Inspiration is highly perishable
I find inspiration to be highly perishable.
It’s a short-term high. It briefly, momentarily, kicks me into high gear with all sorts of vim and vigor, but, like a child who ate too much candy, it crashes. Then, it’s gone forever, and you’re left with “real life.”
When I sense those moments, I do everything I can to capitalize on it. Just because it’s perishable doesn’t mean I shouldn’t use it.
Most of the time, I feel it as a burst of energy to get started on something I’ve procrastinated on. Sometimes I get a kick to take a project or task over the finish line. Sometimes, inspiration is as subtle as lightening my mood.
I had 3 different blog ideas this morning when I sat down to write, but I couldn’t actually get the words on the page. I stared, for hours, looking at a blank document. It wasn’t writer’s block; I had plenty of thoughts that I wanted to put on paper, but I just wasn’t interested in doing them at the time. I was interested in writing, but not those ideas.
I checked my Notes app for old blog ideas I had written down. Maybe there was an idea there that would pique my interest. I couldn’t find them. I think I deleted all of them by accident.
I got up and made coffee, checked Twitter (several times), read a couple essays by Paul Graham, (this one and this one), posted on Instagram, ate lunch, watched the Mr. Beast Squid Game YouTube video, watched the video where the production company showed how they made the Mr. Beast Squid Game video, and listened to the new Elton John and Ed Sheeran Christmas song((Titled, aptly, “Merry Christmas”)) about 15 times.
After reading the first Paul Graham essay, I had a fourth blog post idea that I decided not to write.
My first blog post idea, and the one I originally started this morning, was going to write about a Zoom breakout room I was in the other day. Someone who’s very financially successful on any measurable statistics asked a question along the lines of “How do you know what gives you fulfillment?”
That’s a blog post for another day.
Then I decided to shift directions toward this Tweet I saw yesterdayand made me think about how humans will definitely fall in love with AI robots in the not-so-distant future. I was going to write about how I not only think it’s going to happen, but how I think it will end up being “normal” for large swaths of the population.
My third blog post idea was documenting my journey writing and publishing a book. My book, AI as your Teammate, became a #1 Amazon bestseller last night. When I originally thought of writing the blog post, several weeks ago, I didn’t know if it would become a bestseller.
There’s a great Paul Graham tweet, which I’ve now lost, which said something like “There’s a wonderful moment in between when the founders know a product works and when the rest world knows it.”
I liked the idea of telling the story of writing my first book as one that ended with the book being published and my holding the first copies.
My book felt like that tweet. I had a pretty good idea the book was good, and I liked the idea of ending the blog before the book went to market. The ending of the blog post would’ve been one of a bit of wonder. I thought it was good and would sell well, but I didn’t know if people would buy it, like it and get value out of it. I liked the idea of leaving the reader in that state of unknown. Now that we know how the story ends, I will still write that blog post, but it will be much different.
The fourth blog post idea I had was to write about people doing energizing work. I’ve spent a lot of time on that idea recently because I like doing energizing work, and I think AI can help many more people do more fulfilling work, too.
Paul’s essay about his wife, Jessica,((The first one I linked)) inspired that idea because you can tell how energized they were about YC at the time of writing, and you can tell how energized Paul is by Jessica.((The footnote about her smiling more when she gets attention made me smile)) I especially got a huge kick out of how she wrote three different essays in response to the first piece organized by her newly hired PR team. She cared that much.
I got so excited about Paul’s essay that I started writing.
After hours of looking at a blank screen, I finally felt inspired to write, so I decided to write about inspiration.
The first draft probably won’t be very good. It rarely is.((It wasn’t.))
I’ll enjoy doing the second draft. For some reason, I enjoy the second draft almost as much as I enjoy the first draft.
I won’t want to edit it because I rarely do. I may send it to friends for proofreading, or I may not. It will depend on my mood. Those types of activities rarely require inspiration. To me, those are tasks. They’re not creative or fun, they’re things I do because I have to, not because I want to.
Sometimes, I can’t even seem to do the things I want to do. Like this morning, where I wanted to write, but I couldn’t seem to get words on a page. In those moments, a little boost helps.
Inspiration isn’t a strategy for long-term success. Purpose and fulfillment are long-lasting, and sometimes everlasting sources of energy and perspective.
Inspiration can be just the spark you need to get started.
It can help you block out everything else, quiet your mind, and focus.
Inspiration, for me, is like eating a piece of chocolate. It’s great in the moment, and it can be just what you needed. Then, that moment’s gone.
Today, my inspiration came from a blog post. It’ll fade soon.((It did fade. It took 10 days for me to reopen this so I would edit it. I didn’t send it along to friends and family.)) Some of my blog ideas will never become blogs. Sometime, probably soon, I’ll have a new moment of inspiration and I’ll come up with more blog ideas.
One or more of those will get written, but for now, I’m enjoying the fact that several hours of nothingness became an 855-word in a half hour.
It’s now 2 weeks after I originally hit “publish.” Over the last few weeks, I’ve thought about this post from time to time.
At the time of publish, I still benefit from nobody really knowing this blog exists (although it may turn out that nobody ever finds out this blog exists, yet I’m updating this post anyway), and I realized what this post is actually about.
You’ll notice in the second-to-last paragraph I began speaking of a new moment of inspiration. I didn’t know it at the time, but by then, my inspiration was gone.
During the editing process (which I did enjoy), my inspiration never came back.
When I hit “publish,” I wasn’t satisfied with the ending (“855-word half hour”). I thought it was just fine. It wasn’t great, but I thought it got the point across.
During the writing and editing process, I thought this blog post was less about the outcome of inspiration and more about the feeling of inspiration.
I was trying to capture inspiration in a way that elicited a familiar feeling for the reader (an “I know exactly what he’s feeling right now” sort of thing), but take it one step further. I wanted the logic of the idea that “inspiration is temporary” to bring a new perspective to why sometimes we’re fired up to take action, and sometimes we aren’t. I wasn’t going for a big “ah-ha” moment, just a small “that’s interesting” moment.
I wanted the original end of the blog post to be about a seemingly small occurrence during my moment of writing fury. I tried over and over to nail it, but I just couldn’t make it work. I had 2 scheduled 15 minute editing sessions that both became over an hour long. It wasn’t happening.
I assumed the universe didn’t want that ending to work, so I gave up, hit publish, and moved on.
Hilariously, while I’m updating this post, I’m not changing the title. The title was right all along.
This post is about the fact that one moment inspiration is here, and the next it’s gone. That’s it.
It’s been over 3 weeks since I wrote “Inspiration is highly perishable.” It took a half hour for me to start unconsciously thinking about when my next moment of inspiration will come.
As I thought back, I was surprised that my moment of inspiration was already gone, and I didn’t even notice.