Post-travel notes: 16 Sept, 2019

What is something you’ve been taking too seriously lately?

For me, it’s these blog posts: thinking each one needs to be the quality of a freakin’ New Yorker article to see the light of day. I feel tension every time my cursor hovers over “Ready to Publish?” I’m in the infant stage of writing posts regularly, but I struggle to remember that and give myself grace.

Last week, I was traveling with a friend. I stayed surprisingly disciplined as I was working remotely, but I stopped my daily posts here. Faint excuses floated through my mind: not focused enough, not quiet enough, not enough time. Really, though, I used the trip as a vacation from the internal questioning that comes with every creative endeavor I put forth: IS IT GOOD ENOUGH?!?!?

Seems like the right time for a refresher on producing creative work, and this is for anyone. I’ll leave it to Ira Glass to explain. Hope this resonates with you today too:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”