The below inter­view caught my eye. I sup­pose it did because of a pact I made with myself ear­lier this year. June 3^rd to be exact. I was on the plane head­ing back East and to what I knew was going to be a chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tion. My par­ents, both unwell, needed help. I am an “only child” so it was going to be tough.

I pre­pared myself men­tally on the plane. I asked myself what I could do to help keep me grounded and still feel­ing like me. “Write.” A voice told me to write every­day, no mat­ter what. “And, write a poem every­day, no mat­ter what.”

And that’s what I did. It was ther­a­peu­tic to show up to my nightly rit­ual, but a lit­tle tougher to show up to the poem. But, I did it. And, it helped as I swirled around with my par­ents in a mix of doc­tors, hos­pi­tals, social work­ers, psy­chi­a­trists, home care, nurses, care facil­i­ties, and angelic friends. Some­times it was one in the morn­ing, in com­plete exhaus­tion that I arrived at my journal.

Actu­ally, I’m sur­prised I ful­filled my pact. (Most of the poems are prob­a­bly crap, but, you know, what? Some of them are kind of good.)

But more impor­tantly, despite every­thing, is that I proved to myself that no mat­ter what, if we just show up, we can cre­ate. Even if we don’t feel like it.

It’s time for me to return to that dis­ci­pline. Want to join me? What do you think?

Cre­ativ­ity Is Hus­tle: Make Some­thing Every Day

“Doing some­thing start to fin­ish each day not only helps you get over the fear of start­ing a project, but also the fear of fin­ish­ing one,” explains Mike Winkel­man, an ani­ma­tor and VJ known as Beeple, and cre­ator of Fly­ing Lotus’s “Kill Your Cowork­ers” music video. On May 1, 2007, he decided he was going to com­plete an art project every day. He hasn’t missed a day since — he calls his projects “every­days.”

Read the rest of the arti­cle by: Kasia Cieplak-​Mayr von Baldegg