Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be.

All human beings are creative. The more we can accept and welcome that fact, the more normal our own creativity can become. If it is "normal,", then it can be shared with everyone. If it can be shared with everyone, then there is lots of help available to us when we get discouraged. We don't feel inspired, far from it, but we begin anyway and something in the act of beginning seems to jump-start a flow of ideas. In cozy retrospect, we can call such ideas "inspiration," but as they occur they are far more workaday. One thing seems to lead to another and another, and before we know it an "inspired" day's work has transpired. The only genuinely inspired part of that day was the very beginning when we decided to accept the Nike slogan, "Just do it."

The journey is filled with ups and downs. Don't confuse the two as ever being everlasting. Get up everyday and apply yourself, be authentic, trust your instincts and know that the more you apply yourself the better you get day by day. The day you are waiting for is the day you want to give up, that is when you MUST keep going. That's the barrier between normal and greatness.

Art is not about thinking something up. It is about the opposite — getting something down. The directions are important here. If we are trying to think something up, we are straining to reach for something that's just beyond our grasp, "up there, in the stratosphere, where art lives on high ..." When we get something down, there is no strain. We're not doing; we're getting. Someone or something else is doing the doing. Instead of reaching for inventions, we are engaged in listening. Art is an act of tuning in and dropping down the well. Is is as though all the stories, painting, music, and performances in the world live just under the surface of our normal consciousness. Like an underground river, they flow through us as a stream of ideas that we can tap down into. As artists, we drop down the well into the stream. We hear what's down there and we act on it — more like taking dictation that anything fancy having to do with art.

Growth is an erratic forward movement: two steps forward, one step back. Remember that and be very gentle with yourself. A creative recovery is a healing process. You may slide backward. This is normal. Growth occurs in spurts. You will lie dormant sometimes. Do not be discouraged. Think of it as resting. Very often, a week of insights will be followed by a week of sluggishness. The Morning Pages will seem pointless. They are not. What you are learning to do, writing them even when you are tired and they seem dull, is to rest on the page. This is very important. Marathon runners suggest you log ten slow miles for every fast one. The same holds true for creativity.

Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

In striving to clear the way for our creative flow, we must look at our work habits very clearly. We may not think we overwork until we look at the hours we put in. We may think our work is normal until we compare it with a normal forty-hour week. One way to achieve clarity about our time expenditures is to keep a daily checklist and record of our time spent. Even an hour of creative work/play can go a long way toward offsetting the sense of workaholic desperation that keeps our dreams at bay. Because workaholism is a process addiction (an addiction to a behavior rather than a substance), it is difficult to tell when we are indulging in it. An alcoholic gets sober from abstaining from alcohol. A workaholic gets sober by abstaining from overwork.

Trusting our creativity in new behavior for many of us. It may feel quite threatening initially, not only for us but also for our intimates. We may feel — and look — erratic. This is a normal part of getting unstuck, pulling from the muck that has blocked us. It is important to remember that at first flush, going sane feels just like going crazy. There is a recognizable ebb and flow to the process of recovering our creative selves. As we gain strength, so will some of the attacks of self-doubt. This is normal, and we can deal with these stronger attacks when we see them as symptoms of recovery.

I figure this is my time — to relax, be with my family and have a normal life.

Waiting for art to be easy, we make it hard. We take our emotional temperature and find ourselves below normal, lacking in resolve. We would do it, we know we could do it, but we decide to wait until the doing of it is more effortless. In other words, we put ourselves in a passive position relative to our art. We want something outside of ourselves, the wind of inspiration, to blow our way and then we will get at it. The truth is that getting at it is what makes getting at it easier.

1. If you are choking on an ice cube, simply pour a cup of boiling water down your throat. Presto! The blockage will instantly remove itself.

2. Avoid cutting yourself slicing vegetables by getting someone else to hold while you chop.

3. Avoid arguments with the Mrs. about lifting the toilet seat by using the sink.

4. For high blood pressure sufferers: simply cut yourself and bleed for a few minutes, thus reducing the pressure in your veins. Remember to use a timer.

5. A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you from rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button.

6. If you have a bad cough, take a large dose of laxatives -- then you will be afraid to cough.

7. You only need two tools in life: WD-40 and duct tape. If it doesn't move and should, use the WD-40. If it shouldn't move and does, use the duct tape.

8. Remember: Everyone seems normal until you get to know them.

Creativity is our true nature; blocks are an unnatural thwarting of a process at once as normal and as miraculous as the blossoming of a flower at the end of a slender green stem.

Renewing our social/emotional dimension does not take time in the same sense that renewing other dimensions does. We can do it in our normal everyday interactions with other people. But it definitely requires exercise. We may have to push ourselves because may of us have not achieved the level of Private Victory and the skills of Public Victory necessary.

Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for — in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.