There’s something you want to do.

Something you want to make.

A thing nobody has ever seen before.

A thing that will never exist unless you create it, not in the form it takes in your mind.

But you’re not making it.

You don’t have the time. You rise before dawn, get out the door, stop at the gym to rush through your workout on your way to the job, fight traffic for an hour or more, spend your day solving other people’s problems, fight traffic again on the way home. Then it’s supper, and more work, or maybe housework, or you spend a couple of hours with your family, or at events you attend together or separately. There’s more to do than you can possibly get done in the time you have, and by the time you’ve done the things you can do today, you don’t have the energy or the brain-power left to create the thing you want to make.

That’s real, and it’s life, and some days it feels a little insulting to hear the self-help gurus tell you to just switch off the TV for an hour and get your stuff done. Because you probably didn’t spend an hour watching TV, or if you did it was lying in bed, exhausted, trying not to think about having to get up and do it all again before the sun comes up tomorrow.

And, to be honest, it’s easier not to. Easier to let other people’s priorities become your own, easier to just do what is expected of you rather than creating something that never existed. Because what if it doesn’t really need to exist? What if you spend the time it takes to create your thing, and it’s not good enough? What if somebody takes your thing, and makes it five percent better, and sells to Amazon or Facebook or Starbucks for a hundred million dollars?

Worse yet–what if you make it, and nobody cares? Nobody notices?

Meanwhile, there’s dirty laundry all over the house, the kitchen is a mess, and the dogs need supper and baths. And you still have to finish that report by tomorrow.

Those things are real, and here, and now. They need to be done, and you’re probably the one who has to do them, and getting them done will make your family’s lives easier right now.

And your thing will still be there, tomorrow, or one day when you’re not so busy. It will lurk there, right behind your eyeballs, waiting patiently until you have the time to bring it into the world.

Until it’s not, of course. Until your busy-ness kills that part of your soul where the ideas live, or you run smack out of time.

I can’t tell you how to make time for your thing. Lord knows I’ve made little enough time for my own these last couple of years.

But if it’s worth doing–and I think it is, yours and mine both–maybe it’s just as worthy of your time and energy as the laundry or the dishes or another hour getting that report just right.