traditional publishing, I'm not saying that there aren't. But for me, querying was difficult enough, I knew that it was going to be challenging before I even started the process.

 

And I didn't want to add any more negative fuel to that fire because I again, I knew it was going to be difficult, I knew it was going to be hard enough, just to go through the process of querying, and try to keep my sanity and not check my inbox every five seconds to see if I had gotten a an answer from an agent. So I made a decision that I was not going to intentionally consume media, that was just pure negativity about publishing about making a living as an author about querying, whether that be podcasts, books, social media content, whatever. That doesn't mean that I was turning a blind eye to those things I was I did a lot of research on traditional publishing and the querying process.

 

So it was I was aware, from the outside of some of the big problems. But just while querying, I felt like I had to protect my peace, I had to protect my energy and just hit that boundary and say, for myself, I'm just not going to consume these types of things. Now, for you, that might be the case, if you are querying or going to be querying, but it can also be with relationships in your life. If you have family members, or friends or your partner, whatever, if people in your life are not supportive, and they constantly saying negative things about publishing, or indie authors, or your your book, or your social media content that you're putting out about your book, whatever it is, if they are constantly complaining, or making really passive aggressive remarks, it is fine to set a boundary and say, I'm not going to discuss this with you, I'm not going to engage in this.

 

And the boundary there is like, You're not telling this person in your life that they can't feel that way, they are absolutely allowed to feel like they want to just bitch and moan about publishing or writing whatever, they're allowed to think things are shitty, they're allowed to complain. But the boundary is that you are not going to engage in that with them. And you may be I mean, depends how much you want to escalate the boundary. But this could be if they don't respect that boundary, and they continue to try to get you to engage, or they continue making negative comments to you. The boundary might be okay, if you continue to discuss this, I'm going to leave the room or I'm going to cut this coffee day short, date to short, or maybe just not spending as much time with that person, again, to protect your peace.

 

So it's not trying to change or control the other person in that scenario. Again, it's just what do you need to do to protect yourself. And I'm realizing that how they respond to that is, is up to them. This is, this was the case with the friend that I had to kind of cut things off with. I mean, I'm sure that she was hurt by that I'm sure that she was angry. And I definitely could have handled it better. Again, I wasn't so aware of boundaries. I wasn't so aware of how to do all these things, then I've grown a lot since that since this happened. And I do wish I would have done it a little bit differently. But I was honest with her somewhat, I mean, it wasn't like harsh but I told her how I was feeling and how she responded to that is ultimately her decision.

 

And same thing if you have to have a conversation with someone in your life about how they're viewing negative stuff that you all the time they can feel how they want to feel that's not your responsibility to manage their feelings about the situation. So yeah, okay, I want to give one other example of a boundary that I have set for myself when it comes to social media content because this is related to boundaries as a creative right I rarely get negative comments on social media. I'm not a huge account. It's not like I have trolls coming out of the woodwork to message me or something. And it's not like I'm posting, it's not like I'm a political account, let's say were, or an account that's entirely devoted to like feminism or misogyny or something.

 

 So you would expect, like, I don't want people to just be salty and saying things. Isn't that sad to say that, that we just expect that? That makes me sad. Someone just posting about something like, Hey, misogyny is bad. We should that they should just automatically expect to get trolls and hate comments. That's, that really makes me sad and all that I say that, but what I'm saying is I yeah, I rarely get mean comments or rude comments, but they do come every once in a while. And early on. I've talked before about how devastating they were to me the first couple of times that it happened where my nervous system freaked out, it threw me for a loop I wanted to hide I wanted to not post. But after that, it's almost like it gave me a thrill.

 

And I wanted to, to argue with the person, I would respond back with a video to their comment. Or I would go back and forth with them in the comment section of it. I did that once on a video that I posted a couple years ago about a book burning that happened in Tennessee, and things got political in the comments, which is so stupid, you would think that we could all agree, book burning equals bad. But apparently not. I had us there was someone in the comments who was like, Well, what about when the left did this and the left is trying to ban. I'm just like, Oh my gosh. So I went back and forth with her for a while, like longer than I should have. And it was it was I remember, it was like in the evening. And after dinner, I was like on my phone like seeing I was like did this person respond yet?

