One comforting lesson you learn from making and releasing art is that timing is to be trusted, not forced.
I went to Japan last August. I started writing an article about it on the plane back home. It’s still not released. Once I got done with my first draft, I realized I could improve it a lot by including photographs, and I still had to edit it properly regardless. Then, life happened, and I’ve only worked on it in increments since then. But it’s okay! I have my most important points down. I know what I want to say. And I’d like to think a good article about Japan will always be relevant, no matter whether I publish it in August, March, or December.
This does not mean you won’t put urgency behind your work. If I hadn’t started my article right on the way back from the trip, I probably never would have drafted it. When I push it over the finish line matters less than when I started it. There are other examples, too.
My friend Herbert recently suggested there may be a book in my experience around Pokémon card collecting. It wasn’t a book I had planned on writing, but it was one I could see a publisher being interested in. I’ve never even tried to find one before, so I figured why not create a proposal for it? If someone takes it, great! If not, then I haven’t lost anything. I’ll keep self-publishing my own books anyway. So I started working on the proposal immediately. But when exactly will I finish it? When will my friends who write proposals for a living agree it’s good enough to be sent somewhere? And even if it gets accepted, will the resulting book look remotely like what’s on the idea sheet? And when will it release? Right now, Pokémon cards are a popular hobby. That might not be the case in two years. There is so much timing I don’t control with a project like this. So why stress about it? I’ll simply do my best at the fastest pace I can muster—and then trust that whatever timing it ultimately ends up with will be exactly what it needs.
It applies beyond work, too. It’s never a bad time to visit a place you’ve always wanted to see, and no one decides on exactly which day their child will be born. It took me and some friends eight years to finally host our Simpsons marathon, but it was still a great night I’ll never forget.
Life flows best when we apply force of will and sustain our momentum without bending out of shape to meet some imaginary deadline. Trust the timing, and you’ll always be exactly when and where you need to be.
