How Could I Not?
On making things in the silence and what people are really asking when they say "I don't know how you do it". If you've ever made something brave and heard nothing back, this one's for you.
You know the look.
Someone watches your show, reads your piece, listens to your song, and then says with genuine bewilderment in their eyes: “I don’t know how you do it. I could never make something out of nothing like that.”
And you smile and say thank you and move on. But something about it sits a little sideways.
These are often people who by every conventional measure are far more successful than me. Custom homes. Robust 401ks. Vacation chalets. Big Tech wealth from Google and Meta and Apple that has created a financial stratosphere I will never personally inhabit.
They attend my concerts. Watch my plays. Lurk on my content. And many of them will never once say “that was fun.” Not a comment, not a text, not a simple acknowledgment that they were there and it moved them. The consumption without contribution thing is real and it is its own particular kind of lonely.
But the bewilderment is genuine. Creation, to them, is mysterious. Almost magical. Something that happens to other people.
And I find that heartbreaking. Because it doesn’t have to be.
What They’re Actually Asking
When someone says “I don’t know how you do it” they are not asking about technique. They’re not asking about process or discipline or where I find the time.
They’re asking about meaning.
They’re asking, without knowing they’re asking, how to access a kind of fulfillment that their custom home and their robust 401k and their vacation chalet have not provided. They’re standing in front of something I made and feeling a hunger they can’t quite name.
And to that I say: it takes guts. It takes faith to put yourself out into the world and say I made this. It takes a particular kind of courage when nine out of ten people in your life never mention it. Ever.
My life is built on transforming nothing into something. I’m moderately successful, not to any level of critical acclaim, but my creative practice sustains my spirit, supports a life with children, soothes my body from an immune condition, and calms a mind prone to hypomania. Each thing I make is simply another pearl on a continuously growing necklace.
Phil Stutz talks about this in the documentary Stutz. He calls it the String of Pearls. A line, then a circle, line, then a circle. Each circle is one action. And here’s the key: every action has the same value. Getting out of bed and doing the thing that day. Not sizing up the effort or ranking its importance. Just putting the next pearl on the string. That’s it. That’s the whole practice.
How You Actually Start
Creation isn’t magic. It’s practice. It’s showing up day after day even when inspiration feels like it moved to another zip code. It’s making something small and then making it again but slightly better.
Start with imitation. Copy what moves you until your own voice emerges in the spaces between influences. Give yourself permission to make terrible first drafts. Every master creator once made beginner work. Every single one.
Begin with five minutes today. Make something, anything. A doodle, a paragraph, a melody hummed into your phone. Tomorrow do it again. String enough of those moments together and you’ll discover what every creator knows eventually: the act itself generates energy. Creating doesn’t deplete you. It fills you up.
The world needs more creators. Not just of art but of solutions, connections, and new ways of seeing. The courage to make something from nothing might be the most important thing any of us can develop in an age of abundance that somehow still leaves so many people feeling completely empty.
So when someone looks at me with that bewildered expression and says “I don’t know how you do it,” I want to look back and say:
How could I not?
My Current Obsessions A little treat for making it to the end.
📖 Reading: True and False Magic by Phil Stutz
Watching: Stutz on Netflix (Jonah Hill’s Documentary on his psychiatrist, don’t miss it!
“The [String of Pearls] is probably the most important thing, motivationally, you could teach yourself. You just draw a string of pearls. There’s a line, then a circle, line, then a circle. Each one of those circles equals one action. But here’s the thing. Every action has the same value. I am the person that puts the next pearl on the string. That’s it. Just getting out of bed and doing what you have to do that day and not putting, like, a size value on the effort. They’re all the same size.”
Phil Stutz, Stutz
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