I’m doing the A to Z Challenge in April using the theme “What to Pack on Your Creative Journey.” Let’s pack some zest for life in our metaphorical suitcase.

Zest is the secret of all beauty. There is no beauty that is attractive without zest. ~Christian Dior, Ladies’ Home Journal (April 1956)

A creative journey, like a physical one, will have its less than perfect moments. Misunderstandings, missed flights. Detours, derailments. Lay overs, late nights.

There are two ways that zest improves a creative journey.

Drawing, by J. Swain, of William Terriss as Bucklaw in a production of Ravenswood at the Lyceum Theatre, September 1890. The drawing accompanied a review in The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News.
Mr Terriss, who must have been heartily tired of representing the persecuted but triumphant hero of everyday melodrama, returns no doubt with zest to the kind of work in which he won his earlier successes. His Bucklaw is distinct and vigorous, and, thoroughly artistic throughout, it is, where possible, as in the more sympathetic episodes towards the close, marked with the force of genuine feeling. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

First, when the inevitable downturn comes along, zest helps us to accept it as part of the process, maybe even part of the fun. This is the funny story that you’ll tell at your next job interview in answer to the question about overcoming a challenge, or the one you’ll tell when you receive the lifetime achievement award for your industry in twenty years, or the one you’ll tell your grand-kids when they want to know about your life. There is a dark beauty in even the pitfalls of a project.

Second, zest is how we make sure that we’re truly enjoying the good parts of the creative journey. The downsides are worth it when the upsides are fun, exciting, and satisfying. Zest makes sure that we don’t take those moments for granted. Instead, we enjoy the heck out of them. Zest reminds us to smell the roses, to appreciate the brush strokes, and to get a kick out of the perfect word showing up just when we wanted it.

How can zest make your project more exciting and beautiful?