“You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
-Steve Jobs

The above is taken from Steve Jobs’ famous Stanford commencement address. I love what he says here and find myself referencing it often. If you haven’t seen or heard it yet, you can find it here. It really is worth checking out.

At the office and my mind is buzzing. I focus all of my concentration on a spread sheet. The phone is ringing, people are talking, the inbox keeps updating – new email, new email, new email. I am staring at a computer screen and the little black letters begin to blur into each other.

Finally, the day is done, and I walk out into the busy downtown core. The air is crisp and I hurry along the pavement. It takes almost a dozen blocks before I can hear my own voice. My thoughts are my own again and the world of work begins to slowly fade. I walk to the rhythm of my heart beat and suddenly notice things that only moments ago were lost in the periphery. I see all of the contrasting colours playing out along the horizon as the sun slowly begins to set. I see the definition in the trees whose bare branches are stretching upwards yet curved together. I begin to detach from my identity as an office worker. I begin to feel like myself again.

We spend so many days and hours (and weeks, and months, and years) locked up in the grind of work that it’s easy to forget where work ends and you begin. It all begins to add up and it seemingly takes longer and longer to refocus my mind at the end of the week. It takes longer just to get free.

I wonder – do others feel this way?

I daydream about the day when I will be the architect of my life. I will design my own schedule and carve out a piece of the world just for me.

In this dream, I’m obsessed. I’m fixated and preoccupied by this one simple word, these five beautiful letters: create. It’s a word that seems so full of promise. It invites you to imagine and inspires you to magic.

I’m in love with this idea of creating your day, your world, your life. I’m inspired by all of the people around me creating art in everyday things. From hair styles, to fashion, to website design, the blogosphere and beyond – all these moments making up a beautifully imagined landscape.

And so I write. I develop story ideas in quiet moments. I dictate the next piece in my mind while I walk to work. I run dialogue in my head. I read (a lot). I study and learn new things (even when middle English is intimidating). I take photographs of the things that inspire me. I have pieces of my dream all over my apartment. I stay focused and try to build my life, one chapter at a time. I record my progress to measure myself against. And most importantly, I don’t lose sight of what I want to create.

I remind myself that our time here is limited – and I don’t want to waste one more minute in regret or stuck in the mindset that it’s too late to start. Life is not a dress rehearsal. This is it. As the loss of others reminds us, this is the only time we have.