1 | ON ACCOUNTABILITY
When I first launched The Core Stories Collective in February, I had folks sign up via a Google Form that included this question: Why are you interested in joining this free writing group? What do you hope to get out of it?
By a long shot, the most popular answer was “accountability.” People wanted an official reason to commit to their creative aspirations.
If my goal was to make those dreams come true, I certifiably failed. We just wrapped our first three-month round, and at Monday’s final co-writing meeting, there were just two participants. Actually, just one, if you remove me from the count.
Ouch.
Participation ebbed and flowed, and often, it was for entirely legitimate reasons: work events, travel, holidays, the whole lot of Very Important Things that always get in the way. But the longterm pattern was one of dwindling. As I watched people slowly slip away from showing up — and as I reflected on the scope of my personal culpability for that trend — I started thinking more deeply about accountability, what it actually means, and what it demands of us.
In a patriarchal capitalist culture that expects us to show up consistently at 100%, even when the body or spirit would be better off claiming rest, what does a wise, compassionate version of accountability look like? How do we know we’re hitting the right accountability balance — not too much, not too little? Is there an angle on accountability that doesn’t seem so tangled up in a punishing tone? And when we say “accountability,” to whom do we mean? To what?
Anyway, here’s where I’ve landed so far. Below are some guideposts for accountability in the context of creative practices. All of these will inform the design for the next round of the Collective, but might also be useful to you in the meantime:
1. ACCOUNTABILITY IS SUPPOSED TO BE UNCOMFORTABLE.
I worked hard to arrange three different sets of biweekly co-writing meeting times that were theoretically the most convenient for the most group members. I now understand that convenience was never the point, that its correlation with accountability is negligible at best. First of all, new reasons to be busy will always, and I mean always, emerge.
And second of all, accountability is annoying. It just is. It requires trade-offs that are dubiously worthwhile, especially at first. You do not need accountability to help you do fun and easy things like, I don’t know, binge-watch Netflix, because they are fun and easy. There is always time for Netflix somehow. There is no friction.
The friction is what the accountability is for.
Before you abandon the accountability because you’d rather choose Netflix (or something that is otherwise more important), ask questions. This thing I’m trying to be accountable to — is it something I actually want? Do I want it enough? Am I willing to entertain the possibility that it’s worth it? Why?
You are still allowed to choose Netflix, by the way. Just get the data first.