Raise your hand if you’ve ever felt like there’s just not enough time in the day to pursue your creative passion.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever told yourself that it’s just a hobby so you’ll make time for it later.

Raise your hand if…well, you get the point.

When I moved to Nashville fifteen years ago, I wanted to write songs. I left behind my family, my friends and a long-term boyfriend so that I could at least say I tried. When I got here, though, I was working a brutal full-time job and trying to build a life. To be honest, I didn’t feel much like creating anything new at the end of my days.  I sure didn’t feel like sitting down at the piano after sitting in a cubicle all day.

However, I’d made a deal with myself. I would try to become a writer for one year, no matter how much I wanted to give up. About three months into the move, I realized I was just a lonely, exhausted girl with a miserable job, and I was hating everything.

Still, I’d made a deal with myself:

 One year.

Even though I didn’t feel like writing every day, I decided to do it anyway. I mean, if I was going to have to move back home with my tail tucked, I was at least going to have some new songs to show for it.

I committed to write for at least fifteen minutes, five days a week for the rest of the year. To be honest, I was probably doing that so I could say I was actually writing.  I don’t recall really thinking it would work. I was just trying to avoid self-imposed guilt for not doing the one thing I was sure I was meant to do.

I may have started that fifteen-minutes-a-day thing to prove that I was a writer (I might be a bit stubborn), but in the end, I’d developed a discipline. More importantly, I honored my Inner Creative, and when I hit the one-year mark in Nashville, moving back to West Virginia just wasn’t an option.  Things were going way too well. 

I wasn’t just dreaming about writing songs anymore.

I was writing them.

Creative discipline worked, and I’m still here in Nashville all these years later. I guess you could say I built the foundation for the life I dreamed of as a kid in fifteen minutes a day. 

I wonder what would happen if you tried it, too?

Your challenge: Schedule fifteen minutes every day this week to wildly and guiltlessly pursue your creative passion. 

I challenge you to COMMIT!

To Your Adventure,

Belinda

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