What does it really mean to practice patience—especially when life, creativity, or even a home repair puts you to the test? In this episode, I share candid lessons both from a year of waiting and from my 30 Bad Poems in 30 Days challenge: the struggle to slow down, the urge to keep producing, and why patience might be the most creative tool you can cultivate right now. Whether you’re wrestling with a stubborn project or just want inspiration for your own journey, this pep talk is for you.
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Transcript: Patience
Please note: This is an unedited transcript, provided as a courtesy, and reflects the actual conversation as closely as possible. Please forgive any typographical or grammatical errors.
Nancy Norbeck [00:00:06]:
Welcome to follow your curiosity, ordinary people, extraordinary creativity. Here’s how to get unstuck. I’m your host creativity coach, Nancy Norbeck. Let’s go. There’s an old adage that says that you might not wanna pray for patience because you’ll be given so many opportunities to learn and practice it along the way. And I, I don’t know about you, but in 2025 and in my particular situation, I feel like I am getting the lessons and patience, even if I did not specifically pray for them. Not only has this been a trying year for many people and for many reasons, but, I don’t know if I ever mentioned this before, but a year ago, roofers who were replacing insulation in my condo dropped an entire roll of it through my dining room ceiling. And it’s still not fixed through a series of bureaucratic adventures, things that had to be taken care of in a certain order, etcetera.
Nancy Norbeck [00:01:07]:
And so here I am in November 2025, learning a lot about patience. I’m Nancy Norbeck with this week’s Creative Pep Talk. And I just feel like patience is this thing that, you know, patience is a virtue it’s held up on that level, but also it’s just so stinking hard to learn. Right? And it’s important in creativity to be patient just as much as it is with, okay. First, I have to have the insurance company come out, and then I have to have this contractor visit, and then I have to take their this other thing before the contractor can do anything. And then I have to talk to the insurance company and wait to hear from the insurance company, and you lose a year that way. And, you know, it’s interesting to watch what happens in myself with that. And it’s also interesting to watch outside of me as I think we are all losing patience with things that are happening around us, whether they’re individual or whether they are societal or even global.
Nancy Norbeck [00:02:15]:
I think that it’s harder and harder to resist that call of impatience every day. Now I have been doing this project, the 30 bad poems in thirty days, And that is also bringing up some interesting patience things with me too, because I’m sitting here going, oh, it’s only day 10. It’s only day 15. It’s how many more days do I have of this? Well, the whole point was to do it every day for thirty days. I am the one who set myself this challenge. It was suggested by someone else and probably wasn’t even thirty days. I think I added that part in for myself. So I don’t have anybody to blame, but me for the fact that it’s taking thirty days to do a thirty day thing.
Nancy Norbeck [00:03:00]:
But there is such a rage to produce and to get things done these days that even in our creative practice, it can be hard to say, no, I’m going to sit down and I’m deliberately going to take a certain amount of time to do a thing because I want to give it a chance to bloom and for the process to teach me, not just for me to blast through the process on the way to a product. So, you know, we’re in that month of the year where in The US, everybody wants to talk about gratitude, and that’s great. But this year, I invite you to take a little look at patience. You might even apply it to waiting for Thanksgiving dinner to be ready if you’re that kind of a person because that is a process. It is labor intensive. It takes a while for all of that to be done if you want it to be done the way that you’re hoping for. Sometimes we just have to be patient with ourselves, with the world around us, and especially with the work that we are trying to create, particularly if we’re doing it as an experiment to see what we can learn in the process. If you haven’t yet taken a look at my YouTube playlist where I am posting: all 30 bad poems, responses to comments from folks who are writing their own poems and making their own observations—which is great; they’re wonderful. You should check them out—and anything else that’s coming up for me in this, I hope you will. I’ll leave you a link in the show notes and on YouTube that you can go and check it out. It’s all conveniently in one spot, so it’s easy to find. So as of the release date for this, I’ve got a little bit more than a week to go. And, you know, we’ll see what happens. Hope you’ll join me, and I hope you might give it a try yourself even whether it’s just being more patient or maybe even writing your own bad poem or both.
Nancy Norbeck [00:05:00]:
Either way, I’ll see you next time. If this episode resonated with you or if you’re feeling a little bit less than confident in your creative process right now, join me at the spark on Substack as we form a community that supports and celebrates each other’s creative courage. It’s free, and it’s also where I’ll be adding programs for subscribers and listeners. The link is in your podcast app, so sign up today. See you there, and see you next week. Follow Your Curiosity is produced by me, Nancy Norbeck, with music by Joseph McDade. If you like Follow Your Curiosity, please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to tell your friends.
Nancy Norbeck [00:05:41]:
It really helps me reach new listeners.