Give Your Creativity A Finish Line

It’ll help you tomorrow

I’ve never had a traditional 9-to-5, at least not in the corporate sense. The only time that I adhere to the 5pm cut off time is whenever I’m struggling with my creativity. I find it helpful to give my creativity a finish line because the alternative is to keep torturing us both even as the sun sets and nothing about that sounds fun.

The idea of being a tortured artist for our craft removes so much of reality from that narrative. Some of us (myself included) have hard days with our creativity that are a result of our mental health. For instance, this morning when I woke up I was slow. I was dragging my feet and inching through each task the way I do when my mind is overwhelmed and my body notices it first. It doesn’t make me a worse creative or writer, it makes me a complicated, self-aware one.

There were moments at the beginning of my career when I would have slow days and force myself to work until I went to bed. I’d been conditioned to believe that as long as you sit by the computer your creativity will catch up at some point. Or like the only way to win time off was to have something productive to show for my day.

Today, I got through the list of things that needed to get done — things that were more tactical and required little inspirational creativity from my part…