to start
You start something new. Your fingertips twitch, fueled by the excitement to make reality what you’ve been simmering in the back of your mind for the past few days. The idea is so clear that you can see the finish line from the start, and you draw a straight line from here to there.
You start to work right away and, in a swift absentminded motion, push your last project aside. “This time it will be different”, you say to yourself, while the other project looks at you side-eyed.
But after the initial rush wanes, you notice the animations don’t feel right, the app breaks more than it works, the color palette is boring, and the decisions you postponed come back to bite you in the ass.
To make something is, in some cases, trivial. But making something good is a completely different thing by orders of magnitude. It requires trying, getting it wrong, and trying again.
You’re faced with a dead stop in the road; you’re standing at the entrance of Mirkwood forest while multiple pairs of bright red eyes stare at you from the impenetrable dense foliage. The roads that diverge ahead don’t offer much solace: one is barely a road, more of a patch of grass lightly trailed; the other heads the wrong way. You ponder and wonder how you got here, maybe at some point you took the wrong turn? The next steps look daunting, more so as the memory of the journey that got you here is still fresh.
“I’ll wait for inspiration to come” you say to yourself, with a nagging feeling that the sands of time might wear away what now consumes you, and leave only a distant memory, buried amongst others in your graveyard of unfinished projects.
“Fuck it, let’s ship it”, you say with invented conviction. “It’s a win-win”, you continue. Either you get feedback and the path ahead looks less daunting and more clear; or it gets ignored and you’re happy you cut your losses on this fruitless pursuit; or it’s a smashing hit and it gets traction even in this messy unfinished state.
Slop. That’s how it’s summoned. That decisive moment when you’re too invested to quit, but too weary and unwilling to do the grunt work.
hard middle
But you can go on, relentless in your pursuit. There’s no easy way through: once the obvious is done, the non-obvious remains.
Progress is measured differently here. Sometimes it is working with full awareness that it’s a dead end, but with the hope the journey might yield some fruit; is knowledge gained rather than getting close to the goal.
Research is another option. It’s a tricky thing because researching means the answer you are looking for might be inside that book; or not. There are more books, videos and people to talk to than what anyone has time for, so picking one It’s a zero sum game. It’s important you stay vigilant too, researching might distract you from finishing.
Or wait. Simmering in the backroom of your mind while you divert your attention to other matters. I believe this to be one of the most difficult things, because the most ambitious people have the hardest time releasing their grasp on the problem. But going over the same path might lead you to repeat erroneous patterns out of habit. So you have to really think about not thinking about it.
Difficulty waits around in every corner. This is creativity at its rawest. This is the quitting part.
to care
But persisting is a wonderful feeling. It’s to give in to the experience of life, to be imbued in it, let it be the centerpiece of your thoughts.
Obsess about how it looks, feels, reads. How clear or concise it is. The color, texture or material. Iterating over and over and over again. Honing it like a knife against a whetstone. You can change a word, or a color, or both, or none. But each one that is, carries the weight of all the ones left behind that weren’t; necessary sacrifices to reveal what ended up being.
It costs a piece of yourself. There’s no creation without struggle, and it draws a wisp of your soul, imperceptible at any moment, until you step back and see how much of yourself you’ve given. It’s what it takes to breathe life into it. It will be forever woven in what it is.
To care gives you a pair of lenses to view life through. It makes you appreciate other’s creations, feel their effort, sense the life steaming from them and discern the piece of soul its creator embedded in it. You can now appreciate the gift from this stranger. The gift of caring.