What Will You Find Under That Pile of Rubbish? A Creative’s Way Through.

The creative process is an interesting one. I never did read the book “The Artist’s Way” so I don’t actually know if me referencing it here is relevant in the least, but sometimes “creativity” can feel like trying to catch lightning in a bottle. Other times, it feels like a downpour and you’re running around with a bucket to try to catch it all. I’m not sure we’re meant to be creative and innovative and interesting all the time. In fact, I’m sure we’re not supposed to be. That’s how I’ve felt a great majority of my adult life. A faucet that doesn’t actually have much control over turning the spout on or off. A mystery hand comes in when it dang well pleases, turns the handle and BOOM. IDEAS! GOOD IDEAS, to boot! Other times, the well runs dry, for much longer than you want it to.

But there has to be a dry season to balance out the rainy season. Otherwise, things would just flood, right?

I’m making a lot of analogies here and saying a whole bunch of nothing, but that’s okay, because I’m just trudging along today. Just writing to write. I’ve learned something over this year of blogging. Even though, as I said, I never read “The Artist’s Way,” I have to imagine that part of that tome, somewhere in those pages, it says that even when that faucet is off, even when the bottle remains free of lightning, even when the dry season is causing immense drought, work needs to keep getting done, just to keep the gears lubricated. Don’t let yourself rust over.

That’s the thing. Creative people who do amazing work understand something that’s really hard to wrap your head around sometimes as creative people who do okay enough work: everything you do doesn’t have to actually be any good. Most of the things you do don’t have to be good, in fact. It’s like cooking, for instance. Sometimes, you can make the coq au vin with the chocolate soufflé, and other times, you can make the grilled cheese sandwich with the Kraft singles. The idea of eating fine French food every day sounds good in theory, but it would be quite hard to stomach for the long haul. Sometimes, you just need a friggin’ sandwich with basic bread from the grocery store bread aisle.

Today’s post is a grilled cheese sandwich. No tomato soup to dip it in. No chips for crunch. Just the sandwich, not even cut on the diagonal the way sandwiches should only ever be cut (the corner of the triangle is always the best bite…I’ll fight you on this if you disagree). And I’m okay with that. Wednesday nights tend to be when my well typically dries up, only to be restored in a few days. I beat myself up for it a lot. Or just avoid doing anything about it altogether. “Whoops, I fell asleep!” A litany of excuses usually gets cooked up in my head as the evening turns from 9 to 11 to midnight, but today, instead, I just sat down, and started moving my fingers even though it doesn’t make much sense.

Today’s grilled cheese sandwich of a post is in honor of all the times you do something just to do it, to get through, so that you can get to the other side and move on. Let yourself be bad at something, or do so-so work sometimes. Perfectionism is exhausting and stifles us from the gems hiding underneath a pile of rubbish. If you never dig through the rubbish, and instead just sidestep it as you look for the gleaming diamond on full display, you have no idea what you’re missing. That diamond may never come, but at least you have a palm’s worth of…whatever you found under the pile of trash. Could be nothing, could be everything. 🙂

See you tomorrow, FOAS. Perhaps for another grilled cheese rubbish sandwich post, perhaps for something far better than this.