Hey y’all
Recently I’ve undertaken to share my thoughts/work more openly and readily with people. It’s something that I hope can keep me accountable – making sure I’m thinking and working constantly. It’s also something that I hope can help me connect with people by sharing what I do and who I am.
This last month, I’ve taken to Instagram with a daily posting of a journal entry – more specifically an entry from Austin Kleon’s Steal Like An Artist Journal, which provides a prompt for a creative challenge for the day. Some have been a little silly while others have made me stop and think about life for a bit. Here’s some of my favourites:
April 2: Appropriately the second day’s post. The blackout poem reads: Space, light, nothing./Night resting for the rush/Of one through night into day./Invincible, visible, chased/Through hours of future darkness/Writ in watches in their hands./Light, almost of the deep,/Creeps, tingles,/Leaves no cry. This was fun over a Saturday morning coffee.
April 7: I particularly liked “wicked possibilities”
April 10: Really exciting to think about some things I’d like to learn in the near, medium and distant futures!
April 17: I can’t draw… I wish I could. This one was probably one of my better attempts from the window of a Daylesford Art Gallery.
April 21: This was strangely cathartic in a way.
April 25: Despite the sheer extravagance of ink used in this I enjoyed colouring in while listening to The Roots. Strangely, this fairly uniform task was one of the most effective in enhancing my feeling of creativity.
It’s been enjoyable to go through the book bit-by-bit, but it’s also been a real challenge to maintain the daily posting. I’ll admit sometimes I just had to do something quickly late at night to squeeze it into the day, without actually pausing and creating something.
This sense of urgency reminded me that creativity needs time and space.
This last month has been a very busy one with work/gigs/travel. It’s made me more aware about the ‘creative zone’ that exists. There have really been only a handful of days that I’ve been able to more completely devote to creative stuff throughout April – that’s also due to me not making enough time. I’ve noticed how difficult it can be to feel creative when faced with constant external pressures and how, after a few days of it, the feeling of creativity can become suppressed. While doing these short exercises everyday helped me to engage with my creativity, I wasn’t always in the zone.
As simple a task as it seems, I think, in posting every day, I put a lot of pressure on myself. The requirement to post, regardless of how good I thought something was, meant that I sometimes posted things that were not really of any value. It brought up the “what is the point?!” feeling that has been an issue for me in the past. So, in effect, the act of posting creative things sometimes had the opposite outcome from what I had hoped.
But… Rest assured, I’m feeling great. I’m glad I completed the challenge – at the end of the month, I felt satisfied knowing that I had managed to get through it all and gave myself a big tick. I completed what I set out to do. It wasn’t always perfect but it did teach me some important things along the way. Here’s what I learned/was reminded of:
- Creative needs time and space (sorry to repeat myself).
- It’s important to share imperfect things. Perfection takes a long time…
- Completing goals based on time-frames is important but not at the expense of feeling creatively satisfied and proud of my work and the process.
- Thick pens are much more fun to write with than narrow ones.
So, what’s next?
I’m going to continue with daily practices, but I’m going to transfer this to a more tangible part of my creative practice. From now, I turn to writing every day – sometimes music, sometimes words. I’ll keep journalling too. I’m not going to put pressure on myself to post things everyday either but I will share work regularly that I feel is worth sharing.
I’m going to get busy with doing things that I feel good about! I’m going to let the creative spirit do as it pleases and enjoy the journey that it takes me on.
Thanks again for reading. If you’d like to stay up to date with what’s happening for me, please join my mailing list here.
Brenton
