What would you create if

you allowed yourself to get weird 
if you felt sufficiently confident 
if you weren't worried about judgment 
if you just let yourself feel everything 
if you let yourself play? 

How much would it delight you? 
How good would it feel? 

What's stopping us? 

You have an image in your mind
You have an idea that intrigues you 
You've been thinking about it for a while. 
Right now, in the beginning, in this imagining phase, the distance between the idea and the finished thing feels too great, like a chasm. 
So we don't even start because 

because why? 
are we going to disappoint ourselves? 

I have always loved painting even though...
even though I'm not very good at it. 
(What does that even mean?) 
I have abandoned paintings, destroyed paintings, donated canvases 
when that chasm felt too great. 

abandoned painting of my friend Judy floating in her pool

It is OK to abandon a project. 

It is not OK to give up trying, not OK to ignore your imagination and ideas. 

That deep place of concentration, of the seemingly incongruent state of dreamy focus...that's where we want to be sometimes, isn't it? Isn't it fun there? Sometimes? 

Haruki Murakami goes there. He goes there regularly. He relishes it. 
Throughout history, people have gone there. 

Let's go and stay awhile and see how it feels. 
Let's see what happens. 
Let's see what we make. 
We might delight the world or just ourselves. 
Doesn't matter. 
Let's go.