Work and Joy!

With any of these creative projects a weird calculus sort of kicks in.  You do the work. You enjoy doing the work. There's work and joy.

You take on new challenges, the work gets more intense, the work deepens. So it's incrementally harder to get to that joy level. Your perfectionism and professionalism dictates that the joy only comes when the work goes extremely well.

You shoot for the perfect performance, the perfect show. You shoot for transcendence every time. So anything short of perfect or amazing is sort of disappointing, unfulfilling.  It's a real trap. It's a way to crush the joy.

And the work without the joy is just a job. Still, you can't will things to be amazing, and joyful; you can't just conjure it up, those things descend like the rain, or like sunshine.  You must find the joy in the work and not the end result. You do the work and hope for the best.

You focus on doing the work. That is the joy. You can't forget. It's sort of a Zen thing.  The Work is the Joy. The rest is a sideshow.