finding inspiration in the age of overconsumption

the back pocket #1: the inner mechanics of inspiration

Inspiration feels like a mystical, almost autonomous force. As Elizabeth Gilbert writes in Big Magic (thank you,

Jessie Couberly

, for reminding me how amazing this book is), ‘ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form. They are completely separate from us, but capable of interacting with us’.

As someone who finds inspiration in pretty much everything—two strangers on a train, the way a shadow shifts across my window, a recurring dream, or even something my eight-year-old sister says—I have always been deeply curious about how this almost living entity moves through us, chooses us, and, sometimes, leaves us without a warning.

To be fair, I can turn almost any situation into a book idea. The isolation I felt during the first COVID-19 lockdown became the seed for my (unpublished) second novel: a YA story about a small town that gets buried in snow during the first week of August.

A Halloween I spent alone in 2022 (I was sick, and with a trip to Budapest the next day, so absolutely not in the mood to party) turned into another novel (still in progress, halfway through) about the ghosts that live inside us… And the Halloween party I didn’t attend became the story’s opening scene.

In this era where we are drowning in entertainment, inspiration visits me multiple times a day. A Substack essay, a TV show, a podcast, a YouTube video, a text from a friend, even a cold-hearted email—anything can spark something in me.

Still fascinated by the inner mechanics of inspiration, I keep asking myself: is just inspiration enough? Or does it need a follow-up, a set of steps to turn it into something tangible and real?

Is art all we need, or do we also need things like community to be good artists? Do ideas expire? Is ‘the zone’ a place we can choose to enter, or is it something that visits us on its own terms?

These questions wouldn’t leave me alone, and I don’t know if they ever will. But, this time, instead of over-thinking the inner mechanics of inspiration, I have decided to put together a small compilation for you.

10 things that inspired me this month

1. This podcast episode from the one and only Emma Chamberlain. Sure, Emma is an incredibly interesting person, but, in this episode, her dad steals the show. A painter, YouTuber, former band member, ex-surf trainer (and about a dozen other things), he sits down with his daughter for an hour-long conversation about creative fulfillment.

Here are some things he said that stuck with me:

‘Breaks are essential. If you are not growing as a human being, your art isn’t going to grow’.

And this one:

‘If you are just doing art over and over, you’re gonna run out. You need life. Life to bring into what you do. Living life fuels your creativity’.

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2. This piece by

Florence Given

… I can't explain how much I needed to read this right now.

Your ideas can't change the world if you keep them in your drafts.

‘The audience comes last. I'm not making it for them, I'm making it for me. It turns out that when you truly make something for yourself, you're doing the best thing you possibly can for the audience’.

(!!!). Sometimes, I forget how important it is to create for myself and not for others. Not for validation, not for numbers, not for what might ‘work’. Art can only feel truly honest when it comes from that place: me first, the world second.

‘Build it and the people will come’. Exactly.

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the back pocket is a new series about everything that might not fit anywhere else: media that inspires me, things that happen to me in real life, things i’d like to share with you but i don’t know where to fit in my essays or notes.

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