What if the actual reward is not accomplishment but the act of creating? The finished products and trappings of creative accomplishment are often seen as the goal. But I believe that the act of making is like oxygen. When the making stops, it becomes hard to breathe.
We tell ourselves that meaning comes from impact, passion, or finding the "one right path." But these beliefs can leave us feeling stuck — even when our lives look perfectly fine on paper.
When that sentence comes into my life, whether I'm reading it to teach, whether I'm rereading it to write, whether I'm reading it out loud, even just now, tears always spring to my eyes.
When I when I first made a little bit of money as an actor, the thing that gave me the most joy was to be able to send money to my mom as proof that not only was I gainfully employed, but I was sufficiently gainfully employed that I could send her some money.
I can't go on. I'll go on. And I really did not know how I could go from I can't go on to I'll go on. And that's when I started thinking about this idea of devoting myself to everyday joys or like cultivating these tiny victories, like just having a different metric for what would make me happy or also how I could stay engaged in life?
