My muse is fickle.

Ever since I was very small, I worked with inspiration. I would hear a voice in my head whisper a poem to me, and I would write it down. My history of creation was always an inconsistent one, but by the time I was half-way through high school, I had over 200 poems written. Granted, half of them were your typical angsty teenager fare—I want to say a good 50 involve cigarettes or roses as a motif…don’t judge me—but they helped me develop my style. Of course, this all depended on whether inspiration hit at all.

As of late, I’ve been trying to force myself to create daily, whether I work on my short story, write a single line of a poem, some character dialogue, a love letter, or anything. The brain is a muscle, and it can only really channel my muse when the blood is pumping. Despite my best efforts, sometimes I will be either too busy out in the world or pre-occupied reblogging my life away on Tumblr. That doesn’t mean I’m not chiding myself for not writing—the days I don’t create—I try and make up for it double the next morning or I grumble to myself, brew some green tea, and try to suck up the fact that I wasted a day.

Last semester, during the last meeting of NYU’s Poetry Club, I took my writers to the famous Poet’s House on the Hudson River. The sun was streaming through clear windows, the setting was intimate, the poetry collection was expansive; I’m hard-pressed to think of a nicer afternoon, despite the long walk from the station. To mark the occasion, we brought in Loren Kleinman, a poet and writer with a large social media following. She told us, amidst readings and critiques and laughter, that whenever we are not writing, we are thinking about writing.

It’s true; the job is 24/7, and that’s exhausting, but the mind of an artist is an extraordinary machine (any Fiona Apple fans out there? No? Just me?), pumping the brain full of fumes and laughing gas and oxygen and the same damn command: create, create, create! Whether we answer the call is another matter altogether.

I’m here to tell you, all of you who have been blessed and cursed with the inclination to create, that it’s okay to plan on creating and then not coming through. It’s okay to write down your ideas and feel tired. It’s okay to take a day off creation, no matter how pestering your muse is. It's okay to not be able to channel anything, or to create something less than satisfying. It's all improvements, all steps toward a "Eureka" moment.

This week, The Odyssey at NYU takes you inside the mind of the artist and the little pleasures they cultivate to stay sane: walking by a lemonade stand, looking at sunflowers on a subpar day, and the troubling promise of “forevers.” Lofty high art aside, we remind you that getting lost in your mind is okay as long as you stay awake to what’s going on in this world: interns are still going unpaid and grumbling while they get coffee, Millennials aren’t as informed as they could be, and society still cannot accept that women have nipples.

My point is the following: when you’re not creating, look at the world around you. Learn, inform yourself, arm yourselves with knowledge. With the mind in constant motion, your muse can’t help but come forth, and your creations will not only be beautiful, but meaningful.

Thank you for coming to us, whether to entertain or inform yourself. And remember, with our art and with our choices, we can be a generation that truly brings a positive change. So create, friends! Just don’t exhaust those beautiful brains; sometimes a micronap is necessary, no matter how much you think you don’t need it.

E.R. Pulgar

Editor-in-Chief, The Odyssey at NYU