do the thing.
I make a lot of shit.
That's not a term I'm using colloquially. I'm not depicting my productivity. Instead, it's an apt description of my production quality. It's the technical term for the mountain of absolute garbage my creative process leaves in its wake.
I'm a maker. I make things. It's what I am because it's what I do. I'm not concerned with the outputs. With excellence or perfection. With class or caliber. I only care about the practice. About processes. About methods and consistency.
I made a deal with myself. A contract between the world and me. I show up everyday and I make something. It doesn't need to be great. It doesn't need to be good. It doesn't even need to be ok. It just needs to be.
I'm a maker because I make things. It's just the thing I do.
Have you heard the story about how Adam Duritz became a songwriter?
In a college class he wasn't paying attention to, he got an idea. He could hear the lyrics and the melody. He felt pretty sure that, given the chance, he could figure out how it goes. After class he locked himself in a room with a piano. Skipped the rest of his classes. And by the end of the day, he had it finished.
He still remembers it. He says it's not particularly good. He says that a song like that would only take him 10 minutes to write these days. But, it didn't matter. He wrote a song. He was a songwriter. He did the thing and that's what he became.
That's the trick. The secret. The unmagical, magic of the whole affair.
Show up. Do the thing. Repeat the steps. Everyday.
"We don’t ship the work because we’re creative," Seth Godin says, "we’re creative because we ship the work."
P.S. - I’m still working on moving my collages from my old shop to my new shop. It’s a one at time, kind of slog. So I decided to offer a discount for items in my old shop in the hopes that I’ll have less to move. Use discount code MOVEOUT for 25% off everything in my old shop.
P.P.S. - ICAD - Day 326-328 - all the collages featured in this post are available for purchase here.
P.P.P.S - Made a video of my paid subscribers that inspired this post. You can find it here.
Está claro, lo más importante es hacer el trabajo cada día. ¡Bien!
Needed to hear that this week! Sometimes it is hard to keep showing up, but I know it is always the right thing to do.