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Do Not Stop

Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop and Why Commitment is Art

The volume of posts on this blog have skyrocketed to one per day since I started writing again a few weeks ago. There is a reason. It finally sunk in that commitment is art.

I’ve learned that practicing, or finding your art requires true commitment. The ability to sit down and write every day, to produce something worth reading, something honest and something I can publish is not only critical – it is the actual expression of the art itself. This has been an incredible shift in perspective for me.

I started out fast and wrote 6 or 7 posts right off the bat. But now I’ve hit the wall and ideas that seemed worth writing about now seem too hard, or too simplistic to write. Or if I’m really honest about it, require too much honesty. But under no circumstances, will I allow that to stop me from writing something.

This post is likely one of a few that are simply me sitting down to write. Staring at a blinking cursor, wondering what I’m going to write about. I’m practicing my art by writing this post. Not only am I doing the work, I’m also working out ideas in my own head about myself, my commitment and my passion. I’m searching for answers by writing that I’m searching for answers. Very meta, I know.

But the thing is, I’m feeling down today and don’t want to write. I don’t know if that is because the weather is bad, or because I’m just down about one thing or another. I suspect that being up or down is like the tides. They come in and go out and while you know there is a regular pattern, it’s not totally clear why you can’t change it.

The feeling I have of being down somehow has me frustrated. I keep telling myself to buck up, and then remember my meditation practice of acceptance. So I accept I’m down, sit with it and now, I’m writing about it and believe it or not, actually feeling a little better about things.

The very act of sitting down and writing this is art. It may not be world-changing art, but it is art in the sense that I listened to myself, committed to myself and allowed these thoughts to enter the world. That’s art.

So today’s post is just a bit of blatant encouragement. Don’t stop. Keep at it.

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