“Your resistance is futile."-love, the borg

Welcome! It's Thursday, November 20, 2025.

The holidays are upon us.

All that joyous hoopla mixed with a small side of reverence, and somehow we find ourselves watching people, like family members, dig in with deep entrenchment in the oddest ways.

Resistance when Uncle Bob insists, "that's the way it's always been done, son" or Aunt Sue clings to beliefs that haven't been examined since 1985.

If you asked me when was the last time I felt a large measure of resistance, I'd have to ask you which type?

The kind that instantly flares when the neighbor mentions wanting a new fence?

Or the looming, heavy kind that lands in the inbox of my mind after shattering life events like lay-offs, break-ups, loss, grief, near-death experiences?

By nature, as artists, writers, creators, we're deeply curious creatures. We wander around taking in everything with all of our senses and translate it onto the page, canvas, stage.

In many ways, we're immune to resistance; we're built to be open, to receive, to transform.

But we're also tripped up, if not lodged deep, by our resistance to very particular, and transformative things.

And if you're already a thriving artist & creator, don't you know life will ask you to step up again? To go deeper, risk more, create something that scares you?

Do you resist then?

Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art, in a recent Huberman Lab podcast episode, wrestled resistance to the ground and won for all of us.

Here's the video. Or if you prefer to read it, the transcript is below.

"The more important to your soul's growth, the stronger the resistance will be. That's absolutely true. And what I meant by that was that when we conceive an idea for something we want to do, a movie we want to make or a book we want to make, it's not like at all like what the fantasy was of, oh, I'm really charged up. It's going to be great. What happens is waves of what I call resistance with a capital R start coming off that keyboard or whatever it is to try to stop us from doing it, make us procrastinate, make us go to the beach, make us give in to distractions."

"If you want to know which one of three or four projects that you should do, you should do the one you're most afraid of. Because that fear is a form of resistance with a capital R. And the more important a project is to your soul's evolution, not to your commercial success, but to your own evolution as an artist, the more resistance you will feel to it." -Steven Pressfield

Resistance is big ole' signpost that says "start work here."

The bigger the calling, the more elaborate our avoidance strategies become.

We'll reorganize our studio. We'll research new techniques for months. We'll suddenly become fascinated by our tax returns.

Anything but sitting down with that blank canvas, that empty page, that lump of clay that's waiting to become something.

Some of history's greatest creators spent decades running from their calling. Some swam in the sea of resistance, nearly drowning multiple times, before they finally forged what they were really meant to create.

Could it be that your resistance is proof that you're onto something important?

Let's talk about the masters of creative avoidance, the ones who turned procrastination into an art form before finally surrendering to what they were meant to do.

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It's 1923.

You've just dropped out of Yale, and you're standing on a New York street corner with a suitcase and a plan to "bum about and starve a bit" while taking art classes.

Your family thinks you've lost your mind and here you are, choosing the most impractical path imaginable.

“An artist?" they say. "Now?"

Fast forward to 1939. The US is in the throes of the Great Depression.

You're in your live/work space surrounded by canvases you've been working on for months. They're not right. None of them are right. It’s never quite what you see in your mind.

Your paintings sit in stacks, the ones you've been giving away because no one will buy them.

Every rejection feels like confirmation this was foolish and a mistake.

You are Mark Rothko, and you’re considering quitting painting entirely.

Brushstrokes and color choices are a betrayal to something deeper you're trying to reach.

Remembering the critics who dismissed your early work. "What if they’re right? What if this is all just decoration?"

So you walk away, for months. You read philosophy and study mythology and search for meaning in ancient texts because you can't find it in your own work.

But the calling never leaves. It inhabits your every breath.

When you finally surrender to the work that terrifies you most, the colors that pour out are unlike anything you've ever created.

Pulsing reds, oranges that glow like sunset through closed eyelids. The paintings that will make you immortal, born from the very resistance that nearly destroyed you.

The bigger the calling, the stronger the resistance.

This piece consistently gets cited as the painting where people break down crying, have spiritual experiences, or feel like they've touched something beyond language.

I haven't seen it in person. I'm intrigued and certainly want to see it at the Tate.

What strikes me is that it exists at all. That Rothko pushed through decades of resistance, destroyed countless canvases, nearly quit painting but this piece made it into the world.

