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🎙️ The Creative Life — with Jim Kroft
This podcast is for creatives who’ve chosen the long road.
Each week, I take one aspect of the creative life — a breakthrough, a challenge, or a tool that’s helping me — and share what I’m learning from the inside.
I started the show because I couldn’t find what I needed: a companion for the real challenges of making art while building a life around it.
The podcast swings between the psychological traps we face and the practical tools that keep me going. It moves between mindset and method — but always comes back to how we keep showing up.
I’m Jim, your host. I’ve lived a long life in the arts — full of meteoric highs and humbling lows.
Here are a few stops from the journey:
🎸 Released 7 records — from major labels to van tours
🎥 Filmed 6 feature docs, screened at 200+ festivals
🧠 Built a creative business in Berlin since 2013
✍️ Top 1% on Substack for weekly consistency
📈 Raised nearly €100K for refugee & Ukraine war efforts
🎧 The Creative Life has hit the Apple Podcast charts
Thanks for being here,
Jim
🔗 Listen & Follow:
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Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Creative Life Podcast. I’m your host, Jim Kroft, and I’m broadcasting this from Berlin’s Schöneweide — inside this beautiful old converted power station called Mahalla, where I’m lucky enough to have my studio.
Now I wanted to set the scene because this week’s episode is a little different. After this intro, everything you’ll hear is recorded in one take, with no notes and no editing. And the reason for that is that I installed a new whiteboard in my studio last week after absolutely massacring the walls with my questionable drilling skills. I’ve found it really inspiring to visualise my thoughts on the creative process, and today’s episode just popped out because it stems so directly from my own current experience artistically.
So what’s it about? Well, it’s called “Why We Stop Doing the Thing We Started.”
In it, I want to look at the full arc of a creative project — from the first spark to potential completion — but with a special focus on the dangerous middle; the killing ground of the creative slump where so many projects can shrivel up, fade, and never be completed.
First, we’ll look at why projects lose momentum — and the tools that can help us push through that difficult middle.
Second, how time, distraction, and the world chip away at our resolve — and how to counter the psychological blow when our early momentum meets entropy and stasis.
And third, how we find the upswing again — by reconnecting with what’s really driving us, and realising that finishing the work is itself a form of transformation.
The reason I want to talk about this is that it’s a space I’ve experienced many times before. I’ve completed six documentaries as a filmmaker and six albums as a musician — but I’ve also had my fair share fall by the wayside. So I can look at this question from both sides and draw from a lot of experience.
More pertinently, I’m right in the middle of working through a difficult period with my current project. At the start of last year, I set out to write and record a new album — which I managed to do. But suddenly, much of this year has passed, and I’ve yet to press the vinyl or book a tour. Somewhere along the way, without quite realising it, a block formed in me and I hit a wall.
And working my way through it, I’ve been living with the question of today’s episode:
Why do we stop doing the thing we started?
And so, that’s what I’m diving into today — through my own story, and through what I think is a universal part of every creative journey.
Finally, the podcast has been catching renewed momentum recently, so I just wanted to say thank you. What would really help support it is if you take a moment to rate and review it — and if you’re on Apple or Spotify, to drop a comment under this episode.
Thank you everyone — so, let’s hand the megaphone over to this maniac standing in front of his whiteboard.
Why do we stop doing the thing we started?
So, the thing now — what is the thing?
Well, the thing is the project that you’re carrying around in your heart. It’s going to be something different for different people. For a musician, it’s making that next album. For a writer, it’s the dream of the novel. For a businessperson, it’s getting that business going. The side hustle, the startup, the illustration — whatever it is, we all know that thing.
At the moment, think about it: what is that one thing?
I’m going to illustrate this with my own blockage, because what we’re going to be talking about is the journey from the thing we start out wanting most to do — the journey of a project, with all the highs, lows, slumps, and plateaus we go through on the way to getting the damn thing realised.
How do we go from the potential of what we dream, what we feel, what we want — that sense that we’ve got something inside us — to the point where it’s actualised, where it’s become real, where it exists as evidence in our lives?
For me, I’m trying to get my new album out as a musician. But I’ve also made six documentaries that have shown at over 200 film festivals around the world, and released six solo albums. I know the pattern intimately — but the paradox is, no matter how many times you’ve been through a project cycle, it always brings you to points where you reach that crest of giving up, or hit a plateau.
I want to explain some of the emotional realities that we go through. And I’m explaining it because I’m right in the middle of that sense of plateau and slump — but I’m working my way through it.
