Find your art and let it kill you
Been getting distracted. Trivial things getting in the way. String enough of those together and that's when people start to say "where did the time go?"
I’ll tell you where it didn’t go, it didn’t go towards your craft. It didn’t go towards practicing. It didn’t go towards delivering your gift to the world. What a tragedy.
Even now, the pull of it all, the pull tries to drag me in, the emails, the messages, the phone calls, the phone, oh the phone. Prison bars in the form of a small screen. I have to turn it off to get anything done. Put it in a drawer, leave it in my car.
I had a message from a girl I didn’t respond to for over a week. So I called her. And she told me, you didn’t reply. I know, I had to focus, had to take care of some things. I told her the new nickname I had for her. She said she liked it. Then I asked her out. She told me she's busy this week. That’s good I said, keep it that way, I have things to work on too. Are you trying to justify me saying no to you with you not being distracted?
Yes.
All I’m looking for is a single hour, a single hour to pursue my interests and satisfy my curiosity. And you know what I’ve been doing? Trying to fill those holy hours! And with what? My little screen, my little screen calls me, tells me I must read this, I must reply to that, I must must must.
But no. I resist.
I’ve found my art. It’s right here. Filling up the blank page. You make it look easy they say. Yes well they don’t see the 7,000 pages piled up behind me! All junk, all garbage. But that’s what it takes to get to the 7,001st page to get to the treasure I’m looking for.
You think you’re going to get to 7,001 pages by filling your time with TV shows and brunch dates and emails and timelines and posts and likes and swipes and pings and red bells?
No sir... you get to 7,001 pages (the number doesn’t matter, I could replace it with LOTS) by writing 7,000 pages.
Extreme skill requires extreme feats. Hendrix used to practice the guitar until his fingers bled. And look at you young swine, you’re not scared of failure, you’re scared of what might happen if you actually got good at the thing you enjoy. Success puts you on the hook my friend, failure lets you off!
Now now no need to get angry (though emotion is great fuel for creation), we’re in this together. No walls here! Walls are another distraction! A roadblock on the path to truth.
Avoid those distractions. Which ones? Don’t fool yourself. You know. Oh you don’t? Let me make it clear: everything that isn’t your craft.
Diving into your art is the ultimate transcendence, the gift of gifts. Pure surrender. That’s how you’ll Rest In Peace.
Got it?
Okay good.