lucy liu

luckyshirt:

I need the be here. With a piano, a MacBook, a sketchbook, a mechanical pencil, and a goose that lays peanut M&Ms.

Just for a year. Maybe five.

I’ve said before when advising creative students to major in creative things that the desire to create never goes away. Ever. 

Over time, it becomes a need.

And there you are, a psych major in a cubicle. Not using your degree. And not creating. While the creative monkey on your back gets stronger, hungrier, and louder.

That to me is the creator’s hell.

I love my jobs. Teaching and working with people with disabilities are both incredibly rewarding. I am helping people. I’m not just making somebody else rich. And I am so lucky to be able to do both for really great pay.

Yet every. Single. Day. I am reminded that these jobs are using time that my mind and soul want to be using to make things. In 36 years, I have never had so many simultaneous projects going. And even though one of them is The Project, the one I was put here to do, I’m still hungry.

Like I said, the need doesn’t go away. It just grows. Probably until you snap and end up naked on a center divider somewhere in LA holding a sign that says “Will burn self for meaning.”

And pushing paper that isn’t art will only get you there faster.

Watch Fight Club. Watch American Beauty. Watch Office Space. It’s like that.

If you can make things, point your life that direction. Maybe you’ll starve physically. That’s a risk worth taking to avoid starving mentally.