I’ve spent the past few years removing a ton of external inputs like podcasts, to give myself some space to breathe, sit with silence and think thoughts – rather than constantly stuff my head with voices.

I think the experiment had the desired effect but I’m now taking a less hard-line approach (to hopefully everything) and occasionally letting new things in. So when IINRL Friend Carmen mentioned the (NOT) A Real Artist podcast, I decided to give it a listen.

I have no absolutely pretensions of being an artist, but I do love to make things – and a few lines from from Episode 2: Is Inspiration a Myth? were definitely what I need reminding of on an almost constant basis.

+ To begin, begin.

+ You can’t think yourself to brilliance. Don’t take that as me thinking that thinking doesn’t have a place, because I love thinking, I do a lot of thinking, but I feel like it’s a dialogue between thinking and doing. And I say this fully transparent as a person who used to only think, and I used to only like kind of dream about what I was going to do and I would never do it and it’s a very stagnant place, it doesn’t actually change. Whereas if you start doing, then it informs your thinking and then your thinking changes, or it doesn’t necessarily change, but it adds to it and you come to more conclusions and then you have those feelings or flashes of brilliance, like “oh, I never thought about that!”, but it does occur, at least not as quickly, or not at all when you’re just thinking.”

+ Which is extremely seductive by the way, to just think or plan, it’s so comfortable and you really think you’re doing something.

Ahhhh – the thinking and planning. So many times I’ve thought about and planned a project for months or years – and when I eventually get to execution, I find that often what I’d envisaged isn’t really workable. And I would have greatly benefitted from having hands on much earlier in the process. It really is about the dialogue between thinking and doing. I like that description a lot.

As is the way with these things, the best bit is knowing that it is not just me. I’m thinking to make a list (of course) of the many projects bouncing in my head and work out what a small first “doing” step would be for each. And, well, do them.