What’s Your Briar Patch?

Tackling the new is challenging in ways you can’t imagine at the start. As you wrestle with your ego and the fact that this might not work, you also have to figure out what your nascent creation should be.

If you have guided a creative project from zero to one, you know how daunting it is to stare at a blank canvas. All the creative freedom is intoxicating, but with it, comes a dark reality - a deep connection to your identity. The ego rides along in a sidecar and should you crash, full speed into a wall, you risk mangling yourself as much as your creation.

This is the life of the artist.

This ever present fear, smoldering below the surface, inches us towards safety. In an act of primal survival, the resistance pulls us back to our comfort zone, where we know exactly what to do - where 1 + 1 always equals 2.

Designers sketch and developers map out the data model. We all tend towards our most natural medium and in our unconscious quest for safety, rush past the hard work.

The hard work is different for everyone, but a good divining rod is our fear. The work we are avoiding is a wonderful first step. It may be a leap of faith, but push ahead. Push into areas which give you pause, where you don’t know what’s next, but you feel it’s right. The path emerges with each step and not a moment before.

Like Brer Rabbit, we long to return to our own briar patch, safe from the foxes and wolves, but alas, no noble creation lives there.

What’s your briar patch?