Your Worth Is Not Defined By Your Productivity… Except It is

I think it’s true that your worth is not determined by your productivity – 100% true and indisputable.

However, what I think and feel doesn’t put food on the table. It’s been a rough few years for my partner and myself. Before the pandemic hit we were struggling to find ways to work and support ourselves. After the pandemic hit, it’s just been more of the same – just scarier.

It’s so hard not to feel like I’ve failed by not making myself a success despite having guts, talent, and ambition. I also come with mental illness, trauma, and a host of things I can’t even get evaluated for because I don’t have the money or the privilege.

What I’m stuck on isn’t just how hard it is to internalize that my productivity doesn’t determine my worth.

I am very productive, but what happens when my productivity isn’t given any value? What happens when no matter what I produce, I feel alone and in the dark, and worried about bills and rent and every other thing under the sun.

I’ve realized that in the past I’ve tried to make myself seem more appealing to others. Trying to fit into a sort of concept of myself that would make me seem more approachable, more acceptable, and safer to come to for help, work, and the like.

This hasn’t worked. And, frankly, I don’t care to do it anymore.

You are not defined by your productivity, no.

But, more than that, what you do has value.

You have value. What you make has value. Of course you are not defined by your productivity, but likewise the worth of what you produce is not balanced on the shelves of whatever capitalist hell we’re in right now.

Creating means more than just producing something. Creating something means that you have put value into it in your laughter, your tears, your blood, your joy. You created it and therefore it has value, even on your darkest days.

You also have value. Even on your darkest, and least productive days you still have value.

And so do I.