A   sacred   idea

I walked about 90 minutes up to Stratford to find a spot that would “inspire” me enough to write. I stood in line for another 12 minutes at a coffee shop because my laptop had run out of caffeine. I sat for about 30 minutes before writing a single word that actually made it into this post. It will likely be no better because of it.

There’s always a moment of naive clarity just before an idea becomes a work in progress. You have a thought so compelling that it moves you to act: to write it down, to search for an answer, to create a new project file or Github repo. You haven’t started asking any serious questions about the feasibility of the idea just yet, nor are you concerned with the specifics; all that matters is that for once you’re getting out of your own way to explore it.

The moment, like the motivation, never lasts… that’s why we sit an arms length away from an idea for as long as possible: sketching logos on the back of napkins for the 15th time; etching legends between the rulings of Moleskine journals. It’s easier to give our “sacred” idea a wide berth so we never have to discover it doesn’t hold its shape when you reach out and grasp it, or that we don’t yet have the strength to lift it from the ground. In the moments just before it’s forced to exist, it’s everything we hoped it would be.

In the morning, on the day of writing, I wanted to enjoy that moment. I know that pressure to produce something perfect will follow and that it’s self-imposed. I know that I’ll feel frustration when the idea becomes actual work and that it’s to be expected. I know that every answer, no matter how completely it reveals itself, is a lure placed carefully at the foot of another sprawling labyrinth of obscure and unanswered questions, each more daunting than the last.

The pursuit of a compelling idea can feel like a descent; precedent falls away like stages of a rocket, the frayed ends of pre-existing frameworks reaching forward and falling short like an unfinished bridge. Sometimes it will be quiet. Sometimes it takes everything you have to keep burrowing deeper toward the centre instead of scrambling for the surface where things already make sense.

Then, suddenly, you reach the bottom. The answers stop showing up. You’re greeted with this sense of weightlessness: “onward” becomes whatever you want it to mean.

A truly “sacred” idea, when it finds you, is rarely a beautiful thing. It often feels like an invitation you write yourself to go spelunking. It’s sitting alone in a room for hours building something nobody asked for to solve a problem nobody cares about yet.

It will always be an awkward experience willing something new into existence.