Writing, Resistance and Your Deeper Calling

The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.” - Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

Today when I rose from the sheets, I made sure to get up quickly and start the day with the right momentum. The clock chimes 6:43 am. The sun still hasn't broken the horizon, pink hues can be seen as a deep gradient stretching across the infinite canvas overhead, slowly turning a deep topaz blue.

Pour some coffee to wake up the senses and then outside to greet the day. Weather, temperature, light, all things the body craves to better understand its surroundings. It's crisp outside, below zero. Frost clings to the ground and walls of the buildings like icing on a cake. The sound of ice cracking under foot in the early morning leaves one pondering in peace and serenity.

Back inside now as the cold freezes the tips of your toes and nose. "Hey Google, play some Spanish guitar" I chime, and soft melodic sound streams out from the device, warming the room around it. It's still dark inside, our only big window facing away from the rising sun, we see its light cast shadows across the cities landscape. I light a candle, place it next to me, put some more water in a pot, and turn on the heat. The first coffee is just to greet the day. The second cup, this one is to help get on track, to better navigate a chaotic mind. The fresh ground coffee blooms as the water hit it, rising slightly before deflating once again. The pungent aroma fills the small room we call home.

I boot up my laptop, switch off my phone, take a few deep breathes to centre myself and remember the reason I do this. By now, ideas are flowing too fast to imagine, too many to count, and not enough hands to write them all down. Focus Robert. This is just Resistance, calling your name in chaos. I breathe deeply once more, and then it begins.

I never know what is going to end up on the page when I begin. The process itself is one of self-discovery, as I begin, as if starting life anew, I unravel after each word more of myself until I disappear entirely in a state of flow. Time, ego, identity, desire, they melt away into nothingness, as I do. When I come out the other side, back to my senses, I find a page with ideas and words from places other than my own head, things I never knew were there, as if I was simply a vessel for the energy form of ideas themselves, exploding out of me.

I save my work, shut down my laptop, and breathe again. I do not care what I wrote, just that I sat down and did it. I put in my time today, I made my bed with the demons of work and now my passage has been paid. For today anyway. Tomorrow it all starts again, the same beginning, each day, one after another, but always a different ending. This is the creatives calling. This is the Warrior's journey.

I personally believe this is everyone's journey in life. It's just that it is hard to realize at times due to the external pressures we face in society. So much confusion about what to do, who to be, what to achieve. You have to be a winner to begin with, which is a devilishly painful expectation to hold. I say every one of us has insane creative energy, a deep meaningful belonging, a mission, and a quest. You have to be willing to wake up and see this, when you do, a new path will be forged for you, one of deliberate meaning.

I wish you well on your journey warrior, may you stand the test of time and discover what you are made out of along the way.

“Are you paralyzed with fear? That’s a good sign. Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember one rule of thumb: the more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.” Steven Pressfield, The War of Art.