today’s ride 🚋

i've been thinking about where creativity actually lives lately, mainly because the other day, i wrote a verse for a new song on my phone's notes app waiting in the walgreen’s pharmacy line, and i completely did not hear the pharmacy tech say next probably a half-a-dozen times until they said (very gruffly) excuse me… NEXT.

that was maybe hour four of a day that also contained eleven messages from the 200+ person volleygroup i run asking when’s the next run?, forty-five minutes of obs troubleshooting for a twitch stream later that weekend that maybe six people would watch, a load of abandoned laundry in the dryer waiting for me like 👁👄👁, and band practice crammed into whatever two-hour window a gaggle of adult calendars can manage. somewhere in there i also think i bought groceries, but i genuinely could not tell you what items i threw in the cart.

when i was in grad school in my 20’s, i used to think creativity always needed a runway to take flight — a clear afternoon, dishes done, my desk facing a window with foliage awaiting my musings to fall into my notebook or typed away in my laptop. that luxury hasn't existed in years now, if it ever did, and if i spent my days waiting for it, i don’t think i’d have actively created anything at all in the last decade. when you hit your 30’s in a world where the value of time is premium, but the amount you have feels ever-limited, you don’t stop making things. you do, however, need to keep making things that are hostage to a version of the schedule you create.

i’ve been trying to squeeze my creative energies in the margins of my life these days. while it would be nice to dish out hours and chunks of my day to just creative work, on top of the regular maintenance duties of life (laundry, cooking, cleaning, etc.), i foolishly have decided that i wanna do it all!!! let’s take the volleyball group for an example. running 200 people out of a group chat started for nine friends uses the exact same muscle as finishing a bridge that finally clicks, just slower and with way more scheduling conflicts. it still requires patience, planning, and the payoff is the building of connection and community. sometimes that even turns into a song! (shoutout my “holstein” lovers!) the stream is that muscle again, stretched a little less roughly, and it’s mostly just me and the regulars. no algorithm is ever going to reward any of that because my stream schedule is not “consistent” enough but sometimes the only time i get to hop on and play a game is when the air fryer is running or the washer is churning.

when you have a job, a partner, pets, friends, hobbies, and passions, you don’t get The Block of Time™ to devote to your crafts anymore. you write the verse standing in line or you don't write it at all. the block has to be broken apart and scattered across the milieu of your day.

i used to think i'd know i'd made it as a creative person once i finally had time out of school. but since i was wrong about the time i would end up having, i just started doing it “wrong” compared to the ideal version of what i thought a process should look like. and somehow that's been working. i still got a good chunk of my 30’s left, maybe i’ll figure it out. if i don’t, that’s 40’s nish’s problem. 😁

from our last haiku, none of you said… anything!

and hey, that’s okay! marketing isn’t for everyone! (which is ironic because that’s what so many marketers are TRYING to be…)

i know with a small audience — whomst i love dearly — we won’t always get people calling in. i still appreciate the silent readers and also have immense gratitude to anyone who has ever left a comment or popped in the inbox.

maybe i’ll just turn this into ad-space instead… hey chili’s, you up? 🌶

(send in your questions to [email protected] and maybe your question will be the star of the next newsletter!)

this week’s song is "while we’re young” by extremely underrated indie spectulars, ocean is theory, once rockin’ out from atlanta.

i am not a psycho who’s gonna be like if you aren’t on that #grindsetmindset like me, then you’re not doing ENOUGH! some of you have exactly the right amount going on, and that's its own kind of enviable. this is more of a PSA for anyone who’s had the itch to do something and keeps putting it off to just… start it. start wherever you're standing. it’s better than letting the flame get snuffed.

if you don’t want to send in a question for deep dish with nish but still have thoughts, comments, concerns for my mental well-being after seeing this existential spiral caught on keyboard, talk to me! i love mail, even when it’s ‘e’.

liked what you read? tell someone about it! that beats me vageuposting into the void trying to fight an algorithm! 🤖

as always though, thanks for being here. 🙏

is this little bit not enough?

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