There are many seats on the struggle bus
“Ahh, you know. Strikes and gutters, ups and downs.” - The Dude
This has been a tough summer. Not only is this the first summer that I’ve worked full time since I entered education (my teacher blood is boiling), but also I was out of town on multiple work trips and one mini-vacation. This isn’t all a bad thing - I found inspiration and creativity for #dailycreates through a lot of the pictures I took and places I went, but it also helped me realize an absurd pardox: consistency is the mother of creativity.
As Ray Bradbury said, “Write a short story a week. It doesn’t matter what the quality is to start, but at least you’re practicing. And at the end of the year you have 52 short stories, and I defy you to write 52 bad ones.”
You really have to find the time to be creative. And that has been humbling. It’s like looking at the flights of stairs you climb to your office everyday. You take them for exercise, but you also take them because you have a place to go. The real measure of your commitment is taking the stairs when you have no place to go. Doing some laps during lunch. Setting a goal, 10 flights a day, 15 flights, 20 flights and then seeing it through. Then you are really exercising. Really getting the benefits. You are filling that time with something different than the everyday.
That’s been my analogy for this course. It’s been so gratifying and rewarding, but it’s also been frustrating. Frustration with myself. Frustration for not taking the time to commit to an interesting, but difficult, daily create. Frustration for knowing how good it feels to get work done at the beginning of the week and not the end (see how close this is to exercise?? I know it will make me feel good and I still struggle).
But what’s the ratio? Far more in favor of gratifying and rewarding. It’s particularly favorable circumstances to complain about having the ability to do something you like/love and not the time. It’s so much better than the alternative.
Now, I have to roll my sleeves up and prepare to keep the truth in absurdity rolling. My absurde-de-vérité-de-grande. I’m excited to draw the last connections between the dots and see what greater picture is revealed. And I know...I need to start early.