It’s a theme I’ve noticed myself saying more and more often lately so I figured I’d should write it down.
Usually it’s triggered by somebody asking me about output or pressing publish or where I find time to do some of the things I find the time to do.
“I would be doing it anyway, I’m just figuring out ways to share it since it’s already happening.”
Even this note.
I was a guest on a forthcoming podcast, which is not my normal/comfortable space, but I like the host and am trusting enough of him to know I’ll enjoy any conversation we have.
If he’d just text me and said “Do you have half an hour?” I’d have said yes.
So if he wants to “make some content,” and inevitably, since I know we’ll get some chat time at the margins, I said yes because… I would do it anyway.
What I do with it becomes a secondary question.
Our recording spawned this post for starters. It’s not an essay. It’s also not a political campaign or a spoken word album (although, maybe it could be some slam poetry?).
There’s a dark side of this, too. If I feel like I have to make content, or if I feel like he needs to make content and is just leveraging me to make content, I have to feel that. I have to sense it. It’s a sensibility thing.
Because sensibility is taste.
You want to have good taste in what you would just do anyway.
You want to avoid having bad taste in what you would just do anyway - and there are much nastier words for that, but take the reminder.
We’re surrounded by inspiration. The muses are out there doing their thing. All we have to do is notice, and then choose, creatively, to do something with it, that we’d actually be inclined to just do anyway.
Life is a blank page. Fill it up. Wrinkle the edges. Throw a sheet away and get a new one. You don’t have to sell it, or make a big deal out of - you just have to do it.
