Grantblings

Creative Mondays #031 – Do it now.

One Sunday night, I was preparing the Creative Mondays post to go out the following morning and as I did I was thinking about the week ahead.  I would be traveling back east to work a short puppet job and, as such, I would be getting home late at night next Sunday.  I said to myself, “Self, you should probably set up the post to go out next week as well, then you won’t have to do it during the week when your Travel Panic* sets in.”

My body immediately rejected this offer.  I was exhausted.  Prepping the Creative Monday’s post was the last thing to do on a long to-do list for the day.  I had driven an hour out to Oxnard, recorded several wrestling promos, driven an hour back to my office where I prepped some things for the job I was going on.  Then I went on a long run, grabbed some dinner, came home and wrote my daily 600 words and wrote out checks for the bills and then, because I hadn’t slept well the night before, I was done.

My brain said, “What’s it going to take?  5 minutes?  You can do it.”

My body refused.

But, it really got me thinking about putting things off, especially creative pursuits.  We cannot put things off.  We have to strike while the iron’s hot.  Make hay while the sun shines!  And all other manner of sayings like that.  When it comes to creative work…DO IT NOW.

Real life is a major pain in the butt and loves to throw things in our way.  If we keep putting off being creative, we may wind up never being creative.

It’s hard and sometimes you have to push your self to do it.  Give yourself a kick in the ass because that story isn’t going to write itself if you keep putting it off.  That painting will never be painted, that dance never learned.  You’ve got to win the fight.  These days we are hardwired to sit and watch TV of plunk around on our phones or computers.  There are so many distractions and so many reasons why we shouldn’t create right now.  We have to kill those reasons and create.  If we don’t, our art won’t live.

As much as I shouldn’t say it, because I’m trying to build a great creative blog here, if you had time to read this entry, you had time to at least START some piece of creative work or continue work on something already created.

So, I want you to stop reading.  Well, after this next paragraph.  Stop reading.  Think about what, creatively, you could be doing right now.  Something easy.  Something simple, yet something that will get you just that much further down the patch towards your creative goals.  Once you have it in your head, I want you to get up and do it.

Don’t wait.  Do it now.

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How do you motivate yourself to ‘do it now’?  What tricks of the trade make you get your butt up and creating?  Share it with us in the comments below!  Have a great week!

*Travel Panic is something that sets in before I’m about to go on trip that I, myself, have booked the travel for.  Several days before I’m supposed to leave, my body puts itself in a constant state of “everything is going to go wrong.”  I believe it’s because, even though I double and triple check everything, I know that something is going to go wrong with the travel.  Nothing major ever has, but still the Travel Panic rears its ugly head.  Funnily enough, If someone else has booked the travel, say on a Puppet Up! Uncensored tour, I never have Travel Panic.  Just a peak into the messed up bundle of nerves that is my brain.