Inspiration is for amateurs.  Professionals—those who make legit bad-assery occur with regularity—are simply people who show up and do the work. The boring, hard, complicated, exasperating work. Professionals don’t wait for Inspiration to work…they work until they create Inspiration from dust and ashes of ideas.

If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great idea or waiting for lightning to strike, you’ll spend the rest of your life on the couch.

So get to work. Once you start working, ideas, failures, and triumphs push you along until you’re actually creating Inspiration, not waiting for it. And in doing so, you’ll realize Inspiration was unnecessary to begin with.

[Many thanks to the kind people who pointed out that this post strikes similarities to a Chuck Close quote.  I am—and remain—totally inspired by who he is.  I read his words and it stirred the desire to write my thoughts on Inspiration.  My apologies for not attributing inspirational credit to him, but you can find his full quote where I first discovered it HERE.  The similarities in words in like “do the work” and “waiting for lightening to strike” and “inspiration is for amateurs” were never intended to take credit for his words, but, rather, a distinct reflection of the verbiage I use with regularity, which blurred the lines of attributing credit.  And this was a mistake.  To those I’ve offended, I apologize.  To those who’ve extended support and grace, thank you.]