June 2010

Tell me if this sounds a little crazy.

Day after day, you dream of leaving your desk job behind. Someday, you tell yourself, you’re going to tear down the walls, crush the cubicle, and smash a few of those eerie fluorescent lights on your way out the door.

Planning Your Escape

No more, you imagine, will you be governed by a clock with a slot, watched over by a doofus in a necktie, or chained to a desk that you swear must have been purchased from a former Soviet Union surplus store.

You, after all, are making your way towards something more creative, less inhibiting, and completely self expressive.

Reconstructing Your Prison

And what’s the first thing you do? You head over to the local Office Box. You know the one. It’s the one with the wide selection of aluminum desks, black-pleather office chairs, and eerie fluorescent lamps.

There, you set about recreating the thing you’ve been longing to escape so you can install it in your home.

If this in anyway sounds both crazy and exactly like you, don’t feel bad. You’re not the only one.

Restless Rump Syndrome

For a long time, I tried to get myself to sit in a chair and work at a desk that I lugged home one day while recreating my very own version of the thing I’d been working to escape. No wonder my wandering rump would never comply.

I tried and I cried but away my butt would slide. After each failed attempt, the clouds burst and I found myself in a torrential downpour of guilt.

“No discipline!” shouted the the smarmy, little schoolmarm I keep inside my brain.

“Writer!” bellowed the drill sergeant I also sometimes find there, “What – is – your – ma – jor – mal – func – tion?”

“Off with his head!” screamed the Queen of Hearts. I have no idea how she got there.

So, needless to say, I would feel pretty crummy.

Where You Find Your Chair is Neither Here Nor There.

Then one day I realized something. It doesn’t matter where my chair is. The point isn’t to show up and sit in a particular chair at a particular desk beneath any particular sort of lighting. The point, for me, is to show up on a page.

I think it’s the same for you. It doesn’t necessarily matter where there is. It only matters that you show up some where, or, to paraphrase the late, great Dr. Seuss, you could show up here or there, you could show up anywhere.

The Work is Where It’s At (Wherever That May Be)

My job is to put ink on paper. Your job may be to put paint on canvas, capture images on film, or pour yourself into a monologue. Whatever our work may be, there’s absolutely nothing dictating where we do it.

Sometimes I write and draw in a chair at my desk, but now I’m just as likely to do so in a lawn chair on my deck, in a recliner in my living room, on a bench at the park, or on my belly on the floor.

The only thing that matters is that I write and that I draw. That’s it.

It’s great to have a workspace (perhaps even a sacred one) that you can come to again and again. But there’s no reason to think you always have to go there to do your work. It’s only the work, after all, that matters.

So, though you should certainly commit to showing up, you’re free to show up anywhere. No matter where you go, the work is where it’s at.

Are you getting all the Quiet Inspiration you need? Subscribe to Quiet Inspiration, the Mildly Creative Newsletter. You can also subscribe to these blog posts via RSS feed or by Email.

{ 7 comments }

Admiration, if you’re not careful, can turn to needless envy. You appreciate what someone else is doing, and, before you know it, you find yourself wanting to be them and thinking you should be doing what they do in precisely the same way they do it.

Things Get Strange

But then you begin and you slowly start to notice that you don’t have the same passion, don’t find the same attraction, and don’t get the same results.

And that’s when you start to hear those little voices, the ones that tell you you’re a failure, that you have no discipline, no commitment, no staying power, and essentially no talent.

Things Get Mixed Up

That’s how it’s been for me with drawing. I look at and admire the sketchbooks and art journals of artists like Danny Gregory, Michael Nobbs, and Lisa Sonora Beam and wonder why mine don’t look the same.

Theirs are filled with color; mine are largely black and white.

Theirs are filled with images; mine are largely filled with words, lots and lots and lots of words.

“What’s wrong with me?” I wonder, and then the answer comes to me. Nothing. Nothing at all.

I’m a writer who happens to draw. They are all artists who happen to write. Begrudging this is like being a plumber who feels inadequate for not being a better electrician.

Things Get Sorted Out

My sketchbooks are filled with words because I love to write. Drawing definitely adds an enjoyable new dimension to my writing, but if I get caught up in thinking I have to both draw and write with equal passion and skill, I can make myself a little crazy.

Everybody has their thing.

Some people plumb, some people wire, and together they make a home more livable.

Some people sketch, some people write, and together they make the world more meaningful.

Things Are Alright

There’s nothing wrong with learning something about another person’s thing, trying that thing, or even making that thing your own, but thinking you have to do all things and do them equally well is a good way to find yourself doing nothing – except worrying.

Find your thing, do your thing, and, when you have a notion, try some other things, but always find peace in knowing the world has provided those who will do the other things, their things, as well as you do yours.

Trust me. Everything will be alright.

Are you getting all the Quiet Inspiration you need? Subscribe to Quiet Inspiration, the Mildly Creative Newsletter. You can also subscribe to these blog posts via RSS feed or by Email.

{ 6 comments }