Listen for the Muse…she whispers

In his NY studio the filmmaker Casey Neistat runs a perpetual loop of a Cheetah running down a Gazelle. Casey is the hunted. If he stops or slows the Cheetah will have him. His mantra ‘Do More Work’ is tattooed on his forearm as a constant reminder of the Cheetah situation.

The writer Steven Pressfield discusses his never ending battle with what he labels resistance. Writing is overcoming inertia. Everyday the urge is not to write. There are always compelling reasons not to pen a page, but Pressfield runs a full court press pulling out all the stops until he is sitting in front of a whirring typewriter.

Too many of us fear standing in the sunlight and facing the void within. We play on our phones, listen to music, fidget or favor more serious means of escapism like alcohol or drugs.

There’s no permanent escape. You can go through the motions in a job you hate and live a rented life for awhile, but avoidance begets unhappiness. You got to do your work. That work of love.

Eventually you have to plunge the void. In the void we find our work. This is the work of the flow state where time distorts, dinners pass uneaten and achievements beyond our rationale intellect are birthed.

When we work on that thing we feel in our bones we allow ourselves an opportunity to hear the whispering voice of the Muse. We become a channel through which the Muse delivers a creation into the material realm. Those somethings that are somehow greater than the sum-total of our materiality. We do that which we perceive we are not capable of doing. Happiness and success are by-products of doing that work.

Between then and now you gotta start out with Herzog and push that Yacht over the Mountain. You gotta get on with the business of finding and doing your work.

Keep running. Never stop. The Cheetah searches your building while you sleep. In the morning she’s prowling the first corner ready to pounce.

Know that no matter how magnificent our efforts today tomorrow morning we all awaken to the crushing pressure of the Demiurge. The reasonable thing to do is to give up, or to take a knee, but start being unreasonable. Your happiness depends on it.

If we hustle, if we grind, if we gain yards the Muse may notice us. She smiles on the coal miner and despises the day dreamer. Whether you’ll become a writer, a painter, the CEO of your start-up or a dancer isn’t governed by a lucky break in an x-factor audition or some magical overnight success event. It’s determined by your ability to overcome the resistance embedded in every moment and throw every fiber of your being into clocking hours doing your work.

The clock is ticking.

Get to work.