Its meaning will be whatever you or I assign to it when we're standing in front of it. But the sheer fact that it was created from the deepest part of Rothko's struggle and hangs for us to encounter today? That's miracle enough.

When we choose to wrestle with our resistance, it becomes our story too.

"I am not an abstractionist," Rothko told art critic Selden Rodman. "I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on—and the fact that lots of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I communicate those basic human emotions... The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them."

Julia Child - Spent years as a bored government wife, trying everything from hat making to furniture refinishing to avoid admitting she wanted to cook professionally. At 36, finally enrolled in Le Cordon Bleu. Her resistance? Cooking wasn't a "serious" career for educated women.

Kurt Vonnegut - Sold cars, worked in journalism, taught high school, sold Saabs - anything to avoid the "impractical" life of a novelist. Wrote Slaughterhouse-Five at 47, after decades of resistance to his true calling.

Charles Bukowski - Worked at the post office for over a decade, drinking heavily and writing secretly at night. Only quit at 49 when a publisher offered him $100/month to write full-time. His resistance was fear of poverty and judgment about being a "real" writer.

Wallace Stevens - Insurance executive by day, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet by night. Never told his Hartford colleagues about his poetry. The resistance? Poetry wasn't "serious business."

Philip Glass - Drove taxis and worked as a plumber well into his 40s while composing. Even after success, kept the day jobs out of fear his music wouldn't sustain him.

Clementine Hunter - Louisiana folk artist who worked as a plantation cook and field hand. Didn't start painting until her 50s when she found discarded paint tubes. Resistance came from believing art was "for other people, not folks like me."

The projects you're most afraid of are often the most authentic to your unique creative voice, or your POV.

When you create from your deepest truth, your work is less likely to be easily replicated or undercut.

Authentic work means market differentiation, which often commands premium pricing.

Resistance isn't just pointing you toward your soul's work, it's pointing you toward your most valuable work.

Every year you avoid your calling costs you earning potential.

Quick Fix: The "5-Second Rule" for Creative Resistance

When you feel that familiar wave of resistance (often a quiet, low-grade panic), count down “5-4-3-2-1” and immediately take one small creative action.

Quick sketch. Write a couple of sentences. Interrupt the resistance pattern before your brain kicks in with excuses.

High Amp Fix:

Which one or two potential projects gives you a negative physiological reaction?

When you think about it, you feel a wave of worry, fear, perhaps disbelief, shame, or guilt?

Start with that one.

Then give yourself permission to explore it, even make it badly, to work on it even if you are the only one who ever sees it.

The point is breaking through the resistance, not creating anything perfectly.

You may have to move through the work to receive the breakthrough.

Daily Maintenance: Drain the power out of that thing.

Each morning, write down what creative work you're avoiding and why.

Is it fear of criticism? Perfectionism? Name it specifically. Then commit to 15 minutes moving that project forward each day.

Drain resistance of its power by facing it clearly and consistently.

That’s it, friends!

Got a thought or two about this subject?

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Steven Pressfield: The War of Art, By now, you’ve probably already read this book. It’s THE OG for breakthroughs in your art and creating. I was given this book one Christmas and it’s stuck with me forevermore. You got a stuck creator in your life…might consider it.

Katy Hessel: How to Live an Artful Life, I’m a fan of Katy’s work. Her new book came out about two weeks ago in Britain. Only way to get it here is via Amazon so far. It’s a worthy book.

Mark Rothko, Christopher Rothko: The Artist’s Reality: Philosophies of Art, Mark Rothko's classic book on artistic practice, ideals, and philosophy. Stored in a New York City warehouse for many years after the artist's death, this extraordinary manuscript by Mark Rothko contains Rothko's ideas on the modern art world, art history, myth, beauty, the challenges of being an artist in society, the true nature of "American art," and much more.

Christopher Rothko: Mark Rothko From the Inside Out, The journey to understand the painting is also the journey to understand Rothko, because the work is so thoroughly suffused with the man. World-renowned icon of Abstract Expressionism, is rediscovered in this wholly original examination of his art and life written by his son.

Christopher Rothko, Kate Rothko Prizel, Alexander Nemerov: Mark Rothko, A landmark monograph on an unprecedented scale that allows all aspects of Mark Rothko’s career to be heard in full voice, published in close collaboration with the artist’s family and featuring beloved works from major collections as well as never-before-seen canvases and paintings on paper.

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