How do I know if my creative work is actually meaningful or just self-indulgent?

This question itself is the beginning of the answer. Murasaki Shikibu wrote *The Tale of Genji* not to please a court, but to understand the interior lives of people around her—their contradictions, their quiet moments, what they didn't say. Meaningful work comes from genuine observation, not performance. Start here: Does your work demand something of you? Does it require you to look closely at something—a feeling, a relationship, a small moment—and tell the truth about it? Self-indulgence avoids the hard work of observation. It settles for easy feelings. Real creativity observes until it aches a little. Keep a practice where you note one small thing daily: how light fell on someone's face, a contradiction in your own thinking, the texture of a conversation. This isn't journaling for therapy—it's training your attention. Over weeks, you'll feel the difference between work that comes from actually *seeing* and work that comes from wanting to be seen. The test isn't whether others validate it. It's whether the work made you more truthful with yourself.