When I was a child, my dad took me to the golf course, gave me a sawn-off golf club, put a ball down and said, ‘give it a go.’

I took swing after swing, either missing the ball completely or slamming the club into the grass surrounding the ball. I was probably there for 20 mins, swinging like a maniac. But then I hit the ball, once. I hit it SO cleanly and crisply that I thought I missed it. It wasn’t until I saw this tiny little ball fly like a dart through the air that I realised what I’d done. It felt SO good.

So, I tried again. And sure enough, 20 mins of frantic swinging and missing went by again before ‘bang’, I did it again. Not as good as the first time, but still pretty good.

I had never been on a golf course before, never swung a golf club, but 40 mins after trying it for the first time, I became interested. I was driven to reproduce that feeling of hitting it cleanly, and so I didn’t stop trying.

I spent every afternoon after school practising at the golf course. Over time, I hit the ball more often. Then, I focussed on hitting it better. The more I tried and failed, the more interested I became in mastering it, the more I uncovered the game’s depth and complexity. I discovered that it was as much a mental game against oneself, as a physical one against others.

At 11 years old, I didn’t know that golf could be a passion. If the advice my dad had given me was “follow your passion”, I never would have found golf.

I can’t help but think that the romantic notion of ‘passion’ that underpins our current cultural narrative, “we’re all meant to do one thing on this earth, we just need to find it” is entirely and utterly false. In my case, I arrived at passion through persistence. And I’m not the only one.

Humans like the idea of ‘searching’ for ‘that one thing’ but we are probably more malleable than we realise. Each of us are multi-dimensional, complex organisms; it doesn’t make any logical sense to have ‘one thing’ that we’re good at or interested in. So what’s the solution?

In my experience, I needed a few things to get truly and deeply interested in golf:

1. Opportunity. Had Dad not taken me to the golf course, I never would’ve got there myself. I needed something external to prompt me. Dad had liked golf, so he thought he’d share that with me. Now, with the internet, there are hundreds of meetups in communities around the world that it would be SO easy to find a group (or a person) who might be able to share their interest with me to see if I like it.
2. A rapid feedback loop (and some level of success) for your first try. Like me, it took 40 mins of aimless effort before I saw that ball fly into the distance and get that feeling that maybe this is something I could do. Some activities, like writing a novel, take years. It’s probably not the best place to start. But, if writing is something you might want to try, perhaps a short story or even a flash fiction is a good way to start? You can write one of those in a day and get feedback quickly.
3. Persistence. Once you discover a glimmer of interest or a feeling you like, you only make progress by persisting. If you wrote one flash fiction that showed you that you could do it, write another, and another. Some will be as good as the first, some even better, but there’ll also be a lot of crap. Perhaps doing this will lead you to discover some books, advice, or a course that can help you get better, to weed out the crap ones and slowly improve over time.

Deciding whether to continue pursuing an interest (at the expense of pursuing a new interest) is a very difficult thing. In my case, I almost became a pro at golf but, for various reasons, I slowly decided on other priorities, and now I no longer play. Instead, I spend time writing and illustrating stories—another ‘passion’ I’ve found along the way. The learning curve of writing and illustrating stories professionally, even adopting an art practice, is steep and infinitely deep. Right now, I’m happy there, but who knows what will come. After all, cello is always something I’ve wanted to try, too.

What does it mean to go pro? To deliver every day, no matter what. There’s so much ‘advice’ from professional writers about what it means to write. Commit, they say. Every day they say. No matter what, they say.

But what most professional writers fail to account for is that they’re pros. And pros have to deliver. If you’re not a pro and don’t aspire to be, then ‘every day’ doesn’t matter. No matter what doesn’t matter. Committing doesn’t matter. If the act of writing or drawing brings you joy, if you find happiness in being in a state of occasional flow, if it’s a hobby and not a profession, then doing it whenever you want is totally fine.

Everyone will tell you to grow your audience. Focus on subscribers. Get bigger. Increase market share. Be for everybody. Be liked. Be loved.

But nothing gives me more pleasure these days than when I notice someone unsubscribe from my email list. Why? Because it means I’m not for everyone. It means I’m forming a point of view. A strong opinion. I’m picking a side. A side that’s not for everyone. It’s exactly what art is supposed to do.

It’s funny, no one ever asks me how I find the time to brush my teeth or put pants on before I leave the house every day. The question I always get is, how do you find the time to write?

Creating stuff (in my case, writing stories or drawing pictures) seems to be an ‘optional’ activity in the way we think about the world. It has to come after all the boring stuff. Work, commuting, cooking dinner, cleaning the house, bingeing Netflix, catching up on social media. After all, art (and self-expression) is a luxury, isn’t it? And I will admit, that there’s privilege baked into my life, but the people who are asking me about how I find the time to write aren’t the underprivileged, or historically-discriminated groups. That’s a whole different problem.

When the commitment to write or draw becomes a non-negotiable automatic activity, like brushing teeth or wearing pants when I’m in public, it’s no longer about finding time to write, because it’s already there.

Practice doesn’t make perfect; it makes better. Aiming for ‘perfect’ is a problem because every time we practice, we learn. Every time we learn, we improve. Perfect implies an end — a finish line. But when you’re playing an infinite game, the finish line keeps moving forward; your expectations are always a little bit ahead of your skills. It’s not until we realise that perfect is unavailable that we begin to see the real value of Practice.

