Creative Confidence FOUR

Mr. Roberts, MR. ROBERTS. Yes, hi, HEY. 

Gonna need you to calm down sir.

Take a deep breath, in-out, yeah, perfect.

Not that you don’t have every reason to be pumped.

I won’t lie, I’m impressed.
But I also feel that your talk implies an ease and haste that doesn’t help your cause.

I got your point on how these types of things need to simply be done,
without too much thought or planning,
so that you don’t get stopped by things like planning and details. 

However, I don’t think there’s any shame in admitting you’ve put hard work into something. You don’t have to make it all sound like something you almost singlehandedly threw together on a whim.

Like the guy on a sitcom who’s trying to impress a girl, so he goes up to the roof of some abandoned building and slaves away for hours building the disparaged site into an urban wonderland of romantic wonder. I.e, trees in bloom, quirky vases filled with rare African flowers that only bloom for five hours a year, lawn of lush grass, that is of course draped in a sprawling hand stitched quilt and covered in silk pillows, then nestled in the center is a heart shaped hand carved palette made from a tree in the forest where she grew up,  sitting on top is an array of her favorite foods from the small Chinese bakery in her hometown that’s five states away, then hundreds of violet colored candles cover the rim of the building, and twinkling lights strung into an overhead canopy, accented by the occasional Chinese lantern.

That weekend he approaches the female, “Hey, I, uh, a pigeon stole my phone. 

And flew off with it. I think it took it to the roof. 

I have crippling fear of technology stealing foul. 

Want to come up with me. Please.”

Girl: “……That doesn’t make any sens-“

Guy: “NO PLEASE ROOF NOW ME WITH GO WILL YOU?”

Girl: “I don’t think I feel comfort-“

*Guy grabs girl’s hand and drags her to roof*

They get to the top, and she finds herself in the date night Eden.

She’s astounded, surprised, and impressed, as she turns to him, 

“This is amazing. It’s perfect. It’s beautiful. How did you pull this off? 

My god, I can’t believe you went to this much trouble. It must’ve taken you hours?”

Guy: *causal shrug* 

“Oh, what this ? Nah, just threw it together in five minuets.  

Didn’t even really try. Zero percent effort.  Easy.”
Yeah.

I understand that your efforts weren’t planned to the last detail.
That you embarked on all these tasks with a simplistic determination,
and general disregard for framework.
But I know it wasn’t that easy.
Don’t lie.
“Oh yeah, we just threw up a hundred trees, painted some bike lanes, and built some tables, nbd lol”
WHAT.
I’m sorry, hold on.
Pause.

Let’s think about this for a second

You just casually found hundreds of trees.

Transported these trees.

Placed these trees.

Found wood for these tables.
Built them.
Painted them.
Set them up.
Bought gallons of paint.
Painted bike lanes down either side of a busy road.
Etc.
All last minute.
-Easy-

Nah, I’m calling bull.

Things like that take a lot of manpower.

A lot of money.
Dedicated people.
A certain amount of time, and planning.
And to play all that off as just something you did on a whim?
Sure, it makes you sound cool.
But, I’m willing to bet it also might scare off some of us who when we accurately estimate what
we’re capable of in our spare time, realize that we can’t do things to quite that level.
Now, that’s not to say that we can’t do some crazy awesome stuff.
Stuff we maybe wouldn’t even have dreamed of.
But still.

Basically. 

If a guy is standing on the top of mount Everest, bragging about how it was no big deal, 

took ten minuets, total accident really, didn’t even mean for it to happen, etc.
The people at the bottom might think, wow that was easy for him, I could do that. But they also might then start up the mountain and when it gets hard, feel discouraged that it was so easy for
whats-his-face, but they can’t seem to do it as quickly.
And that’s not a good feeling.
So if I could give some advice to the man on the mountain,
I’d say yeah. Tell your story. Make your journey seem approachable. Be encouraging.
But there’s nothing wrong with putting some hard work into something.
And letting people know that you did.
That way, those people at the bottom will be able to look up and think,
“He actually IS just like me. And if he can do it, so can I.”
Then they'll climb the mountain too.