“Do whatever brings you to life, then. Follow your own fascinations, obsessions, and compulsions. Trust them. Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart.”
-Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic
I was living in Charlotte a year ago when I made the decision to construct a website. That October day, a helicopter swept through the low-hanging sky above my apartment. My desk job hours were perfect; there was ample time to write each day. I had barely touched a pen since graduating almost six months ago. A website would both motivate my writing and serve as a place to keep my portfolio. I was 
brainstorming witty titles when I saw a Tweet. It said, and I paraphrase, “Why do all these twenty-somethings start shitty blogs? No one wants to hear about your boring life.” I ignored the strange timing and kept jotting down plays on the name “Bridges.” The words nagged at me, though. What would I write about? My life was fun, sure, but was I doing anything noteworthy? I signed up for a free web domain, settling on something basic. I moved to the balcony in search of inspiration, soaking in the helicopter buzz and view of the brewery six stories down. My roommate and I would probably go there later. Little lights hovered over its patio like flies.
A white rectangle glowed at the center of the screen with the word “Text” lining the top corner like a raised eyebrow. What was happening in my fun, boring life? Robby and I had just broken up. That was something. No, too soon. Too painful and big. I had marched in my first protest the night before! Charlotte was buzzing with tension between Black Lives Matter advocates and an excessive, discriminatory police presence, hence the helicopter. But writing about that would require a skillful tiptoe of the line between humble, genuine advocate and self-righteous white woman. Better not touch that one yet. My mental rolodex of the past month sputtered and spat beer foam. I decided I had nothing to write.
The precise feeling wasn’t new. This was the third or fourth time I tried and failed to start a website, and their constructions were haphazard: I used pre-picked photos and gave up on neat margins. I wandered between Weebly, WordPress, and Wix, as if the platform were the problem. They were each created in response to a silent, animal cry to write and share. The urge came in waves. People talk about the guttural desire to have children. This, I believe, is the closest I’ve experienced.
That website was never fed a single word. I agreed with the untimely Tweet and heavy air that I had no way to enrich to the impossibly dense tangle of cyber syllables. I’m bored, I thought to myself. I’m bored and I’m boring. I efficiently revoked my permission to create.
I started this website four months later after moving to Atlanta. It stuck because, this time, I didn’t give a shit whether people wanted to read it or not. A hearty readership would be nice, of course, but I understood that my words are pennies in a mint. Millions of words are punched, 
polished, and posted each second. Perplexing ones. Dark ones. Words so exquisite that mine would go weak in the joints and collapse down the screen. But I set a manageable goal of creating a short, quality post once a week. I added pictures, which I hate taking, and formatted them carefully, a skill that took several near-crying bouts to obtain. I decided that my blog would be good, or good enough.
There’s something sacred about securing a place that exists to hold things I create. This website is simple; there’s a six-item menu and minimal images. But it serves as an eternal reason to practice my craft. It’s a tool that, regardless of who or how many read it, deepens my ability as a writer and observations as a human. More than anything, it’s a testament to the day I looked around my still-unpacked apartment and decided that I’ve always had something to write. Even if I felt boring, even if no one wanted to read it.
My heart does backflips when I witness shameless creation. There’s a person in Atlanta who manually writes pamphlets about genius and passes out photocopies on a street corner. My friend learned how to sew and opened an adorable Etsy shop two weeks later. I lived in a rural Virginia town the summer that a shop owner redid his storefront mural. He would scoot inch by inch to his right, revealing a glistening trail of green and blue. After I picture these things, I think about lost poems that ricochet furiously down an 
endless well. The people who would be their channels never mustered the scarlet fury or stoic resolve, whatever would lead them to act on their permission to create.
I called my friend Noah two weeks ago and told him to start a website. His Facebook posts are political, but unique in their level of research and perspective. He’s a fantastic wordsmith. He told me, in very familiar words, that he had thought about it before. But there was the concern of the site’s focus, its content, what would make it unique. Most frighteningly, who would read it?
Perhaps no one. That’s the point. If you embark on any creative journey with expectations for the work’s quality as opposed to how it’s received, you’re destined for enrichment. Not only have I learned how to format an acceptable—or at least legible—website, but I’ve become a better writer and have improved my dismal ability to craft titles. If no one clicks on this site ever again, it will still be doing its job.
That thing you do (playing basketball, pasting together vision boards, designing games, cultivating plants on your doorstep) is important, and we need to live in a place where you’re doing what makes you glow. Don’t listen to voices—your own, included—that tell you it’s pointless to do what you love. Consider a beating heart your call to create recklessly.
October 7, 2017 at 7:40
Relevant quote: “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” -Howard Thurman