A girl friend of mine came over a few nights ago, we sat in my living room drinking wine and catching up. I told her about my last few years, and the giant leap I had just taken to start Haven. She listened, and openly admitted that she didn't think she had "it". The "it" that drives me to create, to pursue new ideas and build businesses, as if my life depended on it. Which I suppose in a way it does. At first, I wanted to deny her this division, and then I realized, she was right. Only she knows this in herself. Her honesty and her support of my many dreams are some of the qualities that make her so endearing to me over the years. So I got to thinking about my creative pursuits, and how I've gotten to where I am today.
The first time I really felt I had found my "people" was in freshman poetry class at University of Michigan, with Professor John Rubadeau, still one of the best teachers I've ever known. He introduced us to so many formats and structures, then encouraged us to break them, and to express ourselves. In his class I learned that I could be free, while writing poetry in a structured format, and I fell deeper in love with the written word. In his class I discovered authors that spoke my language; Kerouac. Bukowski, Dillard. I re-read authors that I had left in junior high, like L'Engle, and fell into the worlds they described, resonated with their emotion and depth.
Years later now, happily launched into the unknown with my 4th startup, I realize this passion for creation is the same in innovators as it is in designers, filmmakers and poets.
And so if you are considering a leap, if you want to create a new business or start something impactful and new from scratch - I'll leave you with this, from Bukowski. And I'll urge you to ask yourself the question - is it coming out of your soul like a rocket? If the answer is HELL YES, then embrace it and enjoy the crazy journey. If it's not, get behind your crazy girl friend who is on a rocket of a journey, she'll appreciate every minute of your support, trust me!
So You Want To Be A Writer
if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.
if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.
don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.
when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.
there is no other way.
and there never was.
Charles Bukowski