It feels wrong realizing how easy it is to make things harder on myself. Putting things off, starting new projects and avoiding tough tasks all make for a guilty feeling whenever I go to bed not having finished what I’d hoped to that day.

I sit here today with less than 7k words to write in a book I’ve been working on since February, a new client that’s sure to cause trouble but will hopefully allow me to rampage Twitter with a real purpose and lesser paying but still important projects that I’m slowly becoming over-involved with. It’s weird how my business, and by business I mean writing, interests are seldom about money, they’re always about doing cool things.

Not finishing necessarily, but doing cool things.

Finishing is tough. It requires of me constant dedication for a few days to emphatically paint my last stroke, but for some reason I fight it every time.

Business-minded people will likely tell me to shut up, finish the job and get paid. And that’s what I should do. And it’s what I will do. Eventually.

But this kind of procrastination is a double-edge sword. It shows that I really do like and am proud of what I create, but it also shows I’m more addicted to the process than the result. I just really like to write, but I’m not sure I’m totally in love with producing things by writing.

It’s a weird feeling.

In his upcoming book The Accidental Creative, Todd Henry writes about the need to establish an environment and a ritual, creative or not, to constantly be able to produce anything cool.

I can hear those in the creative industry sighing a collective “duh”.

So how do you balance physical health, client responsibilities and creative rhythms all at once? I surely can only do two of those things, albeit not at 100%.

I suppose I should have known this already, but sometimes it takes a bit of a push and maybe a cool acronym (F.R.E.S.H. is in the book) to get you going.

I guess this was never supposed to be easy, right?

(Disclosure–I’m a member of the Accidental Creative Street Team and received the book for free. Well, I guess I traded my time to receive a copy of the book, but it’s not like he offered free books for everyone who signed up. I very likely would have bought it anyway, and I thought I had pre-ordered the Kindle version when the book was first announced but I did not.

Also, I have a podcast coming out which was inspired by the Accidental Creative podcast. Man, I miss writing silly stuff like this.)