I read this article A Project of One’s Own by Paul Graham and really related to it. I’m always giving myself little projects, usually to scratch the creative itch my brain requires.

Many kids experience the excitement of working on projects of their own. The hard part is making this converge with the work you do as an adult. And our customs make it harder. We treat “playing” and “hobbies” as qualitatively different from “work”.

I love to play. I’m a kid at heart. Maybe that’s why I’ve always been drawn to the stage, to perform and act silly and make up things. It’s play.

For a project to feel like your own, you must have sufficient autonomy. You can’t be working to order, or slowed down by bureaucracy.

I worked for myself for years for this very reason, and in my current job I’ve fitted in so well precisely because they let me approach it in my own way, they allow me to have ownership (within some boundaries of course) and trust me to get it done.

The most important phase in a project of one’s own is at the beginning: when you go from thinking it might be cool to do x to actually doing x. And at that point high standards are not merely useless but positively harmful.

I haven’t worked on my creative projects for some time. I have a number of ideas but there is all sorts of thoughts and fears keeping me from doing. I need to remember to play, to enjoy, to not have to force a hobby to be financially productive (thanks, capitalism).

Remember that careless confidence you had as a kid when starting something new? That would be a powerful thing to recapture.