The first Ramones show in England was July 4, 1976—the Bicentennial. Two hundred years after the US broke away from Great Britain, America sent back a gift that forever upended their sensibilities: punk rock.

According to Danny Fields and Arturo Vega, as quoted in Please Kill Me (Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain), the forming members of The Clash and the Sex Pistols were at that first show but hadn’t quite broken out. They were a little taken aback by the Ramones. The Brits were intimidated because they saw these lanky guys in black leather and thought that the Ramones were more than just a band—they thought they were a gang. As Danny Fields puts it:

“Paul [Simonon] and Mick [Jones] weren’t in the Clash yet, but they were starting it. They were afraid to play until they saw the Ramones… But basically, the Ramones said to them, which they had said to countless other bands, ‘You just gotta play, guys… Come out of your basement and play. That’s what we did. You don’t have to get better, just get out there. You’re as good as you are. Don’t wait till you’re better, how are you ever gonna know? Just go out there and do it.”

Publishing is the final step in the creative process. You’ve got to put it out into the world. Without doing so, the work is unfinished and will never be seen. Perfection is the opposite of good. Get it out there and move on. Your work isn’t doing anyone any good locked up on a hard drive, or kept in a basement rehearsal. No one gets to hear it that way. It doesn’t exist until it’s published.

The other important part of this is that you have to finish what’s in front of you before you can move on to the next thing.

Free your mind by putting the work in front of you out into the world. Then you can give your whole self over to the next task—your next adventure. Creating the next thing.

And who knows where that will lead you.