To make without reflection is to spend a fortune without knowing what you have bought — the work accumulates but the maker does not deepen. The examined creative life turns its gaze not only outward toward craft but inward toward the motives that drive it: what you are working toward, what you are working away from, and what the work is asking of you that you have not yet given. This is not self-indulgence but the condition of sustained making.
Mura