The Ordinary Is The Point

Your Creative Life Lives in the In-Between

We all know the adage “Don’t compare your behind-the-scenes to someone else’s highlight reel.”

It’s almost a cliché at this point. But as artists and creators, we still build our lives around chasing peak moments. The show, the project, the stage, the red carpet, the video going viral. We put these benchmarks out in front of us like they are the whole point. Then we organize our sense of meaning around pursuing them, even when we know that this kind of day in and day out “success” is unrealistic and unsustainable.

Those peaks are a fraction of the experience. The ordinary is the actual life.

And if you do not learn to love the ordinary, you will never feel satisfied when the extraordinary shows up, because the extraordinary is rare by definition. It is never going to be most of your days.

WAITING FOR THE BIG MOMENT

I used to think my life would start when the big thing happened.

When I first moved to Los Angeles, my days were monotonous. I was working at Starbucks. I was beating the pavement. I was doing the thing a lot of people do when they move to a big city with a big dream, living in that waiting room energy, hoping something would happen.

Then something did.

I booked Glee, and it felt like I got shot out of a cannon. I went from a very ordinary existence to suddenly being inside a world I had only dreamed of. And I remember thinking, “This is my life now. This is what it’s always going to be.”

For a couple years it really did feel like that. There were slow stretches, sure, but every few weeks something would happen. New opportunity. New door. Then a freaking world tour! It was an ongoing sense of: “I cannot believe I am here.”

That period changed my life and it still opens doors to this day.

But that peak ended, and by 2014, things went back to ordinary very quickly and I fell into a deep depression. I felt like I failed to sustain this new normal. I failed to continue operating at the heights. I went back to my normal life and, in that time, it felt like failure.

It took a long stretch of time to unlearn this way of viewing what is the BULK of my life.

THE GIFT OF THE VALLEY

For a long time, I treated the valley like a place you are supposed to escape. Like being “in between” meant I was failing, stalled, or doing something wrong.

In 2025, I got something I have not had much of in recent years. Time. Time to build habits and routines. Time for quiet. Time to think. Time to experience life as a daily rhythm.

Not hustle culture. Not some toxic grind. Just the truth that most days are repetitive. Most days are not glamorous. Most days are not proof of anything.

But that monotony gave me something I did not realize I needed. It gave me the chance to rebuild my baseline, reorient myself, and get mentally and physically healthier. It also prepared me, not just for the next opportunity, but for the life that has to exist underneath any opportunity.

THE PEAK IS NOT MEANT TO BE SUSTAINABLE

As artists, we attach meaning to rare moments. We look at other creators and we see the highlight reel, and we think they must feel the fullness of all their effort paying off in this one shining moment.

Even when we know social media is curated, we still make this quiet mistake.

“Yeah, yeah, I know it is a highlight reel. But if that were me, I would appreciate it. I would really own it.”

And to some extent, sure. When I get to work on awesome things, I am genuinely stoked. I love it. I do appreciate it. I get to live the dream.

But here’s the truth that’s hard to swallow as artists.

Extraordinary things become ordinary very quickly.

That is not a cynical thought. It is just how humans work. The dream becomes normal if you live it long enough.

The thing your past self would lose their mind over becomes the most normal Tuesday you can imagine.

So if I cannot love the ordinary now, I will not love it later. I will just keep moving the goalposts.

THE RESET MOMENT

I had a moment recently where I was sitting at home. My cat was next to me. My wife was on the couch. We were watching a movie. Nothing was happening. But there was a profound sense of peace and belonging.

I remember thinking…

“I am living in Los Angeles with someone I love, with pets I love, with friends and community I love and creating every single day.

We are watching a movie and we are at peace. So much of the world does not get peace, and I have it in this moment.”

I felt overwhelmed by gratitude, and it made me ask a question I do not think I was asking before.

How can I find this every day?

How can I appreciate the process?

How can I bring that gratitude to the ordinary?

You are not going to walk into every mundane task and feel bliss. You are not going to do laundry and suddenly become enlightened.

But if you treat 95 percent of your life like a waiting room, the 5 percent will not fix it.

If you are not present in the ordinary, the extraordinary cannot make up for it.

For years, I kept trying to punctuate my life with peaks, and I did not realize I was accidentally making the in-between feel like life was not happening yet.

But the valley is where I live. It is home. And it is good.

I don’t want my life to be a waiting room anymore.

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If you’d like to watch this in video form, check out my newest YouTube video here:

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