Ask any person pursuing some sort of creative endeavor what the hardest part of the project was and without fail the statement, “getting started” while find its way into the conversation.

You have the ideas.

You know what you want to do.

You may even know how you want to do it, but something about the actual act of getting started always seems to stop us. The moment you’re ready to sit down and finally bang out that project almost any and everything else becomes more important. Before you know it, you’ve lost that meager spark of motivation you had to even begin this project.

It’s funny how we sabotage ourselves like that.

I go through several creative droughts a year, usually depending on my mood and what’s going on with my life. I have these periods of extreme creativity where I’m banging out projects like crazy and impressing myself with my own genius. The ideas are flowing and I’m actually motivated to sit my ass down and work. Damn girl, lookatchu!

Then, one day it stops. I sit down to be creative and I’m all tapped out.

“So this is it,” I think to myself while watching my computer screen quietly descend into sleep mode because even it needs a break from my feeble yelps of despair as yet another unproductive hour passes. “You’ve finally run out of crazy. You figured the day would come, but this early? Should’ve spent more time working on some skills that are actually marketable. Well, time to pack it up and watch that epilogue roll across a dark screen: And nary a good idea was to ever be formed in her pretty little head ever again.“

I like to keep things dramatic in my private time.

I sit. And I sit. And I sit some more and maybe have a glass of wine. Editor’s note: it’s four.

Then, one day, the floodgates open up again and I’m whole. I’m back again like a Cher tour hitting all the creative notes and making my rounds for one more encore.

It’s hard to maintain that creative energy, particularly when you spend most of the day in autopilot and are usually too mentally spent by the evening to activate the part of your brain that spent precious working hours thinking about what various silent body functions would sound like if they suddenly made noise (screaming boners and blinks that sound like bicycle bells? Yes, please!).

I’ve been working to find time to just create. Even if it’s a small goal of simply fleshing out a rogue thought I didn’t consider to be as incredibly stupid as the others. It’s achievable and forces me to at least exercise my creative muscle.

There really isn’t a panacea for procrastination. I wish there was because I’d certainly have a lot more projects under my belt. The easiest and best way to get to it is to just do it. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Now that we’ve acknowledged procrastination sucks, let’s get to it! Stop reading this, clear out 30 minutes and get just create.