This is a really interesting post.

A lot of Medium users seem to be consumed with these binary choices that lead them towards success. “Should I eat breakfast, should I not eat breakfast?”

I did this exercise by accident. One day I wanted to write. I walked myself down to the local diner, took a seat outside and started writing. I wrote some really wonderful prose, dark, tortured, eloquent. Then the food came. I ate. I wrote that I was happy, and I stopped writing.

Which part is the truth? Am I more productive and qualitatively more interesting when I’m hungry? If so, is my writing actually a true depiction of my world around me?

There are some really interesting works of fiction where people dive into this idea (Synechdoche New York, The Things They Carried, Being John Malkovitch, A Million Little Pieces.)

I personally find the most interesting work I do is when I am about to fall asleep. My eyes are closed. I am about 30 seconds away from entering into that ever comforting R.E.M, deep slumber, and I have a eureka moment. It can be posed as an artists struggle, but it’s really just a byproduct of how my brain works.

Should I wake myself up every 15 minutes during the night to kick my creative juices into effect? Would I be happy? Would I be infinitely productive?

Sometimes, as an artist, we don’t get to control the moments where creativity strikes. It could be that our subconscious just happened to finish a puzzle at that exact moment, or you ran into something interesting in your environment.

What has worked for me is being less judgmental about my creative output and learning to enjoy the small things in life, like the sunrise in the morning.