Creative Beginner's Mind

“ Generally speaking, it’s good to make decisions about art and life when you’re in a good frame of mind and then spend time getting out of your own way.”


What does it take to make things happen on a consistent basis?

some measure of knowing you aren’t going to feel like doing the thing.  I’ve got a mental to do list of many things. All of them have varying degrees of importance or even unimportance.

Having read David Allen’s book Getting Things Done he talks about having a trusted system.  He also outlines that system. There are different schools of thought about this. I like the idea of ‘mind like water’. I do think though that you have to perhaps look at things like anxiety and mental health as well. 

Those are beyond the scope of his book.

It doesn’t really matter if you have a trusted system if you’ve got deeper things going on that seem to stall you over and over. 
A lot of things end up being symptoms of a deeper cause.  Let’s be clear, I’ve got no confession here of some deeper cause, as even if I knew it it wouldn’t really be blog material I don’t think.

Anyway, I’ve spent a long time, years thinking that one day would come, where I would wake up daily, inspired, alive, enthused to write, to make money, to make art, to act and so on and so forth. I’d be living the promised dream.

Yet, this may or may not exist. I’ll tell you I do know, that no matter what, you’re going to have problems.  You’re going to have challenges, you’re going to have things come out of the blue that you’ll need to deal with. 

Long story long. Doing. Doing the thing. Me typing this post right now is a form of doing. Not necessarily a habit, as I don’t (yet?) do this daily.  I do write daily. Whether I feel like it or not.  I heard Hugh Jackman compare meditation to showering, you just do it because you do it, everyone showers every day because it’s what you do.  He seems to have taken that same frame of mind with meditation.  I like this frame of mind as it makes good logical sense and doesn’t seem to involve a lot of harrumphing and flailing about striving to do the damn thing.  

This can also be true of creative work.  I’ve noticed it’s a lot easier to prioritize creativity that is for jobs that fulfill my paycheck. Which makes sense, I have to keep the lights on, the water running, the groceries etc.  Yet this doesn’t mean the solution is to then make every creative endeavor urgent, this doesn’t work (at least not for me).  Nor does it mean making every endeavor a potentially paid one. I like being paid, and I like finishing projects, but the artist in me just can’t have it be all or nothing, one or the other. 

There is definitely a balance.  It’s hard, it involves sometimes listening and taking in more feedback about a project than you would like. Perhaps compromising more than you’d like -yet at the same time, if you go to the other extreme of the spectrum you’ve got “I’m just making this for it’s own sake.”  Which to me, just feels uninspiring and I don’t really care about this!

Anyway, doing the things.  Generally speaking, it’s good to make decisions about art and life when you’re in a good frame of mind and then spend time getting out of your own way.  Not asking when you’re tired in the morning “Do I really want to go for this run?” Not asking when you’re feeling like your bank account is low. “Is this really my career path? Is this what I want to do with my life?”  These aren’t Monday morning-do-the-work-time questions. These are questions left for a Saturday, or a random day you’ve blocked off for directional questions, big picture questions.

I’m not talking about white knuckling by the way. I’m talking about just starting or just continuing.  This blog for me is a continuation, this blog for me is momentum. I love this term momentum.  It’s a great way to think about work and life, to gain momentum and keep going.   It’s much harder to go from sitting on the couch to running than it is to go from walking to running--you’re already in motion!

It was easier for me to keep lifting weights consistently once I was lifting, it’s easier for me to keep writing this blog now that I’m writing it.  It will be easier for you to do your painting, your comics, your singing, your videos once you’ve been making a few. It’s not just about habits (which help.)  It’s about just beginning, sometimes gently, kindly, small, easily.

Easy does it. Begin.