For Pete’s Sake, Just Create

If not you, who?

A little over a year ago I started a podcast and blog. I wrote about how I believe adults need to rediscover the power of play and let go of the rigid structures that don’t serve them. To get in touch with music, art, their bodies, nature, plants, and each other as a way of reconnecting with what makes us human.

I was filled with excitement about the idea, the message, and the potential of the brand. I interviewed all kinds of different people with different backgrounds and I covered many different ideas.

It was meaningful, enjoyable, and maybe most importantly, it was a creative outlet.

But after doing it for about seven months, it slowly started to feel like I was just trying to just put on a show.

People weren’t engaging with the content, work was getting busier, I felt like I had nothing to offer, and the air slowly started leaking out of my creative balloon.

I was working a 9–5 I didn’t enjoy, wasn’t living the most healthy life, I felt rigid mentally, and didn’t have very strong relationships.

I didn’t want to be a hypocrite so I stopped the podcast, stopped the writing, and stopped creating.

I convinced myself that one day, once I was finally living the life I wanted to live, that then, and only then, would I start it up again.

But lately, I’ve been sick and tired of it. All this waiting until this or until that.

Its like I had this inner feeling that everybody was watching every move I made, judging me as harshly as I judged myself.

And with that, the podcast and blog became less about creating and more about trying to prove myself.

But in the great words of the late David Foster Wallace:

You’ll stop worrying so much about what people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.

We’ve all heard it before, but nobody cares about you as much as you, and if you want something in your life, its up to you to make it happen.

The past couple months have been a time of much reflection, and trying to get my sh*t together.

I’ve decided to go sober until the end of October (at least) to bring some order to my mind — that means no alcohol or weed — I started therapy, and I plan to begin volunteering in the community.

And while I know that I have a long way to go, I feel like I am slowly moving in a meaningful and fulfilling direction.

Nobody has it figured out

My concern before was that I didn’t feel I knew enough, hadn’t experienced enough, and couldn’t provide enough value to create anything worthwhile.

But the truth of it all is that ultimately nobody knows enough.

I talked about this in my last post, but the fact is that all of us are on this same spinning sphere in space. And to wait until you know enough before creating, before going after something, or before living the life you want to live, well that means that you’re going to be waiting for awhile.

Some make tons of money, become famous, travel the world, and achieve all of their dreams. Others have faith and belief that there is something greater, a God to follow, an ideal to strive towards, something to hope for.

But at the end of the day, we are all just wading through the waters of uncertainty, doing our best to make sense of it all, to bring order to the chaos.

Just create for pete’s sake. If its something you want, your soul wants, if its something you feel you need to do, who really cares how good or professional it is, or how well it is received?

If you want to make stuff, just make stuff, scratch that itch. We all have it. We all deserve to be creators.

Regardless of how right or wrong it is, by doing our part and putting creations out there into the world, we are putting a part of ourselves out into the world.

Create for creations sake, that’s the only way sh*t gets done anyway.