A familiar discomfort spirals through my chest.

A discomfort born from the process of pulling together ideas and memories in an effort to produce something new, something which is so far superior to the culmination of its parts. Something that will inspire and excite.

But I know what we all know, through experience we know it – we will probably fail. That if we are to push beyond our limitations or try anything new, to fail is to be considered almost inevitable, almost guaranteed, promised by the creative process, promised by our beautiful foolishness.

But this beautiful foolishness is what we need to give ourselves permission to make mistakes, again and again and again. It reminds us to embrace this fool-hearted mentality, aiming for results that teeter on a blade-thin edge, with an equal chance of falling towards either success or failure. We should repeat so that we get better at this balancing act, so that we learn to embrace failure as a viable outcome, even while we do our best to lean towards success, with no fear or hope for either, knowing that any feet misplaced are small lessons in how to walk true.

This beautiful foolishness is what helps us to ignore our ego and give us happiness in declaring, with pride, “I don’t know the answer”, with a quick follow up of “but I’m going to find out.” It allows us to not only ask puzzling questions, but to try and answer them ourselves.

It hurts and is hard. I often grow hungry once I start answering questions, when I try to make. I get thirsty, too. And bored and tired. I doubt everything I know and feel. I wonder about the TV, about what else I could do, about hitting refresh on the multiple sites I have open. Just a little refresh, just a little update, that’s all I need baby, that’s all I need – just a small update to see me through.

A small update.

A small distraction.

A small moment of intellectual and creative numbness.

It hurts to say no to those impulses, and when it does, it’s resistance at its most blatant.

But those who go forward in the face of this pain and fear and resistance, who aren’t afraid to fail, who ignore the need to know who just tweeted what, to ignore the numbers that grow, who attach no worry to missing any of it, those who are brave enough to ignore their long lists of things to do and do the one thing they must, to create, are the most beautiful of fools.

We are incredibly lucky to have them.

And luckier still to have the opportunity to be amongst them.

If you were kind enough to read my last article, Starting., as well as this one, you’ll probably notice a common theme – the struggle to start making something. The simple reason is that’s where I am at the moment. But rather than pretend to have all the answers to any creative riddle like some, maybe most, bloggers seem to, I thought I’d just be honest and bring you along this journey with me. Hopefully you aren’t going through the same problems I am, but if you are, I hope we can figure it out together.