The real sparks come when you ride the wave of creativity. When you know there will be moments where you’re stuck and unsure where to go next and need to go into a more idle mode, busying yourself with random tasks such as taking a shower, going for a walk, or driving around the neighborhood. When you know the inkling of an idea comes to you at a very inconvenient time – usually while you’re sleeping or you got a child restless in your arms – and you gotta figure out where you’ll put it; in a Note on your phone, in the margins of a newsletter, on a soon-to-be-ripped napkin. When you know there’s a time to buckle down and commit to the keyboard, the paper, the whatever it is that allows your brain to meet execution. And then you ride the wave some more. Over and over again.
I spent so much of my life blocking off time for writing. “I’ll write all morning,” I’d say. “I’ll write until I got 20 pages down,” I’d challenge. I did all of these things, over and over again, with very little to show for it. Instead, I’d take detours into my email, checking off all these newsletters I was behind on. I’d get sucked into the internet browser and down another rabbit hole. I would do everything but the thing I set out to do. Which only compounded the frustration.
It wasn’t until I understood my brain was a lightbulb, sometimes dormant, sometimes aspark, riding a wave I had no weather report for. There was no way to predict when things would show up. There was only accepting it would be a ride worth being patient for.
