The dreadful wait of creative pursuits
If you have tried to bring things to some kind of fruition in your life, you have surely gotten frustrated a time or two. Things just seem a bit out of reach for the timetable you’ve set.
You are so tied up to the results of the project, your worthiness is highly vulnerable. You swing from motivation to an unreasonable desire to rest and daydream.
To live and to create art. There is a connection and maybe a fine of a difference.
For some reason, that fine line is very confusing to navigate.
There shouldn’t be this or that. We should be able to have the cake and eat it right?
This world is very abundant, surely.
Surely, there is enough to go for me and you.
So what is the missing link?
Here goes my theory. I believe that we have an unrealistic view of progress and time.
Let’s start with progress.
Progress is something we only notice when it’s big and obvious. We tend to underrate small and minute differences when it comes to change. It doesn’t satisfy us enough to be worth the work.
And so motivation dwindles because the big result takes forever to arrive. We wait and wait, and have come to realize “damn, this is just not worth my time. Let me move on to another project.”
We repeat the cycle and continue in a hamster wheel, circling around from passion project to passion project.
And you add in time, you make this matter even more undesirable. What do I mean?
If you consider how long you think a project should take to materialize, you often make an ambitious timetable.
In addition to multiple other projects, many of which are sitting still, you consider adding another project with an even more unrealistic deadline.
This creates frustration that eats you away from the inside.
This is something that takes awareness to understand.
And to get there, takes even more time, depending on the kind of introspection you have on yourself and how often.
And so at this point, we are at two disadvantages: unsound and unwise perspective on what progress looks like, and terrible deadlines.
The sensation of creativity disappears and now you are just dried up and completely out of juice.
So what shall we do?
