Imagination and innovation aren’t limited to certain hours of the day.  I can’t remember where I heard this but it stuck with me as I’m trying to pin down my goals and put them on a calendar so I can check all the boxes toward what I want.  I have a schedule that I know will help me get where I want to be but my brain isn’t always operating on that clock.  Like right now I should have been working on these pieces but I had somethings to navigate through so I ended up writing about something else.  And I have to get ready for work in about 20 minutes so I’m already “failing” at meeting the planned schedule I have—and the more I let myself veer away from that schedule, I get further away from the goal and I feel guilty at myself for not keeping my word.  I limit myself to the hours I have set but the truth is imagination and innovation aren’t limited to certain hours of the day.  Sometimes what I want to do doesn’t jive with what I have written down but I know if I don’t follow it in the moment, I will lose the thought.  If we operate under the premise that we aren’t limited to certain hours of the day, it makes it easier to pick up where we left off.  Maybe we don’t put in as much time on a certain project when we had it planned, but if it was meaningful time spent then we still made progress—and progress is the real goal. 

So where do structure and creativity blend?  I need to have focus but I need to have the freedom to create—this is true for all of us.  And perhaps I need some guidance with prioritizing and sticking with my plans.  Perhaps I don’t know it all and there are other avenues I need to consider toward reaching my goals. This is where ego comes in and I’m still too naïve thinking I understand people.  I don’t always like reaching out for help because it has often been the case where I don’t get the help I need or people take over.  The truth is I will never understand what it is to put ourselves ahead of others so much that we hurt other people and tell them to deal with it.  Where does ego stop and genuine hurt begin?  And when is the self-sacrifice so much that it verges on martyrdom?  I’m not sure but I know creativity and relationships are tied together because we have to prioritize and weave relationships and our need for expression together.  I know that I want complete freedom of expression and creative flow and in order to do that, I need to let go of control—but if I don’t control certain facets of what I’m doing and narrow down the focus, nothing will get done.  And we have this beautiful range of time—we aren’t limited by anything other than what we set—I have 24 hours in a day the same as anyone else—I don’t need to quadrant off my time so much so that it stifles parts of me—and people don’t get to tell me how to feel.

I think we all live multiple lives because we are trying to figure out what we are meant to do—perhaps it’s that we are trying to figure out who we are.  And in order to find the right place, the right skin, we often have to try on different things.  We don’t know if it fits until we try it on.  I think at the end of the day what we want scares us as much as it thrills us.  As much as we desire it we fear it.  And that has a lot to do with the unknown—we are used to what we have around us, all that is here is a result of what we were thinking anyway.  And that is a result of what we KNOW.  There is so much more to know out there so we have to eventually step out of our space in order to create more space.  Even if it’s something as simple as giving up a habit so we can focus on establishing something new.  It’s scary but it’s worth it because the fact is this: everything that is unknown has the potential to be known but we can’t get there until we take the first step, no matter how small.  All of the limits we see in the world are a matter of our perception.  We can change them and break free at any time. Creativity and inspiration hit when they are meant to even if it feels like an inconvenient time.  We have now and we can’t control when we receive the influence/inspiration.  But we can choose how we perceive it and what we do with it.  Speaking from experience, say and do what is needed in the moment otherwise we stack the deck against ourselves.  Creativity and inspiration are meant to flow and I want to relish in the full force of it.