Keep Creating
“[...] many of them will fail, and some of them might succeed, but I will always be safe from the random hurricanes of outcome as long as I never forget where I rightfully live.”
I burst into tears when I reached the part in the talk where Elizabeth Gilbert uttered those words in the above quote. I was re-watching some talks on TED and one of them is Gilbert’s Success, failure and the drive to keep creating. I love her book Big Magic (my book notes).
For Gilbert, her home has always been writing. She says:
Your home is whatever in this world you love more than you love yourself. So that might be creativity, it might be family, it might be invention, adventure, faith, service, it might be raising corgis, I don’t know, your home is that thing to which you can dedicate your energies with such singular devotion that the ultimate results become inconsequential.
So, it is writing for her. What is mine? I thought writing was for me too. I’ve had this blog since 2005—that’s more than 15 years! I’ve not done anything noteworthy with my blog or become a published author or even a famous blogger, but I come back to it again and again. I keep returning ‘home’ and I keep writing for whatever writing means to me.
The ultimate results are inconsequential. I really don’t care about being known or if what I write about is profound or what others perceived it to be. I write for myself. If my writing happens to resonate with others—awesome! If not, I’ll keep going anyway.
Gilbert also says:
The only trick is that you’ve got to identify the best, worthiest thing that you love most, and then build your house right on top of it and don’t budge from it.
I’ll keep coming back to it—again and again and again. I will drudge through the drudgery (thank you, Joshua Fields Millburn! You’re my spirit animal). Keep going (thank you, Austin Kleon! Love all your books).