 

And then after we went back and forth a number a number of times I even Googled something just to prove something to her. And then it was just it just hit me why? Why am I engaging in this? I'm not going to convince this person of anything. I'm not going to get her to admit that I'm right. And she's wrong or to see things from my perspective in the comment section of this Tiktok video. And this is a person who doesn't even follow me. I don't think she followed me. I'm actually Yeah. But it's like, why am I giving my time and energy to this? Now I still, every once in a while will still respond to a rude comment. If I think it's an opportunity for learning or an opportunity to kind of correct the person like it, maybe other people would benefit from me responding to it. But in most cases, I just ignore it.

 

Like I really have set this boundary of I'm not going to engage, it's not worth my time, it's not worth my energy to respond to something that used or 642758 responded that was just snarky. Like, it's just not. I don't think I've ever had to block anyone. But I certainly could if the comment was like really rude or hateful or something. But again, I don't think that's ever happened. So I just have have set this this rule for myself. And honestly, it feels really good. I posted a video the other day about seeing influencers in the wild influencers in downtown Charleston when I was taking a walk and someone posted a comment they were like, and no, I disagree.

 

And instead of responding going back and forth with this person trying to convince them of like why it's okay to just see people creating content in public and think oh good for them, instead of judging them and being all snarky, like, instead of going back and forth with this person, I just ignored it. I'm like, You're entitled to your opinion, I'm not gonna waste my time and energy convincing you that you're wrong. And I just went about my day, and it was so much better, it was so much better than trying to sink down to this person's level and like, convince them that this is how you have to see things and whatever.

 

So there can be boundaries that you set around social media content as well. And those are also they can be time boundaries or energetic boundaries. Maybe for you it's a boundary of only following certain types of accounts, or not engaging in certain ways or not. You know, I don't I don't remember if I've talked about this on the podcast before but one of the things that when I was in therapy, working on some stuff, one of the things that my therapist and I talked a lot about is like going on social media, with the intention of finding inspiring uplifting content. And if I'm in a low mood where I'm depressed and I'm pissed off, and I'm whatever, and I'm doing scrolling Trying, like, I don't want to be consuming content that just makes me feel even worse. I don't need to be doing that.

 

So when I'm in those low moods, and I'm feeling really sad or frustrated or pissed off or whatever, I want to be mindful of the time that I'm spending on social media, but also the types of content that I'm consuming because it otherwise it can just make it worse. So that can be kind of a boundary as well. Okay, well, I think that's, I think that's all I want to say about boundaries. This is a big topic. But maybe the examples in this episode will give you some ideas about energetic boundaries are time boundaries, or creative boundaries that you can set when it comes to things like content, relationships, your writing time, just any of that. Because they're important, you know, this is this is your life.

 

This is, if you think about it as that definition of telling people how to treat you. It's important, it's important. And I feel like I'm a recovering people pleaser, someone who has engaged in a lot of people pleasing behaviors in the past. That's a way I want to rephrase it. Because this is another thing my therapist taught me. Instead of saying, I'm a people pleaser, say like, I'm engaging in people pleasing people pleasing behaviors. So it's not my full identity. But it can be hard, it can be hard to stand up and set boundaries.

 

And remember that like no is a complete sentence. You don't have to explain to anyone why you are setting a boundary or making a decision that you're making, and that you are not responsible for other people's reaction to that boundary. If they want to kick and scream and whatever, that's fine. They're allowed to you're not trying to control their behavior. But you don't have to budge on the boundary. And it's about protecting your yourself. So this can be a real opportunity for growth for us. People who are engaging in people pleasing behaviors. That's a mouthful. All right. I hope this was helpful as you're thinking about boundaries. And I will see you all next week. Thank you so much for listening.

Katie Wolf