I’ve been having a bit of writer’s block these days, weeks, months. It’s been a while since I dared create a full sentence in ink only because I wanted to. I write emails, proposals, and lecture notes. I write names, phone numbers, and addresses. Whenever I sense the absence of my creative output, I will quickly move on to the next thing, occupying my mind with an important mission. No, I don’t ONLY do work. I read, I watch movies, and I spend time with friends. I spend several hours a day cuddling my cat. These are all things that I love doing, and that fulfil me.

The other day, I realised I don’t spend much time on activities that don’t benefit me in the long term, in terms of career and finances. I realised it over lunch with a friend, when she told me that this year, she has made the resolution to do things for herself. She explained that she’s been so focused on her career development, and on moving in with her partner, that there was no time for her own whims! Things she loved doing suddenly became things she tried to work at, and that was no fun! So, she took a pottery class and made a pretty cup, and is planning to continue learning with the same lady. She knows it’s just the beginning and that she has to persevere in creating hobbies, but she is willing to do what it takes.

It’s been a while since I’ve related to someone on such a deep level. I voiced that I can understand completely, but didn’t realise it until she said it first. It was like wearing glasses for the first time, seeing all the blobs and smears of the world get 4K resolution. All the emails, the proposals, are all for different applications, either jobs or residencies. That’s really the only reason I try to use my brain actively. Every time I go to the museum, I take notes, pictures, and read all the texts. I obviously enjoy it, but it became something I do “for practice”. Even this blog, which is something I’ve wanted to do for a while, is something I started because I wanted to have an online portfolio of something tangible and for people to read, instead of just writing for Google Drive’s enjoyment.

Going back to the writer’s block, I see the way I spent the summer as a prime example. In less than a week, I’ll be back in university for my last semester. I’ll be busy writing my thesis, taking four courses, and working two jobs, all while trying to develop my career and figure out where I want to live. I’ve been on my semester break for nearly three months now, and I’ve barely written a thing. Having a blog with my own articles and essays about art was something fifteen-year-old Lihi would be ECSTATIC to be doing, but it was too much. I needed a break from something I love. My hobbies turned into bars on the career ladder. In the three months I could do whatever I wanted, I chose to work or to do nothing, or even sometimes work for free!

And that’s where I start to see the bigger picture. It’s not just about being tired or busy—it’s about how the things I love quietly turn into tools for measurement. Writing, drawing, visiting museums—all of it becomes evidence of ambition, proof of skill, something to display, archive, and justify. Even passion becomes a ledger. Nothing exists simply to exist.

There’s a strange violence in this. Life becomes a series of transactions where time and energy must always yield some return, and even rest is scrutinised for its efficiency. The quiet moments—the ones that should sustain us—are colonised, coded, made legible to some imagined evaluator. And, in that system, the mere act of creation starts to feel like work.

So my writer’s block isn’t just fatigue. It’s resistance. It’s my refusal to turn every thought into currency, every impulse into product. And yet, resistance carries guilt. The world whispers that I am wasting time, wasting opportunity, wasting myself. That to be human without purpose is a crime.

bell hooks once wrote that “the practice of love is the most powerful antidote to the politics of domination.” When I think of love here, I don’t mean only romance, but love as care, attention, tenderness — the kind that makes life feel alive rather than measured. To write, to paint, to shape clay with no purpose other than to feel joy in the act — that is love. It refuses domination by refusing to turn every act into profit.

What unnerves me most is how invisible this conditioning becomes. Profit doesn’t just shape markets—it rewires our sense of self. We’re taught to track our worth in outputs, to measure our days by how much they yield, to confuse exhaustion with achievement. Even our identities get flattened into brands: the “hardworking student,” the “emerging professional,” the “multidisciplinary creative.” It’s a language that makes us legible to employers but erases the parts of us that don’t serve the market.

This isn’t freedom—it’s a trap dressed up as choice. Every option is funneled back into the same demand: be useful, be productive, be visible. Desire becomes strategy. Rebellion becomes merchandise. Even joy gets packaged and sold back to us with a price tag. Yet the body resists. It breaks down, goes quiet, refuses. Writer’s block, burnout, fatigue—these aren’t failures. They’re cracks in the machine, reminders that life was never meant to be optimized.

My friend’s pottery cup struck me hard. It was the clay, shaped by her hands, unclaimed by ambition, useless, and therefore radical. In that small act, I could feel release: released from the constant accounting, from the pressure to perform, from the quiet theft of joy. If every moment can be claimed and capitalized, then the most revolutionary act may be to simply create without reason. To insist that some things are ours alone, beyond work, beyond productivity, beyond measure.