As a person who continuouslyĀ struggles to get the balance right between family, work and creativity, reading this post helped to get some more motivation to just get on with it:
Organization: Do Hard Things
Everybody has projectsĀ in their life that they donāt want to tackle. Hard things.
Maybe thereās a partĀ of your yard thatās overgrown with weeds, and it just gets worse and worse and worse every week.
Maybe your garageĀ is overloaded with junk you donāt use, donāt want, and donāt even dare look at because itās too depressing.
Maybe thereās a relationshipĀ in your life thatās gone south and it seems unfixable.
I call thingsĀ like these āthe swamp.ā The swamp is any part of your life that you donāt dare touch because it just seems overwhelming. Because itās too hard.
There are two waysĀ to handle the swamp.
- You can ignore it forever.
- You can go through it to the other side.
Those areĀ the only two ways Iāve ever found for dealing with the swamp. Ignoring the swamp is easy. Going through it is hard.
But doing hard thingsĀ builds character. (Itās much easier to say this when you are not about to enter the swamp. But itās also true, so it bears saying.)
Here areĀ a few other things that are also true:
- The swamp doesnāt go away by itself.
- In fact, the longer you ignore the swamp, the worse it gets.
- The only way to go through the swamp is to go through the swamp. You canāt go around.
- The first time you go into the swamp is the scariest.
- The swamp is never quite as terrible as it seems.
- There is no feeling as wonderful as coming out on the other side of the swamp.
This is a short columnĀ because thereās really not much to say about the swamp. You can either hide from it or you can go through it to freedom. You get to choose.
Do hard things. The characters you write fiction about are in the business of doing hard things. The more hard things you do, the better youāll be able to tell their story.
Homework
- What is the swamp in your life, right now?
- If you decided to go through the swamp, how long would it take?
- How would you feel when you came out the other side?
Great article! ā¤
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