Anyone who has spent much of their life creating has probably noticed that there is a difference between the quality of their creation and how the world received it at any given moment. Joan Rivers used to talk about whether her work was going to hit. Whether what she was making was going to go from irrelevant to relevant. The artists who have lifelong careers seem to be good at recreating themselves. Because the world is in a constant state of change, your work may hit for a moment, it may line up with the rest of the culture but that wave passes and that creation doesn’t match the next moment.
There are inconstants and constants in life. Your relationship with yourself, if you remain present, can be a constant. Your home is hopefully a constant. Your immediate family, a constant. But whether your concerns line up with the waves of culture, well, you're outnumbered. There is not much you can do about that. You can put your creation, your art, your app, your film, your book, your vision, your performance, your event, and your private club out into the world, but if a large number of people don’t agree at that moment that it is important to them as well, it will feel irrelevant. This is not your fault. You are outnumbered.
There is a lot of ‘You create your own reality.’ ‘If you can see it, you can be it.’ ‘You have to expand your vision of yourself to become larger.’ All these self-empowerment ideas keep you from getting in your own way, but at some point, it is you against the world unless you are riding one of its waves.
There are moments in my life in which I felt a wave coming. More felt than saw. I got in good alignment. I began paddling like hell to gain speed early so that when it hit, I was already going fast enough that it would take me. When it works, this is a good high feeling. It feels inevitable. It feels powerful. It just happens to you. What you are making is meeting the moment and it is so much larger than you and you feel, and are, huge.
Other times I have done the same thing, been a very early adopter, made something gorgeous with tools that were still hard to get ahold of, and the wave turns out to be a small swell by the time it passes: VR.
If you are a lifelong creator you will know the full arc of creating. You will know when your work hits and when it doesn’t. 'Right now' helps me weather the various moments of relevance. ‘No one seems to care about my work…right now’. That is separate from ‘My work is…’ Know yourself. Know your work. And maybe one day it will hit. But right now it is meaningful to you. And that is something.