LIVING INSIDE THE THING THAT WANTS TO BE BORN BECAUSE IT’S LIVING INSIDE OF YOU

Jun 26, 2025

I wake up thinking about the book—a new book, new ideas.

Those thoughts are quickly replaced by my day job brain. I get sucked into that world because it is so easy because there is always a million more things to do, and I can always do more and more and more. I can give as much of me as I can possibly give and it will eat it.

It’s funny how a book—or any big art project—becomes so important to its creator, like we live inside it’s world and we let it take over and consume us. We might wake up thinking about it, go to bed thinking about it, and wish we were thinking about it throughout the day when we’re too busy with other life stuff to think about it.

The funny part is that it likely won’t matter that much to anyone but you. Maybe no one will even read it, maybe it will never even exist, and right now no one even knows it exists because it doesn’t fully exist yet. You are still birthing it.

We can visibly see pregnant women and give them space and whatever they need—water, a seat, a hand, a pass. But do we do this for artists pregnant with an idea?

•••

When I was briefly living in Scottsdale and housesitting, I would start working on my book as soon as my day job duties ended on Thursdays. It was hard to shift my mind into “book mode” after five days of journalism (writing a memoir feels like using a whole different part of your brain), but by Saturday night, I would be fully embedded in it. It was my every waking thought.

And every Sunday, I would resent my day job from stealing that creative space from me. And then I would have to remind myself that the day job was allowing me to survive.

This cycle went on for about six weeks. I was able to create a first draft but painfully.

How many artists are silently carving out time to work on their projects in the tiny nooks and crannies left over after working a day job?

Why is it so easy to switch modes into the day job work but not the other way around?

I think, quite simply, you need a lot of free space in your mind to be a vessel. It can’t be all cluttered with tasks. Creativity doesn’t live in that environment. The muse won’t appear there.

•••

Sometimes something small gnaws at me—a desire to draw a thick black line across a sheet of paper, a vision for the cover of a zine, two foil characters for a comic strip, a curious juxtaposition, a title, a line, an idea.

The gnawing goes away when I finally give it my attention, or it just goes away and finds somebody else.