So when you set out with the thing, you’ve got the dream. The dream is generated by a spark — that spark of potential. It hasn’t been tested yet. So at the beginning, you’re trending upwards — the idea, the spark, the gumption, the power of beginning, the belief that nothing can stop you.
That is the Godhead speaking through you — the thing inside you. You might not be an expert yet, but you’ve got that sense of majesty, that conversation with the infinite, the potential. John Lennon talked about the “music of the spheres” — when he was writing, he felt connected to something beyond himself. That’s what you feel in the spark — that aliveness to new ideas, that sense that everything’s possible.
But then… the problem.
I had that spark with this new album last year. I hadn’t written anything for ages. Getting older, more bills to pay, freelance film and photography work — it all takes time. It’s hard as you get older to keep the thing you love going. I’ve been through so many ups and downs in music — paid really well, then down to nothing. But I never want to give up this thing, because it’s my primary connection to life, to growth.
Last year I was suffering from writer’s block. I got this wonderful room where I could put all my instruments. I started working through the block. Each song that came through felt good. Momentum built. I finished the songs — and that was a high point.
But then comes the plateau.
It sneaks up on you. You’re on the up — then suddenly you’re on this flat stretch. It’s dangerous, because this is where so many projects die. And it’s awful, because when you hit this plateau, you start questioning yourself.
Impediments appear. Blocks come from outside or inside — limiting beliefs, unmet expectations, the lack of response you hoped for. In a performative, social-media world, that sense of feedback is addictive. Without it, the wholeness of your original vision starts to dilute.
In my case, that plateau turned into a slump. Doubt crept in. I started leaking self-belief. The spark that once propelled me seeped away.
What’s happening here is that you’re being tested. It’s the moment your self-belief is challenged. And paradoxically, it’s your opportunity to find your character. But right when you’re being tested, you feel most disconnected from the fire that defines you.
When the thing is no longer at the centre of your being — when it’s been fragmented and pushed out — you feel like you can’t reach it anymore. Days go by. Responsibilities pile up. The thing you loved drifts further away.
So the question becomes: how do you bring it back to the centre?
That’s where self-knowledge and fortitude come in. You have to make the decision to reconnect — but it doesn’t happen by willing it alone.
You have to make space for it.
For me, I had to admit that while I love my YouTube channel, Substack, client work, and relationships — all these things I value — they were diluting my creative core.
So the first decision: prioritise the thing itself.
If you’re a musician, make music. If you’re a writer, write. If you’re a business owner, build your business. Don’t hover around your purpose once a week — get back to doing the thing itself.
Second, do it daily.
Even small steps. You don’t need to grind five hours after your day job — just touch it every day. Build the habit.
Third, protect it.
That means saying no. Having the hard conversations. Reclaiming your centre from distraction.
Once you start doing that, you’ll feel the return — that slow reawakening of energy and joy. You’ve survived the cycle. You’ve been tested, you’ve doubted, you’ve fallen, but you’ve endured.
And when you come out the other side, you’ve transformed.
Because the truth is, there is no resurrection without the cave. You must go through the death — the dark slump where you think you’ve lost it — before you can rise.
Viktor Frankl said that we always retain the final freedom: to choose our attitude. And at that point — the lowest — you must choose. Choose to act. Choose to create again.
Then comes the upswing.
This is when you make new decisions. Write them down — three simple ones. For me:
Get the album artwork done.
Press the vinyl and plan a tour.
Reconnect with the joy of music.
And that last one is everything. Because we’ve forgotten joy. We’ve made everything about performance, outcomes, and productivity. But joy — that’s what brings life back.
So make space for joy. Cut the side quests. Protect time for the thing itself.
When you do, momentum returns. The spark rekindles. You move toward completion.
And completion matters — not just for the work itself, but because it transforms you. Each finished project is a new skin shed, a new version of yourself born.
That’s the deeper meaning of creation. It’s not just what you make — it’s who you become in the process.
And when you bring that creation back to the world, it feeds others. It renews the world in its own small way.
So why do we stop doing the thing we started?
Because everything — inside and out — gets in the way.
But we also have the power to begin again. Every single person holds that spark — that living potential that can never be destroyed.
So if you’re in the slump, be gentle with yourself — but keep going. Make space. Return to the thing.
Because when you do, you don’t just finish a project — you rediscover yourself.
Drop a comment — let me know what block you’re facing. I’d love to hear from you.
My journey continues: I’ll be working on the artwork, looking at a tour, and most of all, getting back to playing — back into the heart of my love for music.
Thanks so much for being here. Take a moment to rate, comment, or share this episode if it resonated.
Much love — I’m Jim, and it’s an honour to have you here.