And you have to fight to create this time. Life (now more than ever given current events and global chaos) conspires to steal from you days and hours and years to “work.” Conspires to steal from you the ability to hone that “fullness meter” in your heart or brain or wherever it lives. There’s a story I love about Murakami Haruki (don’t know if it’s entirely true, but it’s definitely partly true): For most of his adult life he went to bed at nine p.m. no matter what was going on. If he was doing a book signing — goodbye at 9 p.m.! For him, fullness was to be pulled from his morning work (and morning run), and fullness was critically maintained by doing it over and over and over again. He knew that whatever “pleasures” awaited him after nine p.m. (believe me, there aren’t any), they didn’t compare to the fullness of his work. This may sound pathological or nuts or like he’s “missing out on life” but … you can’t argue with the output. This is how the work is done. By going to the mat for it in unexpected, seemingly petty ways, in protecting it from death by a billion paper cuts of one more whiskey or: sure, I’ll just go with the flow today. (The flow will always be there for you.) […]

But this is the crux of creative work and keeping it going sustainably — as you become more and more “famous,” and as opportunities multiply, you lose the ability to commit the time to the work like you could when you were younger. I find the most inspiring and successful artists are those who have protected and continued to nurture whatever it is they find as the source of their “work” and fullness, no matter how “busy” they get or how many excuses they have to do something else. (Or how offended someone might be if you just get up and go to bed at nine p.m.)