creating routine

Okay. It’s time to get serious about this business of being a creative person. I haven’t been giving my craft the respect it deserves. If I were my boss in this business (which I am, why can I not let myself think that?) I ought to fire myself. I haven’t been showing up to work, and on the rare occasions that I do show up at all, I phone it in or fiddle around with odds and ends. This is no way to do business or hone a craft. It’s high time I gave it some solid, dedicated time if this means as much to me as I want it to mean.

I have to constantly remind myself that making crappy art isn’t half as wasteful as letting all my art supplies take up space, sitting there forever unused. How much more wasteful that I have all these ideas rattling around in my head and not doing anything with them. So what if they turn out bad? Of course nothing good will come of anything if I just let it sit in my brain.

So, however insignificant the steps may be, I resolve to do something every day to actualize the visions in my head. Even if it’s the tiniest sketch in my journal, there will be daily creative output in my life.

Since it doesn’t matter what I do so much that I do, I intend to carry around my heretofore unused red sketch journal. I’ve had it for years, but it’s useless because I’m afraid to mess it up. Yet it only serves its purpose if I use it, for better or worse. If I don’t mess up, I don’t get better. So if I decide that my goal is to fill it up by using at least a page a day, I can aim for routine instead of perfection. That, friends, takes a LOT of pressure off. I’ve been hearing a lot lately about creating routines in order to eliminate as many decisions from your day as possible to free up your mind for more important things (like knowing that you’ll eat a pear every day at lunch so that’s one less thing you have to think about). I think having this as part of my daily routine will mentally take the pressure off of my need to create. Deciding what I’m going to create won’t drain me if it doesn’t really matter, since it’s just something I’ll be doing every day. There’s no fear of messing up because it’s just a journal. It’s just like morning pages–I’ll doodle every day just to be in the habit of it, with the peripheral benefit of catharsis. It’s sitting down to your work that’s the whole of the matter.

I know that I can do good work if I just show up to the job. So here I am, reporting for duty, prepared to show up every day, on time, checking my ego at the door, with a can-do attitude and willingness to learn.

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