It’s easy to put limits on ourselves. To see these things as barriers that prevent us from doing what we want to do. My desk is too small. I don’t have enough time. I don’t have a ‘space’. I can’t afford to do art. I can’t draw. But barriers are only barriers if you see them that way.

Of all the mediums, why did I start with watercolour? (Apparently, the most difficult, according to oil painters).

Well, because my desk is too small (for acrylics). I don’t have the luxury of time (that oils demand). I don’t have the ‘space’ (to store artwork that takes too long to dry). I didn’t have a lot of money (to afford canvases, brushes, mediums, etc.).

Watercolour, for me, is the ultimate medium. It dries fast. It doesn’t stain my furniture (much). It only needs a piece of paper, which is lightweight and can be as big or small as your circumstances require. It’s cheap to get started. It’s portable, too.

Barriers are only barriers because we imagine them to be. If we try to use our constraints and see them as shaping us, rather than limiting us, maybe we’ll discover something that fits in with life, but still feeds our soul.

In year 7, I was asked to write a story for a class assignment. It was a pop-creative-writing task. I ended up writing a derivation of the Jonah and the Whale story from the bible. It was a Catholic school, the class before this one was Religion, so it was the first thing that came to mind. I went with it.

I was an A student. Top of the class in most things, I lived in the top 3 on my worst day with average scores of 90 out of 100. So when I got the mark back for my story, and I got a 55 out of 100, it had an impact.

Twenty years later, I still remember that mark. I remember the teacher, I remember the red ink, I remember the feeling, and I remember making a decision. I made a decision not to write. If I was good at so many other things, then maybe writing was just not ‘my thing’. I hid the story (and the mark) in shame and focussed on science, maths, sport, and computers.

What would have happened if, instead of a mark, I had a conversation? If the teacher approached it with empathy and curiosity and asked, “I can see where this story came from, can you?” If she asked, “The story is too similar to another, how do you think you could change it to make it different?” or “This is great for a first draft, here are a few tips for making it better.”

Instead, it took me 20 years of pursuing everything else *but* writing, before I found my way back. I blogged for a bit, wrote in my day-to-day at work, added captions to silly illustrations I was doing in my spare time. I found myself enjoying the process, so I sought out online resources. I began to study language in my spare time, found clippings of passages from other writers that I liked. I found a passion (and eventually a career) through persistence.

When I was in year 7, I was utterly unequipped to handle negative feedback delivered in a novice way. It’s fair to say that mark changed my life: one teacher, one mark, one comment.

Teachers have immense power in shaping children’s lives, and as with any job, some people are great at it, and some people aren’t. Giving feedback, coaching, and nurturing kids so that they learn from their failure, so that they persist and improve rather than run away, is hard. But it’s worth it.

Some of my happiest, deepest, and most thoughtful moments are when I’m away from the computer. The laptop closed, the mobile phone switched off (or in my weaker moments, in airplane mode). That’s when I sink into a 12-hour flow state attempting to create something new, something physical. My head, hand, and heart, working together, pulling at one another, trying to wrestle control of what ends up on the page.

Immanuel Kant said, “The hand is the window on to the mind.” and Darwin linked greater dexterity of the hand to greater brain capacity in humans. I’ve learned, through simple practice, that I think better when I’m using my hands. Typing (and writing) is one thing, but nothing works quite so well as the physical medium I’ve come to love so dearly.

I know there are many digital illustrators out there who are doing amazing work. And intellectually, I know the digital medium brings a lot positives to the modern-day professional freelance artist. I’ve tried these things. I’ve spent too much money on fast computers and bigger and better graphics tablets. But nothing has been as successful at bringing my head, heart and hands together than the absence of a computer. Maybe it’s the same for other people.

It takes me half a second to Command+Tab and change focus. My computer is a swiss-army knife of distractions. It’s the antithesis of an environment conducive to productive, deep, meaningful work. Command+Tab.

I persist with non-digital work because there’s no Command+Tab. No Ctrl+Z. No way to undo, cover up mistakes, get distracted. When I’m sitting in front of a piece of paper, armed only with my pencils and brushes, there’s focus. I can spend 12 hours a day like this. It’s fun.

Maybe it’s my fault. Maybe I lack the self-control to stay focused when I’m working in front of a computer? Maybe if I turned off the internet, I would work differently. Or maybe digital is just the wrong medium for me. Maybe the computer wasn’t designed to help me make the sort of art I want to make. It’s great for processing accounts or email correspondence. It’s great for managing the business. Maybe it’s not me after all. Maybe it’s just about using the right tool for the job.

In economics, there’s this idea of disposable income. That is, the money a person has ‘left over’ after all the essentials are taken care of. Once the rent, mortgage, food, heat, travel etc expenses are paid, what you have left is ‘disposable’. Typically, disposable income is spent on leisure activities – eating out, movies, recreational sport and so on.

Maybe time works the same way.

We know we’ve only got 24 hours in a day, and we’ve got some essentials. Sleeping, eating, and working seem to things we can’t avoid. If we have kids, or sick parents, then caring for loved ones falls under this ‘essential’ time. We can try and shorten or skip some of these things sometimes, but in the end, we need a certain amount of rest, food, income, and care to function properly. What’s left, then, is disposable time. And, like disposable income, we spend that on things. Some of us play sport or exercise. Others meditate or practice yoga. Some of us play a musical instrument. Some of us put time and effort in to maintaining and deepening friendships. Some of us binge Netflix, or ‘catch up’ on social media.

The question I get most often is, “how do you find the time to write?”, and now I’m thinking that the answer is, “It’s just how I spend my disposable time.”