The time is now and now is the best time

Just starting is often the hardest part of being creative but we must be strong and beat the resistance.

It’s easy to stay in bed an extra hour or two in the morning on your day off; to stay up late the night before watching, ‘just one more’, episode of something; to mosey around with no apparent objective. It’s easy, and I’m guilty.

But I’ve been bed ridden for two days and still not feeling great after contracting some horrible virus. I’ve been quite delirious at times, having strange dreams and thinking about all the things I could do or should be doing while I’m at home. The tracks I could be finishing; the blog posts I could be writing; the artwork I could be preparing.

The mental onslaught was driving me mad but I was unable to do anything. Sitting up typing made me go dizzy and headphones clamped to my head brought me out in a hot sweat. I couldn’t do anything for two days and those tedious two days felt like a lifetime.

It got me thinking though. When we stay in bed, watch TV, endlessly scroll, etc, this is our lifetime, just in small bites. Before you know it, it’s a long time and we’re using it all up, ‘willy-nilly’, as my Nan would say. OK, maybe you don’t want to create and just love entertainment. If that’s the case, that’s fine, crack on.

But if you want to create music, build things or write stories, you have to make the most of this precious time because this is your life. The more of it you spend doing anything that isn’t your goal, the less likely your goals will come to fruition.

Is the reason we push aside our goals for things less satisfying is due to something author, Steven Pressfield, calls ‘Resistance’. He claims that it’s an insidious force within us with one goal, to stop us doing our best art, and that it must be fought.

He might be right because the hardest part of doing anything is starting. It is so easy to think, “Oh, I’ll do it later, I’ve got loads of time”. But you know what happens. Your partner calls or your mates are going out or your children wake up or you remember that other thing you needed to do…

The best time is now

The best time to do anything, especially art, is now, because if you’re thinking about it, it needs to come out.

Think of your creativity as the steam in a steam engine. The things you experience in your life are the fuel or coal being shovelled into your furnace, and this drives you, but it frequently builds to such pressure that it needs to be released. That’s the whistle you hear on the old steam trains flying by now and then, but for you that’s your best work, bursting out of you and expressing itself.

Now what happens if you ignore this? The pressure builds to the point where the boiler begins to crack and things breakdown. Let this happen too many times and the engine becomes sluggish and inefficient. See, more frequent releases of your creative steam keeps your engine streamlined, sleek and bombing down the tracks, no problem. And that is what you want to be, a streamline locomotive.

The more you get used to doing, rather than delaying, the easier it becomes. The easier it becomes, the more productive you will become. The more productive you become, the more experienced you will be. The more experienced you are, the better your art will be.

Really though, all of this is obvious. But we need to consider how we spend our time because this elusive force that tries to keep us from our art will get the better of us if we’re not careful.

So go and start your thing now. You owe it to yourself. You owe it to your future self! We only have so much time and it’s ticking.

I’ve created a few workbooks that you can put your ideas in wherever you are. So if you are away from your workspace you can still let out a bit of that inspiration, because as I said, the time is now and now is the best time!

In fact, let that be our mantra, “The time is now and now is the best time”. Yeah, I like that…

“The time is now and now is the best time”.
“The time is now and now is the best time”.
“The time is now and now is the best time”.

Remember it the next time you find yourself about to pass on your art or roll over for another hour in bed.

Thank you )

Thank you if you read down to here. You are very much appreciated :)

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