Creators and process (the drug of choice)

Creators love process. In fact creators are process. 

Have you ever spoken with someone in thrall to a dream? Yes they talk about the end point, the book or the business, but really what they mostly talk about is the process. They crave it, have to have it, can’t exist a day without it. 

When you see someone immersed in process, you’ve found someone immersed in creation.

Someone excited to go to Bali can’t stop telling you about what they’re discovering hourly about Bali. How they’re going to get there. How their saving is going. How their preparation is going. What they’re taking with them. What might be the best clothes, the best gear, the best hat, the best way to be semi-clad in the tropical fecundity of Bali.

It’s the same with someone starting a business. If you sit back from the conversation, just sit back a foot in your mind, you’ll find that if you sift out everything they’re talking about regarding building their business . . . if you sift all that out . . . there is nothing left. 

Because starting that business is their meaning. It’s breathed. It’s eaten. It’s evacuated. Little exists outside of the process for that person.

It’s the same with a new parent. 

It’s the same with a kid constructing a fort.  

It’s the same with someone creating a love bond. To be on the other side of a conversation with someone falling in love is perhaps the deadliest place to be. 

(“Oh, did I tell you, we both brush our tongues! We have so much in common!”)

Inventors.

Artists.

Elon Musk.

All thrive on process. 

It’s in the daily thicket of doing that ideas emerge, disparate thoughts converge, ego submerges, energy surges.

You’ll know it when you’re in it, you won’t be able to suppress the urge . . . to do it daily and do it often.

How do you get there?

Like everything else. You begin. You let it acquire mass. You move from inspirational to habitual. 

You take things off the table so you can put more of this on the table.

You take other things out of your mind so you can put more of this in your mind.

Once it’s taken hold of your mind, it will take hold of your actions. You’ll begin accruing escape velocity.

Then it’s only a matter of time before you too become a process junkie. 

You will acquire that home, ride that motorcycle, bring that thing to market . . . but you won’t stop. Not now, because process has got you. Process has infiltrated and you’d rather give up sex than process — yes, I exaggerate (thankfully), but you will forego trips to the beach, nights out, social interactions, TV, meals, internet surfing, phone calls to Mom.

You can tell a true dream when you’re as in love with the process of achieving it as you are the goal.

What is a dream, really, other than a means to living a meaning?

Part of the What creators do series.