Tag Archives: creative

Expressing Creativity

Creativity. A catch all, fun to use word.

“Hey me too! I like to be creative.”

How do you do it? What gets it out?

I think a big problem in our hyper culture right now is that so many of us believe in creativity – believe in expression (which is an absolutely beautiful thing we do have the time and awareness to understand this) – but then flounder or deliberate when it comes down to shipping, to expressing creativity.

It is a hard thing to identify. I am sitting here right now reading and reading and reading one of the many brilliant articles coming into my inbox, thinking that I’m just staying on top of things. But am I? Or am I squandering my opportunities to really create?

I guess another beautiful thing about this hyper culture is that this power is our own, it’s our choice.

Digging in to Overcome

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Yes, there are going to be bad days. Yes, we’re all going to feel like we’re diving into the deep end. Overwhelmed. Stuck. Frustrated.

It all happens. To the smallest pea in the pod to the largest pumpkin in the patch.

What also happens is time continues to tick on, unrelenting.

So, as to not remain in a rut of overwhelm, give up the habit of waiting and pick up the habit of keepin on.

Keep doing. One step at a time. If it helps, sure, think about what’s getting at you as you keep on too.

One trick that I habitually adapt is to find a creative outlet to contemplate the rut. I write sad and lonely heart felt poems, I sing the most heartbreakingly slow songs I know. The list goes on, because as a human being, the ebb and flow is continual, thus the need to just keep on trying is continual.

Some tips I’ve learned over the years:

nobody is to blame, not even yourself
nobody is perfect, there are no exceptions
you learnt from old mistakes, remember?
is that an excuse running through your mind? Oh no it isn’t!
waiting does not solve anything

To add some comedic inspiration, here’s Mike Falzone.

Timing – Ergo Limiting – Artwork

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Having a time limit – a deadline – to artistic creation is counter intuitive.

Artistic creation has an undefined ending. Limiting it with a time frame leaves very little space for interpretation and improvising, two crucial steps to uniqueness. Unless the time limit is set so far down the road that making the time limit in the first place is a moot exercise.

What is required, however, is a beginning. Inking a spot in the ol’ calendar for creating. Forcing yourself into a creative regiment, rain or shine.

When you create, at the essence of creation, you have an idea of what the end product will look like, but this idea is hardly the exact thing (unless you’re Tesla who used lucid dreaming to test and design all his creations). I’ve found for myself, the more I create the more clearer it becomes that the created product will tell me when it’s done. My job is merely to comply with it.

It is the job of the creator – or the time limiter – to identify the difference between a great product and a perfect product. Sometimes great is enough to ship, unless of course you’re working for NASA where human lives are at stake.

The Grading Scheme

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Challenge is a hard item to grade. After all, what’s challenging to me might be a cake walk for you. Further, if I work really hard – spend hours – on a project, especially a creative project, it might be considered a piece of junk compared to yours that you’ve put together in an hour.

Unless you ask my mother, then obviously mine is just as good as yours.

When faced with the industrial task of grading somebody, we must make a scale; there must be some sort of scheme we can use to compare quality. Past experiences, popular expectations, text book results all tell us how to scale and what to expect.

How on earth can your or I grade an inner feeling of quality? Why don’t we work in colors, giving creators a color grade on what they’ve done.

Oh, I really enjoy this, quite a bit. I like how the swirls there are evident. I’m giving this one a Purple.

The common scale, once we escape the schooling system, is a monetary scale. “I like this, I’m going to pay more for this.” Or alternatively: “This cheap thing broke on me, I wouldn’t spend a dime on it.”

It’s important to be aware of how we’re grading the world; how we’re grading people, efforts, quality, influence, habits, culture, accuracy, etc. can have drastic effects on the future development of the world, and our interactions with it.

What have you graded today?

Exercising the Mind

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The mind, in all matters concerning it, must be exercised in order to keep it healthy and growing strong. It is as a muscle, requiring constant and consistent activity to stay healthy. Sports players, cards players, computer programmers, engineers, and on and on all continually and relentlessly practice their profession; going over and over selected scenarios, developing new ideas, or reaching new depths of creativity are all ways to exercise the mind.

Starting at birth, new parents are encouraged to challenge their child with new responsibilities, play memory exercising games, or teach them multiple languages. This makes headway into the starting of the child’s academic career, where it is quite obvious it is demanded that they do indeed use their brain for scholarly purposes: calculating formulas, creative writing, memorizing biological systems, etc.

It is easy to sit back and let the exercising be demanded of a person and let it grow in a passive pushing mode, but the real character comes when graduation is upon the student.

At this conjuncture in life, the student is now free from all prescribed and demanded learning. This is where personal motivation comes into the equation. The new graduate is only looking for fun adventures and to explore the limits of their newly found freedom; which by all means is necessary in the growth of the person, but there is a certain tipping point, or balancing that needs to be acquired. After all, balance is the key to life.

The exciting part is now that the graduate is indeed graduated, it is upon them to decide which path they wish to explore.

No longer is the learning prescribed, but rather opened up for interpretation where the mind is the school master cracking the whip, and the conscience is the poor school boy waiting eagerly with big wide eyes for what is to come next; open to be influenced.

Activities like reading and writing are great ways to keep the thought process active and firing on all cylinders, which incidentally can also be used to keep the mind focused (this is a good thing). You’ve heard it before, and you’ll hear it again; in this day and age of the internet and instant communication, it’s hard for people to stay focused on one topic for any length of time.

Writing down ideas can help keep the thought process aligned straight towards success, in all essence of the word.

The main point, however, is that without activities that keep the mind thinking, keeping all those neurons sparking like luminescence in the midnight waters, the brain will not keep the doors open to creative thought.

Before you know it, you will be a machine working at a dead end job wondering how you got there, feeling sorry for yourself the whole time.

SO! I encourage you, don’t let it happen to you! Exercise your mind!

Do you have any other ideas or games that will help keep the mind active?