Uncomfortable is probably a good thing

"I have lots of comfortable songs.  It's time to write some uncomfortable ones." -glynngm

If you're an artist, comfort zones suck.  Comfort zones mean you're relying on that which has already been done which means it's not as difficult to digest which means it's easier to ignore.  And if you're creating art that's easily ignored you might as well be making pancakes or baking cookies or writing a blog.

Seth Godin's latest book, Linchpin, has been challenging my thinking lately.  It contends that we all have the capability to be artists during our everyday lives and that being an artist means doing emotional labor as opposed to the busy work and manual labor that most of us fill our lives with.  The book covers way too many topics to try and even begin to summarize here, but I will say that one of the overall themes of the book relates to comfort zones and becoming complacent. Many of us have become complacent.  We have a job that we're not in love with, but it pays the bills and is easy enough to show up for so why worry about it?  Why challenge the status quo and take it upon ourselves to figure out a different path?  Why not just show up everyday, do what you're told, make a serviceable effort, be a cog in the machine, regurgitate a ready-made message, and collect a day's pay for a day's work?

I've been complacent for most of my life.  But Seth Godin's Linchpin is urging me to make moves and take advantage of opportunities and push boundaries and step outside of my comfort zones.  Because I don't want to just be a lemming anymore.  I have so much more to give and the desire to create art and share art and tell stories and perform emotional labor and go down a different path and work and fight tooth and nail for the life that I know I deserve.  We all have these desires and we all have the abilities to do it.  We just need to step outside of our comfort zones...

Now I need to go get to work on those uncomfortable songs...