I have always been what I call a waiter-saver.
For a majority of my life, I would save my favorite treat for later.
When I got a bag of airheads, I would eat all but the blue (my favorite kind) and stick them in my drawer. I thought it would be a good idea to save them for a perfect moment in the sometime distant future. A couple of months would go by and I would open the drawer to find something I needed. My blue airheads would be there and I would remember them only when it was too old to eat. Or I would open the drawer and find out that one of my older brothers had eaten them all.
Don't worry, this is not a blog post that is going to talk about my weird candy hoarding habits, I promise there is a point! I started to notice how the waiter-saver crisis started trickling down into the things I did creatively. I began to see how many others were doing the same, waiting for a better time in their creative life.
When I started thinking about writing, I thought I would do it when I got the perfect journal.
I would buy my favorite kind of pen, brew my coffee in my cat mug and be at my spot by the window. I visualized, fantasied about it and ended up never actually writing that entire year. I saved that dream like I saved the candy, it sat in a drawer waiting for the perfect opportunity.
Let’s get real, life is not filled with every day perfect moments to do something.
Life is life, things get created, art happens when situations are not necessarily ideal. I create when I have pig mud dried on my pants or when my cat sits on my back while I am trying to work. I progress when my rug isn’t so perfectly vacuumed the way I like. Why? Because that is when I am doing, creating.
I realized this year I could keep waiting, waiting for my life to calm down and do the things that I wanted. Then it occurred to me, life never calms down. It never has a pause in the storm, a moment where it will be absolutely perfect. If I kept going on waiting, I would never do what I wanted.
What are you waiting for? What haven't you done or saved away in life like my blue airheads that could go stale?
There are no excuses. I would tell myself I was too busy this week, it was not the right time to start painting. Then I would catch myself on my phone for a good fifteen minutes, I had time! You can make the time to do the things you love and want to try, even if it is just five minutes.
I started small, a simple daily writing prompt that I found on Pinterest. Every day, no matter what is going on I write. I'll miss a day time to time but it soon becomes a habit. A choice that I have made because it was something I wanted to do.
Pull the candy out of the drawer and eat it, learn how to sew today, start some seeds in a pot, do the things you have been wanting to do. There will never be a perfect time to learn embroidery, but if you just started today even in the mindset where will you be in 2019?
Food (or blue airheads) for thought,
