You’re an artist, but you realize your body of professional work is smaller than you’d like. You need to make some full illustrations to put in your portfolio, and the time is now.

First, you need inspiration, so you start by scrolling on Pinterest. If you end up meaninglessly scrolling for 2 hours because you got distracted, don’t stress! That’s part of the process! It happens to the best of us. And honestly, that’s enough work to warrant a break, so it’s totally fine if you stop to rest… for the rest of the day. There’s always tomorrow, anyway.

But then tomorrow comes, and you think that maybe Pinterest wasn’t a good idea. Just start sketching! Something’s sure to come to mind. You come up with some ideas, but none of them are really interesting, and you need reference pictures for some of the poses, so you end up on Pinterest again. You lose another 2 hours. You take another day-long break. You brush it off for tomorrow.

But third time’s the charm. You crack your knuckles, pull out your pencil, and stare at your basically blank page. Huh. You could’ve sworn you did more than that yesterday. It doesn’t matter! Today’s the day. And as it turns out, it is! By what could’ve only been a stroke of luck, you came up with an idea that you actually like, and finalized the sketch. The page is more eraser marks than pencil marks, and you were practically pulling out your hair trying to make the sketch look good, but you did it. Starting the rest of the drawing is so daunting though, and really, you’ve already worked enough for the day. This can be a problem for Tomorrow-You.

Turns out, Tomorrow-You is very mad at Yesterday-you for that decision. Now you have to pick up their slack. Choose what art supplies you want to use and set up your materials. But… in order to do that, you have to clean your desk, and your desk is really messy. That’s, like, a lot of work. Maybe you’re hungry! Yeah, you’re hungry. You can’t start cleaning now, you need some energy first! You make a snack. You eat the snack. You walk back to your desk, and you force yourself to clean it.

And now, after everything, while you’re dipping your paint, or sharpening your colored pencils, you remember that you actually like art. You chose to do this, and now that you’re in your workflow, you realize why all over again. No matter how much of a chore it may feel like, it’s still your passion. You like seeing your progress with every artwork, and you like creating something that you can be proud of. That doesn’t mean that you won’t procrastinate on the next illustration, but you’ll know that it’s worth the struggle in the end.

Just maybe avoid Pinterest next time.