During art school I felt my way through everything.
Schedules and regiment and discipline were something to be avoided because I never knew what I would feel like when it came time to do whatever was on my schedule.
These days I am so disciplined and calculated. I use logic more than imagination. I leave at 10pm instead of 1am because I don’t feel consumed and controlled by the passion of creativity.
To put it in the words of Scott Adams, I’ve become more of a simplifier than an optimizer.
I look to clean things up and streamline them. I walk through life with more of a minimalist approach. I try to simplify them to make them more straightforward.
Whereas in college I was more of an optimizer. I wanted to squeeze out the juice of life from every single moment of my day. I drank a ton of energy drinks, listened to fast paced music, went to the top of parking garages a lot, and would spend 2 hours trying to get to an emotional state of passion before ever working on the project in front of me.
But now I can get stuff done.
A calendar doesn’t scare me. Spreadsheets no longer represent tyranny but instead are my friend! Seriously. You can organize huge amounts of information with spreadsheets.
I wear a button down shirt most days, and I report directly to the president and CEO of a national franchise.
Instead of staying up late to keep doing creative work, I now get myself in bed by 10 every night so I can wake up at 5:30 to write.
In the past I was controlled by my creativity and inspiration. If inspiration decided to show up that day then I would cancel plans, stay up late, and get rid of anything stopping me from channeling that inspiration into something tangible.
These days creativity is no longer my master. Instead of begging and pleading for creativity to show up I now command him to show up whenever I am in need of his services.
Sometimes Inspiration shows up too, and she shows up way more often now than she used to.
So in many ways I mourn the days when inspiration and creativity were my masters. Those days seemed so rich and full of passion. But now that I reflect on things I realize that I am much happier now that creativity is part of the staff and not the master of the house.