Sometimes it seems that work consumes all of your creativity, and sometimes you have to admit that you’re just lying to yourself.
There are days when I say to myself “I just don’t have any good ideas” or “Nobody wants to read this drivel.” Those are the days my internal editor is really letting me have it. “You’re just not really good enough,” he says. “You’ll never amount to anything as a writer.”
That internal editor’s voice, he’s real nasty. And he doesn’t let up. Not ever.
I’ve got to learn to stifle the editor stomping around in my lizard brain, that chunk of my fight or flight chunk of my brain (with the emphasis on flight).
The fact is that I am good enough. I’m going to be 38 in February–pushing 40–and it’s time to bring some focus back to my personal creative work. I say personal creative work because I have a lot of leeway to be creative in my career, but I don’t want that daily grind to be my excuse for stopping when I get home. I did that for too long when I worked in journalism.
“But I’ve been writing all day. I don’t have anything left in me.”
Yep, there he was all along, the editor screaming from my lizard brain. Just shut up in there!
I have a lot of priorities to get in order. The things I’m trying to juggle are family, career, getting to the gym, reading more, and finding time to be creative. Along with all of that are the typical workaday responsibilities. Housecleaning. Cooking. Ferrying kids here and there.
So many people are able to do all of that and have the time to change the world. Look at the president’s schedule. Look at everything Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have been able to accomplish. Look back to Einstein and Ghandi all of the other people now known by only one name (I guess you’ve made it when you’re known by one name). All of them, everyone, has 24 hours in a day the same as me.
I have time to change the world, too. I just have to make that commitment and I am ready.