If all you can do is be discontented, be discontented.
If all you can do is be restless, be restless.
Wake morning after morning, wishing you had more time to write.
Work day after day at your nine-to-five job, wishing you were lost in the stories of your imagination.
It takes determined discontent to create positive change. If you can choose something other than writing, if you can find a way to make peace with your current profession and find satisfaction in your current schedule, then do so.
But if you can’t, if only writing satisfies that need, then be as restless as it takes to get you to do something about it.
Stand there taking punch after punch until you remember what you’re fighting for. It’s worth a broken nose, a fat lip, a few missing teeth.
Eventually, if the restlessness grows strong enough, you will stop believing in the invincibility of your constraints. You will stop believing that:
- it’s impossible to make money as a writer;
- you need a standard of living your writing can’t provide;
- you’re not good enough to succeed, or to hold yourself accountable, or to keep working when the process becomes more of a challenge and less of a novelty;
- it’s unrealistic to believe you could spend most of your day doing something that nourishes your soul.
You will stop caring about those lies because all you will know is that you must, must, MUST do it.
If discontent is the most you can muster today, then be discontented. Tomorrow you may find that the wind has picked up, and you cannot help but adjust your canvas and let it guide you forward.
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