It Doesn't Have to be Good

While practicing your Moment Art, it is essential that you do not hire an editor. This is not the type of writing/art/composition that requires it. In fact, in order to maintain an honest approach, an editor is detrimental. Now, I’m not talking about an editor that one would hire to proofread or critique; I’m talking about that little voice inside your mind that may surface to tell you what you’re doing wrong, or that you’re not doing it good enough.

You must remember that your Moments are not going to be Pulitzer-winning photographs, so don’t try to compose them as such. You need to remember that Moments are candid snapshots, like that Polaroid of you with your mouth half open, chewing on a greasy cheeseburger, dripping ketchup on your t-shirt during that Memorial Day barbeque. They will not show your best side, and you may even be unaware that these shots are being taken. The importance of the Moment is that you are true to yourself, and that your Moments are always veracious.

Many of us, however, will still find that it is necessary to be hard on ourselves for no reason at all, and that by not utilizing our inner editor, we are just creating rubbish, not art.

Well, fine.

If you want to be hard on yourself, we will do that as this week’s practice. We will not give our Moments a hard time, so you must still keep your editor hushed, but instead we will give ourselves grief, for no other reason than because we think that we should. Get it all out this week, however, because next week we will start becoming a little more positive.

Here’s what we will do:

Grab a mailing label, Post-it, or anything else that has a sticky back to it. Take a second to visualize one thing that went wrong today, whether or not you could, or should, claim fault for it. Now, write this on your sticker. Break it into stanzas; make it poetry. It doesn’t have to be good poetry, because it isn’t going to get published anyway, I assure you. Draw a little doodle of yourself on there if you wish, because it is you that this grief is directed toward, anyway.

Now, take this sticker, walk into the bathroom, and slap it onto the mirror, unsigned. Walk away and leave it there, because it is not your Moment; it belongs to the world and to the voices that spoke through you.

And to be fair, here’s mine:

Simple creativity.

You’re right, this isn’t very much. It isn’t a masterpiece work of art, and it shouldn’t be. Of course, we are starting out simple, and this Moment should have only taken about a minute, but I promise they will get a little more involved over time. For now, however, what is important to realize is that now matter how busy you are, there is always time for a little creation in your life.

Do this once every day this week and keep this in your mind: It doesn’t have to be good, it just has to be.

-SRT