You Almost Missed It

Here's how it actually started. You overheard something, or saw something, or asked yourself a question you couldn't quite finish. It was small. You almost didn't notice. Then the moment passed and you went back to whatever you were doing.

That quiet moment doesn't get talked about much, because we get sold a bigger story. The strike of inspiration. A bolt of lightning that arrives fully formed and changes everything. Most of us are waiting for it. We've been waiting for years.

The actual signal is much smaller. A line. A color. A half-thought. The kind of thing you can dismiss in a second because it doesn't feel like enough.

What we call a creative block is often just the long habit of dismissing our own sparks. We see them. We don't trust them. We move on.

We have sparks like that all the time. They are everywhere. The hard part is catching one.

A spark needs something dry and light enough to take it. It needs warmth. And most of us also need someone nearby. Someone who notices the spark before we dismiss it, whose attention says, that one. Stay with that.

That's the tending part. The flicker is easy. Keeping it lit long enough to become real is where most of us lose the work. We were alone with it, and alone, the spark went out.

So here is the small piece of news. The spark already happened. Maybe this week. Maybe today. You felt it for a second and let it go.

It's still with you. You can find it if you sit for a minute.