Every time you turn me down
I tell myself it’s the last time
That I wait for a change
Cause you always turn away
I’ve lived 90% of my life feeling inadequate compared to people who’ve spent their time grinding 10,000 hours at a single task. I’m impressed by those who have done this: Tiger Woods, The Beatles (Hamburg sessions) and so many of my University+ friends who have been successfully working for years in their specific domains.
But grinding towards a single task is not what makes life feel vibrant and generative for me.
I operate from a point of being inspired. I get excited about ideas across different domains. As a child of the 80s who grew up 20 miles from the Bronx, I like sampling, remixing and nodding to those who came before.
My persistent tension: how do I make progress when my default is to wait for inspiration?
Inspiration is my magnet.
It creates velocity but not always direction, which comes from Order.
I get excited by novelty. Neither inspiration or order is morally superior yet they’re different ways to pay the inevitable cost of being available.
Inspiration and Order are different approaches to prepaying or postpaying for outcomes.
You always have to pay something. The question is whether you want to be more in control over how you pay, or whether you prefer to go with the flow and accept the price when it arrives.
People driven by order manufacture control to reduce uncertainty. The Order-prone need checklists, schedules and a predictable cadence to feel safe enough to act.
Inspired-first people sometimes feel this predictability like a straightjacket that mutes possibility: I experienced it for far too long without knowing how to change clothes.
Both sides have blindspots. The inspired can defer indefinitely under the guise of “waiting for the right time,” while the orderly can mistake activity for progress.
Every time you look at me
It seems like you see straight through me
I don’t know what to say
So I turn away
As I previously wrote activity is not the same as progress. Many people “work their ass off” yet never set their own progress objectives. They confuse busyness with forward movement.
Being proactive by setting learning objectives and owning outcomes is how you convert bursts of inspiration into durable results. For people who prize order, I believe the lesson is to lean into ambiguity, especially when you are in trusted company.
Order without space to discover turns into pointless routine; inspiration without discipline leads to strings of unfinished experiments.
So what does a middle path look like in practice?
I want to stay in your arms
But you just try to escape
I want to give you my love
But you act just like you want to run away
Do you want to run away?
