The Dance Between Discipline and Delight

Currently, painting the outside of my house is consuming most of my waking thoughts, and a great deal of my time. All I want to be doing is painting. Everything else feels like a distraction.

The first glide of my brush and roller over the old exterior colour with the new puts me into a bliss state. It’s the height of satisfying! The dancing sweep of my arm immediately transforms the wall. What’s old is new. What’s dull and imperfect is bright and flawless.

It’s intoxicating.

I suspect it is absorbing me because it is a new beginning. I’m at the start of a project. I have that new shiny thing energy.

Meanwhile, I’ve dragged my feet with this chapter’s post. Sitting at a computer feels much too still—and much too not-painting!

And I know the above picture doesn’t make sense yet, but it will.

Finishing what we start

Starting something is the easy part. Finishing is another thing entirely.

Julia Cameron talks about compassion in Chapter 9 of The Artist’s Way, and I get it—really, I do. But if I’m honest, for me, it’s rarely shame or fear that keeps me from finishing things. It’s laziness. I’d love to let myself off the hook with a wave of gentle compassion, but sometimes, I just need to get up and get it done. Discipline is required.

But here’s the catch—discipline is not the long-game answer. Creativity and discipline are fraught lovers. For a while they dance beautifully, but eventually, it gets boring. Creativity loses its passion, and all discipline does is go through the motions. As Cameron puts it, “The discipline itself, not the creative outflow, becomes the point.”

So what else is needed?

Enthusiasm.

"Enthusiasm is an ongoing energy supply tapped into the flow of life itself," Cameron shares. It has to be about play, not work. But this is tricky, because when you don’t feel like playing anymore, what do you do? Give up?

Conversely, Steven Pressfield, in The War of Art, says, “The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.” It’s a salient point, but a bit too militant for me. I don’t think this approach is sustainable, unless it’s your grind and you’re relying on it to pay the bills.

Creating the right conditions

Cameron’s recommendation is to make creativity fun.

One thing I do to foster enthusiasm for writing (when house painting isn’t calling to me) is separate ‘work’ from ‘play’. I work on my desktop computer, and I play (i.e. write this blog) on my laptop. It helps shift my mindset. I write either early in the morning or at night—those liminal times, when the world is quiet.

In the morning, I make coffee, light a candle, and write before anyone else is up. In the evening, I reduce lighting to a lamp or two only, and some music. This week it’s been a lot of Miles Davis Quintet. These hours feel like a kind of platform 9¾—where creativity slips between the cracks of daily life. The veil thins. And something real comes through.

Creative abandon

It reminds me of being six. I remember this vividly because my school teacher that year was Mrs Trezise – every detail of her outfits always matched, down to her jewellery and nail polish, often black. I guess she would have been considered stylish, but all I remember about her is that she was cold and stern.

One day, Mum dropped me off late to school. The classroom was empty. I had the whole place to myself. I built a city out of wooden blocks—a metropolis covering the entire carpet in the middle of the classroom. I felt such a sense of freedom and unselfconscious abandon. It was absolute creative heaven.

Then the class returned.

Mrs T was furious I was there by myself. Meanwhile the kids kicked over my fantasy city. All that quiet joy destroyed in seconds. That moment has always stayed with me. I think it’s why I still treasure those hidden, unguarded moments—when time and space is all mine for the moulding.

Secret adventures

Cameron writes, "Our artist may rise at dawn to greet the typewriter or easel in the morning stillness. But this event has more to do with a child's love of secret adventure than with ironclad discipline."

Those early mornings and nights when I write—coffee in hand, candle lit, or jazz in the background—aren’t about being disciplined. They’re about entering a hidden world, slipping away from the noise into something sacred, playful, and free.

Adventures in clay

Just as writing has its rituals and rhythms, I’ve been discovering the same is true of working with clay.

It all started with a wheel throwing workshop I did with two friends — a birthday treat for our little trio, since all our birthdays fall within a few days of each other. It was playful, messy, and way harder than I imagined. The very first thing the instructor said was: “Practice detachment.” I smugly thought I wouldn’t need to. I was wrong!

One bowl collapsed in slow motion, slumping over like it had just given up on life. The other two were... special. Let’s say they have character. I call them my "special needs bowls"! Pottery, like any creative pursuit, is its own craft. It demands patience, repetition, and humility.

Inspired by the workshop we bought clay, glazes, a few tools, and started hand-building at home. Once a month we gather to drink tea, chat, and enjoy shaping clay into lumpy, bumpy creations. Hand building is great for beginner potters because the imperfections seem to work.

Failing again and again

But even with this acceptance I find that sometimes I’m in the flow and I’m happy with what my hands create, and other weeks are frustrating. A reminder that failure is always part of the process.

This week I made some coffee cups. Here they are in their raw, still wet form. But what you don’t see is that there were three attempts to get there. I kept having to scrunch the clay back into a ball and start again. “I don’t have my clay mojo today,” I lamented to my friends.

It’s tempting to stop at the collapse. To give up when enthusiasm starts to fade, things don’t flow, the creation in your hands looks like a demented mess. But skill takes work. On the fourth attempt I got it. Still far from mastery, but adequate.

Is mastery a dirty word?

But the concept of ‘mastery’ is pretty much the sister of ‘perfectionism’. A more worthy pursuit is probably becoming okay with failing.

There’s enthusiasm during the fun parts and discipline that carries you through at other times. Sometimes, if you're lucky, the two dance together. You’re deep in creating and suddenly you're lost in it. Not striving for mastery. Not chasing results. Just playing — and trusting the work to shape you back.

So, while house painting has competed for my attention, and enthusiasm hasn’t always shown up, it’s taken a little discipline—and a lot of reflection—to bring this chapter to you. In the end, I’ve enjoyed the process of contemplating the dualities of starting and finishing, enthusiasm and discipline, work and play, and mastery and failure.

I hope you've enjoyed reading it.

Are you a good finisher? Or is there something in your life whispering to be finished? Let me know.

Leonie x