I Have 14 Minutes and I’m Going to Use Them To Write This

Erik Kostov
Sep 2, 2018 · 2 min read

It’s almost 8pm. 7:46 to be exact. I have 14 minutes. The phone rang. Dang.

:50. 10 minutes lef— Dang. :51. Okay. 9 minutes left.

Dad called. Meatballs for dinner. Okay. Cat ran away mid-call. Caught it. Now it’s home. Checked the fridge. Nothing to eat. Meatballs, right.

Spent 50+ minutes writing down ideas on a philosophical essay about creative people and how the standard career path doesn’t work for them.

Now we’re here. :52. 8 minutes left.

All I wanted to say was that creative people don’t fit the norms of society because society is built on norms and creative people by definition are those who (:53) break the norms.

Laptop burning as I write this. 6 minutes left. Don’t know what to say so that it sounds coherent, is interesting and I can make a clear point in 3 minutes or less (so that I can edit it).

Think, damnit.

I’m waiting for the clock to move to :55 so I can have something to write. I’m glancing at it. There. It changed. I now have less than 5 minutes. 7 glances in a row and now I have even less time than I started the sentence off with.

Maybe creativity should be left alone. Maybe everyone should be left alone. (:56. 4 minutes.) Maybe we shouldn’t judge. Maybe we shouldn’t be quick to give advice. Maybe things are way more complicated than we give them credit for…

Yeah, maybe…

3 minutes left on the clock. I say this as the numbers switch from the curvy 6 to the jagged 7 and I’m off to edit this.

I don’t know if I have a point for you. But the point for me is that things are more complicated than I thought. I will humble myself. It’s a great thing to try and do. I learned it in my old street dance days. But that’s for another time.

Thank you for reading. I hope your day is filled with flowers and small dogs that lick you and bark cutely.