One Step

Not one step back. “Withdraw, then return” and “no backward step” are two pretty great quotes juxtaposed, then interspersed within The Horus Heresy series. Applied to war, but also the self. Never surrender your soul, your ideals. Do not compromise in the face of Armageddon.

This applies to internal and external pressure, but I want to draw a facet of how this applies to the creative world. Everything creative goes as far as we are willing to push it, but no further. The words will not write themselves. The brushstrokes need to be put to paper. The song needs its chords and intervals carefully checked.

I come back to pick up my creative work, in the face of life events, distractions, priorities and when there’s the drive to continue, or when I’ve decided like this moment to make it happen. Like something dropped in the sea, while it’s distorted the tools will remain where they are.

I look at a deal of documents, knowing they are waiting and line by line it will get where I direct it to be. A close friend of mine, after making effort in making changes to their house, also tool out every single tool of their creative vocation, and spent a clean hour reacquainting themselves with the skill.

It was good to read that, the fact being communicated with an accompanying picture. As with any destination it is one step after the other. Perhaps creatively we are just more conscious of the steps.

A little personal challenge, some long lost image, or shaking off the rust all are steps that lead to the same place. And I’ve learned that time is malleable. In some sense, deadlines and goals and fulfilment matter. But the bubble of time, the empty part where mistakes lie around waiting, where the ideas are generated lie open, private rooms where someone needs to step in, and a lot of emotions and turmoil and satisfaction all pile in.

No one becomes a master all at night, and one singular stroke of creative perfection is rare. But each step is feathering more definition to the great works of our lives. It shapes how we look, what is built, what is remembered. And accepting that one step, while seeming to be a large thing, is also a straightforward step and one not to be scared of makes for the little states of progression that many more eyes see than we expect.