Monday Mood: Relentless Motivation

By: Violet McCleod, Madeline

Some ideas don’t wait. They arrive fully formed, claws out, demanding to be built before you can talk yourself out of them. They haunt your downtime, crawl into your dreams, and rewrite your to-do list in sharpie. That’s what Subtyped.me was — not a project, but a possession. A pulse that became a platform. Not because I was ready. Because I couldn’t stop.

Relentless motivation isn’t about confidence. It’s about need. It’s what happens when you’re too aligned to stall and too obsessed to sleep. It looks like movement before meaning. Like saying “yes” without knowing the whole question. It’s not safe or sustainable — but it’s sacred. It’s the fire that makes you build.

There was no spreadsheet. No runway. No strategy. I made what I could, as fast as I could, with whatever was in front of me. I didn’t ask if it would work. I asked what would happen if I didn’t make it. And the answer scared me more than the risk.

The thing about compulsion is that it doesn’t care about pacing. It only wants out. So I let it speak. I made the structure, wrote the copy, coded the forms, connected the threads. I let the mythos catch up later. And somehow, it did.

What emerged wasn’t perfect — it was possessed. And it worked because it was honest. Because it said what it meant. Because it wasn’t trying to sound smart or polished or professional. It was trying to be true. And that’s what made it powerful.

We talk a lot about strategy and timing and readiness. But sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is stop waiting. Stop researching. Stop editing yourself out of your own story. And just go. Make the first version. Speak the rough truth. Build the thing you’ve been avoiding.

Not everything has to be slow to be meaningful. Not everything needs months of planning to be real. Sometimes the most real things are the ones that arrive all at once and burn through you until you get out of the way. Subtyped.me didn’t ask for permission — it asked for a portal. And I opened it.

So this Monday, I’m asking you to chase what won’t let you rest. Follow the thought you keep ignoring. Make the thing you don’t feel ready for. And let the fire be enough. Relentless doesn’t mean perfect — it means unavoidable. And if you can feel that pulse in your ribs, it’s time.

"And Then, There Were None" - Original Composition (Doctor Who: The Time of Magic)

I can think of at least two times in the past month when an idea materialized, fully formed, inside my head in the middle of the night and forced me to get out of bed to bring it to life. Raw, untapped motivation in a creative prospect can sometimes be a little difficult to come by, so I make sure to capitalize on it whenever I catch wind of its presence. 

When I’m compelled to create something, it will escape me one way or another, so the more logical choice tends to be letting it go freely. Whether that’s at 4 AM or not is seemingly out of my control. An idea is ready when it's ready, and it’s up to the creator to allow it to become real in that moment.

When I’m working on something that I can feel needs to be willed into existence, I can barely feel the work itself. The thing I’m creating bleeds out of me and creates itself on my screen and in my ears. The blueprints exist and are ready to be built; who am I to stand in the way of it?

On April 25th of last year, sometime in the very early morning, “And Then There Were None” was ready to be born. I was mostly unconscious, but not enough to discourage it from taking shape. By the time I rolled out of bed and got to my computer, the song was already written; I just had to put my hands on my desk and let it out. 

The first draft felt like a bit of a mess initially. I was aware of that even as I finished it a few hours later, and so I didn’t bother to export it. However, when I rediscovered it the following morning, I saw it in a different light; it was a pure, untempered creative thought spread over seven minutes of music. All of my basic, by-the-numbers ideas for revisions seemed irrelevant in that moment. The song had been brought to its logical conclusion in that very early morning, and it was ready for the world. It didn’t require weeks of forethought or sketching; it simply existed.

In the end, that was the version that I mixed and released. Sometimes, when I feel discouraged or unwilling to sit down and blurt out the first draft of something, I look back on it and reflect on how desperately this one wanted to be created and what it took to make it happen. If an idea wants to be made to exist in the world, then it likely will be in one form or another; the fact that we as creatives have an opportunity to help it do so is truly special.

Violet McCleod is a Mucha girl sitting in the Nighthawks diner, written with Zelda Fitzgerald's soul. Magician of Ember & Ink Collective, she is a writer and marketer and can be found most places at anachromantic.

Madeline is a freelance composer, editor, and writer who’s in the midst of a somewhat nightmarish creative spell. When her hyperfixation on music theory isn’t keeping her busy, she can be found most places as The Celestial Mechanic.

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