For years, the hour after five belonged to alcohol. Work stopped, the drink started, and everything after that was already decided.
When I stopped, the hour didn’t go away. It sat there empty, every day, at the same time.
Nothing prepares you for that part. It was carrying something, and when you set it down, the weight has to land somewhere. If you don’t decide where, it picks its own spot. Usually a screen. Possibly food. Sometimes a habit that’s easier to defend and does the same job.
Mine went to the work. The evenings I’d spent drinking, I spent on projects. The mornings I’d spent recovering, I spent at the gym. There was no plan behind it. Making things was the only thing I could find that was actually mine.
That turned out to be the whole mechanism. Getting sober opened the hour. Creative work is what made the hour worth having. An empty hour with nothing in it is just a longer stretch of wanting a drink.
I’ve kept that hour for myself for a few years now. I want to share it.
What Happens
11:00. We arrive. Ten minutes, guided. Most of us come to create already spent, carrying the last call and everything unfinished. This is for setting that down long enough that when you open the file, you’re the one opening it. A chair and a space of your own is all you need.
11:10. We make. Cameras optional, mics off. Everyone in their own work, together. The chapter, the edit, the song that’s been half-finished since spring. It doesn’t have to be good or finished or going anywhere. Nobody watches your screen. Nobody coaches you. Nobody asks what you’re working on until you want to say.
The voice that shows up when you work alone, the one that asks who you think you are, gets a lot smaller when you can see other people sitting in exactly the same place at the same moment.
11:40. We share. What you sat with, where it got hard. No feedback, no critique, nobody fixing anything. Something changes in a piece once another person knows it exists.
12:00. Done. You go back to your day carrying something you didn’t have at 11.
Who It’s For
You’ve stopped drinking, or you’re changing that relationship, and there’s something you keep almost getting to.
You’re already deep in the work and you can feel what the fog has been costing you.
You have a practice and no witnesses, and making things alone has started to feel like talking into a drawer.
You don’t need a sobriety date. You don’t need a finished project. You don’t need to call yourself an artist, and plenty of people here won’t.
Nobody teaches you anything. Nobody touches your work. There’s no go-around where you tell your story. You can keep your camera off, pass at the end, or leave early and nobody will ask about it.
The Details
When: First Tuesday of every month, 11:00am ET. 8am Pacific, 4pm UK.
Where: Zoom. The link comes to subscribers the day before.
Cost: Free
Bring: Something you’re making.
Subscribe and I'll send you the link.
Between now and the first Tuesday, watch for the hour in your day that isn’t doing anything for you. Most people have one. It’s rarely the hour they’re short on. It’s the one they never assigned.