So you’ve had an idea, and as far as you’re concerned, it’s one of the greatest ideas of all time.

Maybe you’ve decided to pen your very own album and chase record companies in search of fame. Maybe you’re gonna build a boat and sail around the world, because life’s only a gift you get once. Maybe you’ve decided that the best thing you can do with your life is build an enormous stainless steel spike and place it smack bang in the middle of your countries’ capital city.

This idea takes over your life, you feel fresh, invigorated, you have a new lease of life. The mirror shows you someone with a slightly more chiselled jaw and who is slightly less ginger than they were. Life is going to work itself out. At last.

You start work on your project. It turns out to be really easy, you get some really clever double entendres in your first song. You start to think, “I’m going to be bigger than Jesus, nobody has done that before!” You share what you’ve wrote so far to others, they love it! Your self made boat actually doesn’t sink when you test it out in the local lake, the strange looks you got from the old woman in the pink coat feeding the ducks at 6AM were worth it, after all, it’s not her lake. You go to sleep feeling warm and fuzzy, the world better look out – here you come! You wake up the next day and keep working perfectly on your lofty goal, you never get bored, or encounter problems with the design of your spike. This process repeats until the spike is done. You have enough money as a result of your project that you can now hire a body double to go to family functions instead of you, your sisters’ wedding wasn’t all that important anyway. Marriage also isn’t a thing you have to worry about, because it turns out that the ladies love a man that puts giant spikes in the middle of capital cities.

Either that or she loves your money – you should give her some, maybe she’ll dance on giant spike (not that) if you are generous with it.

Except this doesn’t actually happen. You can’t think of the killer line in your title song on the album, or you hit a design flaw in your boat. You get stuck and “think” about the problem for a bit. You gossip about the five day parties of yesteryear with an old college friend. You look out the window wistfully and stroke your chin, trying to find a solution, but fail. You then go into bed and stro… where were we?

Doubt sets in. Were the tests of my boat not good enough? Was the soul piercing and judgemental stare of that old woman at the lake, right?! Am I actually mad? Am I actually not really creative and instead going to have to settle on being the world’s sexiest accountant? How in the hell am I going to make money off of my giant city spike? Worse again, how am I going to make back the €4,000,000 I spent on it? (Yes that actually happened).

You decide to show more people what you made, for a second opinion. It doesn’t go well, and that’s an understatement. Your song about walruses gets laughed at because it supposedly doesn’t make any sense, you think the audience just didn’t get real music. You presented your master plan for the spike to a contractor – who roars you out of his office with line, “WHY THE FUCK DOES DUBLIN NEED A STUPID FUCKING SPIKE IN THE MIDDLE OF IT?”

he’s not getting invited to the grand opening then. his loss…

You get really down. You go to a dark place – where no creativity exists. No, not Amy Schumer’s joke writing desk! You’re just sad! So after you live off a sole diet of beans for a few days an inspiration suddenly comes from the blue, an acquaintance from long ago meets you on the street and tells you they heard of your ambition to set sail and thinks you’re really brave, although they decline your invite to join you on the voyage. Maybe you hear a song you haven’t heard in years and it really resonates, (LMFAO’s Party Rock Anthem was a real tear jerker) you find the missing line from your own century defining hit. Maybe you look up at the clouds and think, ‘if I built a really really big spike…’

The journey to finish your project draws closer, working on it becomes fluid and fast because you became much better with constant hours of practice. Things are finally enjoyable again. You don’t look out the window for inspiration, instead you look out of the window and fantasize about your now fabulous future. Fantastic.

Just as you touch the finish line, write the last words of the last line of the last song, self doubt returns. What if my first year English teacher was right? What if I actually have no demonstrable talent for writing, and I’m not as well read as I could be? Some family members joke about your ambitions, “who does Jack think he is? Building a massive spike in Dublin is a stupid waste of money.” You also inexplicably catch the bubonic plague. No. Not this time, you’ve been through this self doubt before, you can reach your goal. And you will. Besides, who else is going to make those flamethrowers, because they tweeted about it as a joke, but it turns out that people actually really wanted flamethrowers and it’s legal to buy them for some reason. Gotta give the people what they want… right? heh heh… flamethrowers…

The moral of this story is one that any self-respecting millionaire that insists on wearing a baseball hat indoors because it’s part of his brand and says things to the tune of, “you don’t need a college degree to be a success in life,” all the while having a shit eating grin and laughing at the statistical anomaly he is for dropping out of college and not ending up living with his parents until he was thirty, all because he found a niche in the market for flamethrowers, of all things, would know…

It goes like this, the creative process is one where you have to fail quite number of times before what you make becomes what you want it to be. The business people don’t tell you, what that failure could be like, or how hard that failure is to take for somebody who is as gifted at making stuff as you. Don’t quit. Do yourself justice, the hard times are where you prove yourself.

Now get out there and build that spike, you loveable rascal.