Shout shout shout

My pal Lucy Bellwood jotted down some notes about being patient with yourself:

The impulse to fix fix fix work work work shout shout shout until it all gets done in one breathless swoop is strong. But I think it's the same impulse that tells me I can only draw a graphic novel if I sit down on a Monday and refuse to lift my backside from the chair until I’ve drawn 250 pages in a single go. It won’t end well.

The lesson I’ve learned in my creative practice is that my "success" is far more reliant on the systems I use to gently hold myself accountable over time. Staying in it for the long haul requires an ongoing sense of accomplishment—however minuscule. It also requires restraint. Only then, gradually and in an entirely un-linear fashion, can it grow into something transformative.