You realize that whatever your virtues, you’re not exactly bringing about world peace or writing the great American novel here. You have a job that you like reasonably well, and there are moments when it’s exciting, almost inspiring to do what you do. Still, those moments are few and far between lately, and you’ve felt for a while that you need something else.
It’s always been fascinating to make something work, for some reason that you can’t put your finger on. Too, it’s always come pretty easily, seeing how things fit together and making them work a little better. Tweaking them, really. What doesn’t come as easily is creating the thing in the first place. So naturally, that’s what you want to do. The more difficult part always seems more important.
So you start with a blank page, or canvas, or mind, and stare at it for a while. Turn it around and start again, and finally begin, in one corner, tentatively. Close enough to the edge that you could call it a doodle if you wanted, tear it off and pretend it never happened.
And then something happens, something you hoped for but didn’t really expect. That corner grows a little bit, spreads out to become the center of something else. It’s not perfect, but it’s something new and after all, the tweaking was always the easy part, the unimportant part, so it can be done later. For now, you’re just playing with it, seeing where it takes you, wondering what it will look, feel, taste like when it’s done. Wondering if you’ll even know when it’s done.
Abruptly almost, you find that it’s done, and then you have to decide what it is. It’s neither what you had in mind when you started, nor when you were halfway done with it. Still, it’s different and it’s new, at least for you, and maybe it’s not time to decide what it is just yet after all.
