creativity

My New List

As you might’ve guessed from some of my previous posts, I have a curiosity with time management and productivity. That’s not to say that I’m an expert at either in theory or practice, but it’s something I think about a lot and do my best to apply in my life.

Part of getting myself into a better frame of mind as we embark on Week 2 of EVERYONE Is HOME, one thing became real clear to me real quick: I needed to up my productivity. Not because work demanded it, but because it’s important to me. Making sure I got something done in the right frame of mind is important to my mental health and balance.

One Of My Greatest Hits

I came across a video by Kinga Glyk which then led me down a YouTube rabbit hole of bass-centric videos. Not a bad way to spend 9 miles if you ask me, but I found myself thinking “Man, I’m never gonna sound that good” somewhere after my second Marcus Miller video.

It’s one of my greatest hits. That’s what I call the thoughts or things I’ll say repeatedly, usually in some kind of self-deprecating way or as an excuse for something. Usually, I don’t give them much thought because they’ve become like the “ums” and “uhs” of my brain life – conversational filler that for the most part goes unnoticed because it happens so often.

But today, I actually started to think about it.

There’s more time than life.
Old Spanish saying, quoted by Dr. Ken Atchity

Time is a funny thing, and I mean that quite literally. As Alan Alda once famously said, tragedy plus time equals comedy. Even if it isn’t the punchline, I’ve heard jokes where the setup is almost as hilarious as the payoff. Which, to me, means that time is inherently funny – both in a comedic and ain’t-it-kooky sort of way.

“The problem, fundamentally, was one of control — I had too much of it, over too tiny a territory, and I wasn’t willing to surrender it. You can’t control your way out of control.”
Sam Anderson

The above quote is from an article by Sam Anderson in the New York Times Magazine back in May 2015 where he talks about something called blind contour drawing – where you draw something without looking down at the paper until you’re done. Full disclosure: I haven’t finished reading the article, but I found the quote via Austin Kleon and something about it connected a few dots for me this morning.

Leaving Room For The Unexpected

It’s safe to say that I live a pretty safe life.

It also occurs to me how odd it is to have a thought like that while standing on the surface of a planet that is hurtling through the universe, constantly a few cosmic degrees from collision with objects, a degree or two away from tipping the balance away from being habitable, terminally subject to the faulty and fantastic abilities and flaws of a dominant species that is, at this moment, treating hand washing as some kind of revolutionary movement. Like, seriously folks, it’s been around awhile. Are we all that new to this?

Endurance

Bit of a rough week adjusting to some new glasses (progressives because… age), so since my life is basically feeling like one big adjustment, I didn’t have much inclination to work on Adjustment. However, since I don’t want to leave anyone hanging (especially myself), how about a poem that I go back to from time to time called “The Secret of My Endurance” by Charles Bukowski?

Keep Your Pace

It’s taken me a couple decades to learn this lesson, but pace is important.

I can bike a lot further if I find a good pace. Go too fast too soon and I’ll burn out really quickly. Go too slow and my progress will be piddly enough that I’ll quit out of boredom. Find a good pace that’s still pushing me a little bit while also not burning me out, and I’m good.

Life and creativity is like that – they have a pace that allows for pushing (getting better) while also not burning out. But it’s not the same pace for everything.

Adjustment, page 15

It’s been interesting working on this project and trying to find a story or poem on each page of this book without getting tied up in the context. One of the things that I’ve had to make peace with is that every page has the potential for success and failure.

There’s definitely some pages that I feel good about and some where I’m almost positive I’ve blown it. That’s not to blame the raw material available, it’s my ability on that day to sift through and find the pieces that will result in a poem.

Don’t Call It A Comeback

As I mentioned before, the screenplay I’d been working on last year had stalled. Nothing really to do with any issues I was having with the story, it was mostly a combo platter of not being sure if I could convincingly write dialogue for people in their early 20’s (the story takes place at a college) and a heaping helping of “I don’t have a deadline so I’ll finish it when I’m good and ready.”

And I was fine with that for a long time. Until I wasn’t.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Neil Gaiman and his writing process lately, and one of the things I keep coming back to is that writers finish what they write.

All Set-Up, No Action

Ideas are worthless.

Yeah, I said it. Of course, I’m only one in a long line of people who have said it, so please don’t think any credit is due here.

In learning about screenwriting, I found there was two schools of thought: those who guarded their story ideas as if they were a precious hidden treasure and those who didn’t. And I can understand both sides.

There’s something about an idea that is special, but a lot of that comes from our perception of it and where it came from. The idea comes from us and most of us, for whatever psychological reason du jour you happen to subscribe to, would like to think of ourselves as special in some way. Even the idea that we aren’t special kinda makes you think you’re special because it feels like you’ve figured something out other people haven’t. You’re part of an elite. You liked the band before anyone else. You actually understand and appreciate Infinite Jest. Whatever.

Todd Regoulinsky