Cure for pain

If you consider what you do to be within the realm of the creative world and you DON’T find yourself crippled with mind-crushing insecurity, you’re probably not doing it right. That’s just how it is.

Art and writing and creativity – whatever that is – is subjective, which means it offers no good metric for success, and that means we rely on feedback, and when feedback doesn’t come it’s like the world has dropped from below us and we’re left scrambling to straighten our upturned confidence.

Today, I rediscovered a simple solution.

No phone. No e-mail. No Internet. No searching for confirmation. Nothing but sun. A cup of coffee. A walk. Some lunch. Maybe eggs Benedict. Some talking. Some friends. Some family.

Cut free from the grid and fire up the grill. Stand impressed, reminded; feedback doesn’t matter, life continues without it, and even an overcooked hamburger tastes better than whatever it was you were worried about in the morning.