Creative Friction Part 1. The Problem is the Landing

I’m starting a short series on Creative Friction: the gap between wanting to make something and actually getting it made.

It’s for anyone building a room, a habit, a project, a body of work, or just trying to get one stubborn idea out of their head and into the world.

Part 1 is about the thing I keep running into myself:

The problem is not always the idea, the gear, the room or the plan.

Sometimes the problem is the landing

This is a post about overwhelm, procrastination and juggling.

I have my awesome home studio setup. It is working really well.

I have songs written and half-recorded. I have ideas percolating. I have gear ready to use. I have the room. I have the plan.

What I don’t always have, and what always seems elusive, even when I nail it for a while, is the time to actually SIT DOWN AND DO IT.

And it comes from a few different places. Some obvious. Some sneaky.

My day job: I currently have assignments to mark, grades to finalise for the end of term, and the next term of teaching already creeping over the horizon like a polite academic swamp monster.

My side-hustle business: I have 3 client projects on the go. One is well under control, but the other 2 need to get, this week, to the beautiful magical SEND INVOICE stage.

My other side hustles: I have this Skool group, plus a small sales business I’m trying to build, because apparently one side-hustle was too emotionally sensible.

My bands: I’m in 3 of them, including the one that plays the songs I’m trying to record in the room. So there are rehearsals a couple of times a week, and on the weekend there was a gig where 2 of them played.

The dogs are looking at me like: “Why haven’t we been out yet? It’s not raining TODAY.”

And then there’s the weird part.

The studio is not the problem.

The gear is not the problem.

The songs are not the problem.

The problem is the landing.

It is getting from “I want to record” to “I am sitting in the chair, the session is open, the guitar is plugged in, and I am doing one small useful thing.”

That gap is where a lot of creative projects quietly die.

Not because we don’t care. Not because we’re lazy. Not because the idea was bad.

But because life keeps throwing open tabs at us, and the creative work gets pushed into some imaginary perfect future block of time where we are rested, calm, focused, hydrated, inspired and somehow not needed by any humans, dogs, clients, students or unpaid invoices.

So this week I’m trying something simple.

Not “finish the album. Not “record all the songs. Not “become a disciplined studio goblin by Thursday.”

Just this:

Open the room. Open one DAW project. Do something on it.

It could be fixing one vocal line. Recording one guitar part. Naming and saving the session properly. Bouncing a rough mix to listen to in the car on the way to the dog park (see what I did there?) Writing the next lyric. Deleting the terrible take that has been sitting there judging me.

One small landing.

Because maybe the answer is not always finding more time.

Maybe sometimes it is making the threshold smaller, so the creative work can actually survive the week.

In the next post i'll discuss the "perfect block of time" that I am looking for in more detail (hot tip: it likely doesn't exist withou specific artificial conditions).

What is one tiny “landing step” you could do on your own project today?

2 comments

Creative Friction Part 1. The Problem is the Landing