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LM: #280: Violently creative
I’m a hypocrite.
I hold back in my writing. I hear in my mind the objections of readers about why they can’t commit fully and passionately to a creative life. Their day jobs and kids and sacred evenings watching TV. And I fool myself into thinking I’m writing for them.
Meanwhile, I’ve repeatedly done crazy and weird things to make creativity central to my existence. I’ve spent money originally meant for retirement, turned down lucrative and prestigious job offers, and moved to another country and started from scratch a new life in a new language.
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And I’m still such I pussy I think to myself, “Nah, I can’t write that. Norm McNormie can’t dream of taking a pay cut from his $250,000-a-year job.”
Sadly, I’ve been trying to be reasonable so long I can hardly access the passion with which I once could have told you how I really felt about the creative life to end up where I am.
And it bothers me there are others who might live more creatively if only I spoke up and set an example.
For those readers, take my best relay of the faint message I can barely still hear from myself decades in the past.
Be violently creative.
Be passionate and uncompromising about the pursuit of your creativity and curiosity. Bang against and break through barriers that stand in your way and guardrails trying to guide you into what’s considered normal, socially acceptable, or even safe or healthy.
Quit your job. Spend your savings. Abandon your family. Live in the forest. Move to a foreign land. Establish an entirely new identity and disappear from anything you’ve ever known. If the image of your lifeless body face-down in a gutter in some alleyway doesn’t seem as bad as you think it should, so long as you got there by giving your creativity a chance, by all means send yourself down the path you fear might lead you there.
If you’re meant to live the creative life, nothing will stand in your way. The “reasons” of the normal are mere excuses.
This is life. Not a dress rehearsal. Your one chance.
Do things and make sacrifices in the pursuit of your creativity that other people think are crazy, weird, even sick.
Maybe others will think you’re a loser. Maybe you’ll genuinely ruin your life. But at least you gave that gnawing little voice a chance to speak up.
Aphorism: “Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” ―Gustav Flaubert
Book: Eat, Pray, Love (Amazon) is Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir of self-exploration.
Best,
David
P.S. If you have no idea how to get to there from here, Surround and Conquer.
