Self Discipline

If A + B = everything, then A must = creativity, and B must = discipline.

That is my definition of having it all.

It was not always though, I thought creativity would trump all back when I was 14. There were a few people that contributed to the outcome though, the first was Paul McDermott.
It was Paul McDermott that shattered an illusion I had. Being regarded through most of primary school as funny, and continuing onto high school and having never planned or prepared anything in my life, I was woefully dissillusioned as to what true comedy was. I had assumed that a pro comedian (like I shamefully thought Paul McDermott was at the time) was pulling every witticism off the cuff, all improvised, spawned by his brilliant brain.
But Bryce and I discovered his old discarded script on the abandoned set of Good News Week. We both took it pretty hard, we found out then that not only was Paul McDermott scripted, he had a team of writers telling him what to say. This shattered everything I thought a comedian was, a comedian I had thought doesn't sit and read other peoples jokes.
It was revealed to me by an insider and looking back at it, what children we must have seemed that even brilliant Comics like Roy & HG were scripted and rehersed their timing down to the second.
Later Bryce and I entered Raw Comedy as a comedy duo, to his credit Bryce was wise enough to want to prepare some material, but I thought it would be funnier if we were spontaneous and refused. And stage death was pretty fucking awful that night.
I learnt that you really don't just get up on stage and jokes start coming to you. Come to think of it, just about anything funny I've ever said or possibly written I had thought of long before I said it. For me planning and scripting was actually natural, the talent lay in recognizing the opportunities to say something funny.

The second person was Mr. Parker. As much as I disliked Mr. Parker's lifestyle and value system, when he took over cross country at my highschool and stopped it from being about fun but a serious training program, I started having a lot more fun.
I would never have expected it, but if anyone ever introduced me to self discipline, it was him.
After he showed up and ran a program, and set goals and pushed every participant, I actually noticed my own improvement, and ended up not only attending training, but running on my own time.
I think the essence of that was that in the first instance I enjoyed cross country for a reason in the first place, and having it as a fun informal club really didn't add anything but the frustration of not getting any better at it.
Once structure was introduced I enjoyed it a lot more, because what should have been assumed to be fun was the running itself, not the way the running was managed.
And as I got better at running, I enjoyed it more too.

The third was my art teacher Vicky, whom upon replacing the somewhat unpopular art teacher that preceded her, proceeded to down all our art, bin it and paint over our class murals.
Why? Because it wasn't up to standard. We'd been aiming too low and it wasn't the standard that when displayed on the wall would inspire us to do better.
This was delivered in a terse little speech. I thought we had lost one bitch only to be replaced by a mega bitch. Vicky ended up being one of the best teachers I'd ever had.
Because it was more interesting to do things much better. It was more inspiring to actually look at art history, and the best examples of each movement before doing a piece than just charging into a 'fun' egalitarian project where everyone's work gets displayed.

So it was over the years, someone who detested discipline as a crutch for small minds, and idolised pure versatile spontanious intelligence, learnt that discipline is actually essential.
SO it is with all things.