I opened up the Travel & Leisure magazine and just started ripping.

Tearing out glossy pages at random, letting my hands choose relevance without judging or thinking or deciding what each page would be used for.

Then, removing the edges of each piece until it emerged.

The word, the phrase, the tiny pig figurine. Whatever showed up.

Dropping them onto a non-sequential journal page. Securing them with PVC.

Wondering why they fell in that way, how could they be connected, does this make sense.

Refusing to let the opinion of the bitch have any power.

Scribbling with the first pastel that came to my fingers.

Rubbing the streaks, smearing the purple across the substrate, noticing how it caught in the groves of my fingertip, piling pigment at the edge of the page.

Words appeared, numbers, colors of different thickness.

More smearing. More rubbing.

Drawing matte across the surface to seal, to close, to end the five minutes of spilling creation across a page.

I created tonight not for the finish.

I created in remembrance.

Remembrance of when she shows up.

She shows up in the mess.

The surrender. The fellowship of paint and canvas, keyboard and bytes, fingers and the peppermint scented skin of our lover’s back.

That is where Art lives.

Art is not always findable. She is not guaranteed. She is not certain.

She is precious but infinite, rare but abundant, unknowable but everywhere.

She cannot be forced. Only … seduced. Tempted to come out and play.

That is the great secret. Like they said, our only job as writers, artist, inventors, entrepreneurs, fanciful creators of what did not exist before … is to show up.

To show up to play. To worship.

To give up our pride, our know-it-all, the bitch in our heads, the fear that someone will laugh or boo or kill us with a glance from the last row in the seminar hall.

Our job is to show up. To do the work.

And to let her do hers.

–

Do you find it hard to have faith that creation, that art, will show up in your work? Do you have days, weeks, months, when you just want to give up?

How do you keep the faith?

I’d love to hear from you below!

And – be sure to get your copy of the free no-opt-in pdf download manifesto How to Live Your Truth

The diagnosis of osteoarthritis in the middle knuckle of my right ring finger – stiff, swollen – necessitating aleve and rest and splint and ice and the sticking of my flesh with needles.

I couldn’t type. Couldn’t write. Was stuck with videos and hunt & peck and voice recognition technology that couldn’t keep up with my chewing of words and streaming of consciousness.

Then, weeks later, when I finally sat down to write …

I didn’t have the right pen.

I didn’t have the perfect unlined square sketchbook with a red cover and a smooth ribbon to mark my page and a stretchy loop to keep it all perfect inside my backpack.

The laptop was too heavy.

My back hurt. I didn’t get enough sleep. I needed a snack. There was too much light. It was too noisy. That other thing has a deadline. I didn’t feel like it.

What’s coming out isn’t good.

This stuff is depressing. Simplistic. Been said before.

What’s the point. I’m doomed.

Etc.

So at 7:39 this morning I pulled the zipcar into the parking lot of Safeway and went inside to buy anything to write on.

One of those generic composition books with a place for your class schedule and the tables to convert square yards and cubic feet.

Pens. Whatever they had in stock. In black and blue and red and purple.

And I decided to write in here, this imperfect journal with a childish purple pen, every day for the month of February.

Twenty-eight days.

I write here to get back into practice.

To not judge.

To seduce the resistance.

To find my voice which apparently was squished in between sofa cushions or fell behind the headboard or misfiled itself in the banker’s box labeled “stuff to be organized later.”

I write for twenty-eight days to remember how.

Think you’re not in a creative industry?

Think again.

In this video I share my realizations from the polarizing manifesto “Ignore Everybody: And 39 Other Keys to Creativity” by Hugh MacLeod (@GapingVoid).