You know your life is a little nutty when you pull out of the driveway and realize the Christmas tree is still attached to your car. Turns out it's been there for a couple days. Such is life with an infant.
But there's nothing better than the satisfaction you experience when you finish a project you care about. The work is out in the world! The project is done! The artists are thriving! The baby is sleeping! You feel fulfilled. Proud. Energized. Relieved. It's one of the most profound things you can experience as a creative person. It's something we all want to feel. It's also something that many artists struggle with -- how to finish a project they care about.
For many people, the creative process looks like:
You have an idea. You get excited about it. You go to the store, buy some art supplies, experience some momentum. You start your project and experience a hiccup. Maybe the material doesn't behave like you thought it would. Maybe you're missing some information.
You don't get the results you want immediately so you stop working on the project completely.
Your enthusiasm for the project wanes. It becomes harder to make time for it.
But then you have a new idea!
You think perhaps this is the idea that you should work on. Not the other one. This is the idea that will finally get you to sit down and WORK. It's the golden idea!
And the cycle starts all over again... sound familiar?
Here's the secret: If you struggle with following through on your ideas, you're getting stuck at the PLAY stage of the creative process.
The PLAY stage is dedicated to testing, experimenting, and learning. You might love to test out your ideas but when you experience a hiccup you pivot to a new idea instead of pushing through the challenge at hand and getting to the next stage of the process, which is FUEL. The Fuel stage is about seeking outward for information. This could be a class, an artist model, a coach, or a podcast that can help you move through the challenge and get to GENERATE (the stage where you make a bunch of stuff).
So, to finish something, the process looks more like this:
PLAY (test out the idea) >> FUEL (what info am I missing? get help) >> GENERATE (make a lot of shit) >> REFLECT (what's interesting here? take next steps)
