Universal Jer

All my life I’ve been a visionary. New ideas flow through me like the air I breathe. Where the rubber meets the road has always been the hard part. In the blog Jessica Mah Meets World, the blogger sets out a great first goal… finishing. Her point is that even if the project isn’t your masterpiece, the best thing to do is finish and then revise. How many people have 2/3 of a life’s work that is never finished? Why do we stall out?

I tend to get grand visions of ideas that overwhelm me. My mind starts to spin out all of the steps necessary to manifesting my vision and I start to get lazy. I start writing a book and then get sidetracked learning about how to publish it, before there’s anything to publish. I get sidetracked on facebook or reading other people’s ideas and end up whiling away the time I could otherwise be using to advance those ideas.

I also have a bad habit of trying to “fast-forward” my skills to the end point, while skipping the in between steps. When I hear a musician on stage it’s easy to believe that those notes flow out from some magic creative space. When I read a classic novel, I want to think that the words just dripped out of the pen in serendipitous fashion, with violin music in the background, and light streaming in illuminating the creative miracle being performed. When I watch professional sportsmen, it’s easy to forget the grueling day to day training they undergo and imagine that they naturally perform their feats of strength. Learning to be a musician wised me up to the tedious practice that hides behind all great performers. Each one spends hours and hours behind the scenes perfecting their respective crafts… Making sure of every note. Combing through the manuscript for a word out of place, or a sentence that could be better formed. Watching hours and hours of opposition pitchers to be able to focus on that little ball coming at 100 mph.

I also have a tendency to spread myself too thin. Currently, I’m working (in my mind) on a recording a new album, composing some songs, trying to get the band back together, writing a novel and a non-fiction book, creating three or four websites, working a full time job, and taking classes part time… oh and this blog!

As a Renaissance man with my feet firmly planted in the New Age, it’s hard for me to concede that I need to whittle down my interests and focus on one or two of the above tasks to accomplish any of them with the fullness each deserves. So I’m sure I’ll continue trying to multitask these grand schemes until one of them becomes so big I can no longer push it to the side. My first task is to Continue the projects I’ve already begun, in order that they may be Finished, and try to stop myself from creating more side roads I have no intention of traveling for long!

Tags: creative process, finishing, multitaskiing