Another Magic Trick!

(we can use all the magic we can get, right?)

I’ve been thinking about all my creative friends and what amazing things they do. Some I have known my whole life (family can be friends!), some decades, some a few years…many in “real life”, some, so far, only online.

(In my imagination we all meet up IRL for a crazy, long weekend of music, art, stories…good food [Portugal], walks, dogs, probably not enough sleep…)

There’s one thing that they all have in common, in spite of working in vastly different areas, from jet plane design to watercolour painting (ok, that’s actually the same person), which is:

They keep going.

As in:

They make a thing, it’s crap, they keep going.

They make a thing, it’s genius, they keep going.

They make a thing, no one likes it, they keep going.

They make a thing, it goes viral, they get famous, they become a milliionaire billionaire, they keep going.

Success is, basically, keeping going, not “being successful”. Because the adrenaline and dopamine hit from “success” are great, but short-lived.

Whereas, keeping going, man, I tell you, it is magic.

As a classical flutist, when I was a kid I wanted just to be able to play a certain very pretty sonata by Telemann that was on a LP by Jean-Pierre Rampal. But by the time I was able to play that sonata, I was on to something else, so I kept going.

After that, there were other pieces, other “successes”, a job, another job, a recording, a standing ovation. Fantastic.

But the real trick, the fun, the magic is: keeping going.

At each stage, it’s hard to even imagine what might come next…to find out, you have to keep going.

Ask yourself, “What next?”. “What do I love to do in my art?” “What do I dare myself to try to do?”. These are the questions that propel you forward.

Nothing wrong with laurels, but if you sit on them…well, they’re likely to get kinda itchy, and you’ll get bored with yourself before long.

For the real magic, keep going.