It’s an amazing thing when you see for yourself how simple ‘experiential’ changes in your creative life can alter the course of your life. And at the same time, you face a formidable enemy which is as cunning as you are creative. In fact, Resistance is cunning because it gets its ideas from… You.
I ask myself if the war against resistance will ever be won, and I am rewarded by an answer that is truly terrifying: I will never win the war, but perhaps I can win every battle until I die. My reasoning is that Resistance is always going to wage war against me. It will always find a way to keep me from painting, drawing, taking a photograph, rehearsing, writing, etc. Always.
There will never be a time when it is not present. The only way to keep it away is to do the work. I know that for Resistance not to be there on my shoulder, I must get up every day and face the fields of empty canvases, blank template sequences in the computer, and the ‘Create Story’ link in Medium… And begin. Work. Push, draw, play. Create!
There will never be a time when I will feel a sense of satisfaction at having not worked on something that embodies my creative ‘self’. Whenever I entertain this idea of rest, or support, excuses, the enemy has won the battle. It has, in its deviously perverse way, used my own sense of being creative, against me!
So, in the end, what can I do about it? what can YOU do about it? Well, it would be easy to say, “Sit there and do your work, man!” But you would still be facing an empty page, a blank canvas, a template project from which nothing will happen. It’s easy enough to read about Resistance, recognize it, and another entirely to face it. This is in and of itself, resistance talking to us.
So I will offer you my insight into the battles I have won (and sadly lost). I will detail them out as best I can in these entries. They are reminders for me, and hopefully insights for you to beat the enemy at its own game. You may never win the war, OK? And that is OK. You will have a million battles to fight, and hopefully, will be so armed to win them all. That will feel like you are winning the war. And that is important.
