Create

We’re 10 days into the New Year which means the vast majority of people have already broken their New Year’s resolutions. I’m just starting mine — which is to say I broke my resolution day 1 because I didn’t do anything.

Only now am I mustering the fortitude to act on the resolution which is really just a word. It’s a loaded word — more like state of being — but one which is not at rest but inherently always in motion.

CREATE.

This is the word that has been stuck in my craw for the last few weeks to the point that I finally allowed my brain to accept it and my lips to speak it to Tracy in a moment of clarity regarding what I wanted from this year.

It’s a terrible resolution in a lot of ways because it’s nebulous at best and impossible to quantify and track. The worst part is I don’t even know exactly what I mean when I say it. I don’t know what I want to create, how I want to do it, or what this will end up looking like if I somehow get my act together and stop thinking and start doing.

But I guess that is kind of the point.

I’ve always enjoyed the process of being creative, or rather of seeing the output of expression that comes from taking a blank slate and making it something different. This has always been weird to me because my artistic abilities are capped at being able to draw passable block letters for our kids’ chalkboards on their first day of school pictures. I can be impatient and I’m too much of a realist to appreciate “real” art.

But in thinking deeply about who I am and how I’m wired, I can unequivocally say that I feel most alive when I’m engaged creatively. At work, this has taken the form of working with entrepreneurs and playing a part in building Square 1 from its infancy. It’s why I’ve started a couple blogs, dabbled with a podcast and enjoy coaching — which is really just about taking a bunch of parts and figuring out how to combine them together in a way that makes them more valuable than they are individually.

As I list out these expressions of creativity I sense the memory of the joy of the final product or at least my memory of what each was. But truth be told, I don’t love the process of creating. I’m impatient and lazy and the king of all procrastinators. For years, my creative process has consisted of putting off whatever final project I need to accomplish until the last possible instant while putting together pieces in my head. Then, with one tidal wave of output, I hammer out a version and hit publish because goodness knows I don’t have the stomach to actually edit and perfect the thing.

These one draft wonders occasionally are decent and people will read them and react generously and say super nice things like “I loved your blog post” or “you should be a writer”. The adrenaline rush of putting one’s work out for the world to see is real — intoxicating and nerve-wracking and a whirlwind that makes me feel glad to feel the butterflies again which used to show up before big soccer games. The problem with creating is that doing it — not just thinking about doing it — requires commitment and practice and discipline which I’ve been unwilling to submit myself to with any regularity. To keep the sports analogy going, I love playing the creative “big game”, but I don’t love the hours of practice required along the way.

Which makes me ask myself the uncomfortable question — WHY? I’ve long said I enjoy writing but didn’t want to do it professionally because I “don’t want someone telling me what I have to write about”. As I examine this thought more critically — pulling back the layers of my own hubris — my lack of output is driven more by a combination of laziness + a sliver (or chunk) of self-doubt screaming “what if what you create isn’t good?” It’s never in all of creation been easier to create and distribute original work — and yet I’ve not been doing it with any regularity.

But what do I create? Do I focus on personal interests or write for professional development or create for myself only or figure out interesting things to share with the world?

Yes.

It’s all of these and the inevitable untapped ideas and mediums which I haven’t yet thought about. It’s all the fragments of narrative prose and physical goods and events to bring people together and conversations I’ve had 100 times in my head that need to see the light of day in their imperfection so they can grow and morph and, yes, die too. For there’s a lifespan for every living thing and even good things eventually come to an end.

But first one must be alive.

That’s my resolution — to create and give life to new ideas — and as a result feel more alive myself. Since the beginning of this post 6 more days have passed and we’re now 16 days into the new year. Time to get to work.