Creative Running
There’s no creative running in the Olympics. No style points. No bonus for running the race in an interesting way.
The only thing that matters is how fast you get from here to there.
It might be the most pure sport.
Especially a sprint like the 100 meters.
The clarity is so magnetic. A definite start. A definite finish. And clarity of what goes in between.
Charging For Easy
You start out not good at the thing.
The process of getting good is hard…but after that, the thing is much easier.
You don’t have to give away the thing you’re good at just because it’s easy for you now.
Rather, you charge a price (in part) because it’s hard to make it easy.
Who Do You Want For The Job?
You can probably find someone to do the job, play the parts, wear the uniform, show up mostly on time, and even smile now and then.
But someone who can do the job AND CARES about the job…that’s a lot harder to find. And because it’s harder to find, it might not seem worth it to even look. Because even if you do the difficult looking, you may not find.
Finding someone to simply do the job is easy and passable. And takes way less of your time.
So you have to make a choice about what you want.
Sounding Better
Doing a cover of Blackbird or Hallelujah or Amazing Grace…most people sound pretty legit. They’re cheap covers because they’re some of the greatest songs of all time. Everyone sounds good.
You sound better when you’re playing better material.
Steven Tyler and Adele and a few others sound great no matter what they’re singing. But for the rest of us, sure, we can work to sound better…but what we really need is better material.
20s and Great Material
Recently I looked back over the songs on My Favorite 50 playlist.
(You should make one, it’s harder and more fun than you think)
Something jumped out at me.
There is a perceived parallel journey between making great art and knowing-thyself. But the vast majority of the songs were written by artists who were in their 20s at the time…and artists in their 20s don’t know-thyself.
So we’ve got artists making the greatest material of their careers at a time when they’re just starting to learn who they are.
What does this mean?
Self exploration isn’t the biggest key to great material.
Having the time and bandwidth to tinker with ideas goes a long way. Having the time and bandwidth to be curious about other artists goes a long way. Having the confidence to be naively confidence goes a long way.