Friction
Giving it what you've got / Issue 1,160
Oh, hi friends!
You put it off and put it off and put it off until you're swimming at the edge of the ocean of disaster and then, only then, do you start to do the work.
Are you this way, too?
Do you also require tension and friction?
The pressure cooker feeling of Welp, now there is no choice.
Hey, me too!
But I'm going to argue that we are doing alright.
That the preamble to the work is important, too.
Last week I had a day where the decks were cleared and I could write write write.
What did I do?
Read some stuff, listened to some stuff, stuffed my brain with some stuff, brushed the cat, ate some of those addictive Scandinavian Swimmers from Trader Joe's, and kind of berated myself for not "doing the work."
And then, as the light faded in the evening and I was saying goodbye to my last chance of putting anything on paper, I pooped out six pages of my musical.
I'm sorry to be so crude — so unlike me right? — but that's what happens.
There is nothing.
Then there is something.
Maybe I could have written those six pages six hours earlier. (Or, frankly, six weeks earlier.)
But I didn't. I couldn't. I didn’t.
And you know what? They are good. They are good not only because they exist, but because they felt true in the moment. Even if that moment was a pressure-cooked scramble.
So if that moment comes to you in a long, fruitful stretch this morning, or in a 15-minute burst this afternoon, or two weeks from now, or six years from now, trust that the moment you do the work is the right moment for you, too.
Less judgment.
More trust.
Keep going.
And rich pleasant life vibes to you