loving the process

Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists generally. There is, has been, and will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It’s made up of all those who’ve consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination. It may include doctors, teachers, gardeners – and I could list a hundred

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Remember, people are often drawn to things that are done imperfectly. Whether it’s art, movies, or books, people tend to talk more about the flawed things that get stuck in their heads than they do the obvious, perfect things.

As Malcolm Gladwell says, “You want an aftertaste, and that comes from not everything being perfectly blended together.”

He offers a thought experiment: what if the brief to design a new train connection was given to Disney instead of railway engineers? The latter immediately focuses on speed, time, distance and capacity. With Disney, the goal wouldn’t be to shave minutes off the journey. They may ask a different question: “How do we make the train journey so... See more

the metrics, outward success, markers of “making it”, numbers, likes, popularity, visibility, praise or criticism or being ignored, awards, highlights, or trajectory that might come from what we make don’t matter much if we aren’t enjoying the process of making what we make.

So much of getting good at anything is just pure labor: figuring out how to try and then offering up the hours...

...Pleople always assume I'm interested in the end result-the wonderful thing they've made-when what I'm really interested in is the process. How did you get this way and why? I'm curious about the ugliness of trying, the years and years... See more

This is, for many of us, the dream: unfettered commitment to externalizing our innards without concern for any gaze but our own. Reclaiming one’s time, you could say. But it requires nothing short of a battle.