You don’t feel like it. You’re exhausted. You think of the effort it will take to get going, and you find the idea of working on your project tiresome.
What should you do? You might think, “just do it,” but that is incorrect. You shouldn’t finish your book. You shouldn’t complete that painting or drawing. Don’t set out to finish your cross-stitch project. Don’t aim to complete anything right now.
Instead, just start. Get your tools out. Put a word on the page. Paint a single stroke. Make a single stitch.
Not only that, but cheerfully do it badly. Set out to make every sentence as incoherent as possible. Your brush strokes or pencil marks should have no resemblance to anything that any sane person would recognize save it be in their most grotesque nightmares. Every effort should look bad. Write crappy sentences, paint wild strokes, make sloppy stitches. Plow into your work with heedless abandon! Set out to fail spectacularly!
Eventually, you’ll fail at this and do it well. Failure is much easier than success, after all.
Additionally, consider the atom. It’s nothing more than a tiny lump of particles, and it doesn’t resemble anything on its own. Yet when combined in vast numbers, atoms build into truly wonderful things. Each flower and precious stone is the cumulation of countless particles.
You’re not making flowers. you’re making particles, and it is only in their totality that those particles will resemble something wonderful. Mark the pieces down, and they will accumulate. That accumulation will likely surprise you. It doesn’t matter if the individual strokes are a bit wild. It’s the total effect when viewed as a whole that matters.
This is integral to the creative process—the channeling of chaos into order. Get out of the way and create chaos.
In short, consider this as permission to go play.
The Astral Wanderer is brought to you by the pure chaos that lingers in the hearts of every mortal. If you want to support this content, share this article with your friends, comment on it, or consider throwing a dollar or two into Patreon. All proceeds go toward building flowers out of beef. Really.