When I was in elementary school, my family would gather all my used notebooks and exercise blocks, tear out the used pages, and bind the unused ones into a thick, collage-style notebook. This notebook was made of pages in relatively poor quality—thin, with instruction lines that annoyed me by guiding and limiting me at the same time. The good paper notebooks were expensive and scarce, so I practiced writing on the bad paper. When I was ready, if ever, I could use the good paper. I had to make sure it’d be perfect because the good paper was rare.

I kept this mentality ever since. The mentality of scarcity—believing something can only be released into the world when it’s “ready” and “perfect” because there are only so many chances to produce and share my work. I scribbled secretly in my cheap, poor-quality notebooks while my expensive, cloud-floating-feeling notebooks sat on the shelf. I typed words into my website and set the blogs to “private” so no one would discover my immature, stupid jabbering. If one person knew I was an aspiring imposter, that was one fewer person to love me when I was finally ready.

When will I and my work be “ready” so I don’t waste my precious resources and chances? I will never be ready. It will never be ready. This realization was once devastating.

Ideas come and go. Thoughts never come from nothing. Making space in your mind enables you to see abundance as the nature of your mind.

A scarcity mindset is like a bucket of water, while an abundance mindset is a lake. The bucket’s water doesn’t change, while the lake, though it appears still, has streams flowing in and out, constantly changing and transforming. Hopefully, you can see your creativity as a lake, not a bucket.

Writing on bad paper and good paper is simply writing. Paper is paper. It is your work, your production, your process that matters. And to our luck, creativity belongs to the things that are abundant, as long as your heart can make space for it.