Welcome to negative capability, a weekly journaling prompt intended to encourage deliberate thinking in order to cultivate joy, emailed every Sunday. These prompts are meant for my 절친 only,but I am making them available for all my subscribers during the month of January, a time when we are most often reflecting on our past selves and what we want for the coming year. If you find these prompts useful or inspiring, why not consider subscribing?
What motivates you more: spite or joy?
Oh, spite, 100%. Listen, while my guiding philosophy might be to cultivate joy, I am a firm believer in spite as a healthy reason to do anything. It’s the troll in me.
That said, I don’t think being motivated by spite is a bad or morally reprehensible thing. Spite gets us riled up, and more often than not, it also gets us moving. Wintersong was partially motivated by spite. I was reading a lot of books at the time I was drafting it that I had hoped would scratch my itch for the moody, vibe-y fairy tale retelling, but unfortunately, I didn’t find any of those books executing their premises the way I wanted to read. So I wrote the book I wanted to read at that time.
That being said, while I think spite is an excellent motivator, I don’t think spite sustains anything. We all know the traps and pitfalls of outrage; you need more and more hits of outrage to keep going. This is where joy comes in. When spite as motivation fades, joy as sustenance will keep you going.
Spite
Spite
Spite
🗣️ Listen below.
Welcome to negative capability, a weekly journaling prompt intended to encourage deliberate thinking in order to cultivate joy, emailed every Sunday. These prompts are meant for my 절친 only, but I am making them available for all my subscribers during the month of January, a time when we are most often reflecting on our past selves and what we want for the coming year. If you find these prompts useful or inspiring, why not consider subscribing?
What motivates you more: spite or joy?
Oh, spite, 100%. Listen, while my guiding philosophy might be to cultivate joy, I am a firm believer in spite as a healthy reason to do anything. It’s the troll in me.
That said, I don’t think being motivated by spite is a bad or morally reprehensible thing. Spite gets us riled up, and more often than not, it also gets us moving. Wintersong was partially motivated by spite. I was reading a lot of books at the time I was drafting it that I had hoped would scratch my itch for the moody, vibe-y fairy tale retelling, but unfortunately, I didn’t find any of those books executing their premises the way I wanted to read. So I wrote the book I wanted to read at that time.
That being said, while I think spite is an excellent motivator, I don’t think spite sustains anything. We all know the traps and pitfalls of outrage; you need more and more hits of outrage to keep going. This is where joy comes in. When spite as motivation fades, joy as sustenance will keep you going.