I have this constant struggle with creativity which mostly centers around finding ways to parlay my own creativity into money - be it income that runs the entire spectrum accomplishing making enough so that it does any of the following things:
1) Makes me rich
2) Makes me borderline rich
3) Allows me to go into my day job on the worst of days & say the line from the Johnny Paycheck song of the same name; Take this job and shove it and support myself solely off of my creative work(s) and fucking never look back. As I type this, perhaps this should be numero uno.
4) Supplement my day gig to the point of not having to put in the on the clock hours to the extent that I currently do.
I've been frustrated by this for most of my life, but even so, I think it's not a bad thing to walk around on this earthly journey as a creative type - however that creativity comes out, which can be in many ways. Creativity is a wonderful thing and I have always favored that over a competitive mindset. Nothing against a little friendly competition, but give me the creative vibe every time.
Creativity is ideas and ideas are thoughts with a wonderful energy in and of themselves. Thoughts are things oftentimes, seeds if you will. You've got to plant them for them to blossom into real, tangible things that will do any good in this life - and they'll do no one any good if they just lay dormant. Even the best ideas are useless when they're uncultivated. They need to be brought to life.
I had a wonderful drafting teacher my freshman year of high school, Mr. Pease. All these years later (never mind just how many years later!) I still remember him telling our class that every single thing that gets made has to be drawn first - before it can be made. He told us to think about that and wrap our minds around that fact - everything, take for example a simple ball point pen. A thin reservoir of ink that at one end has a tiny ball that rolls over a piece of paper leaving ink onto a page. Someone has to draw it and present a visual of it so that the manufacturing can be figured out. How awesome is that? Plenty.
But what is perhaps even more awesome, is that in order for something to be drawn it first has to be seen. Someone has to have a vision of whatever it is they want to make - it's gotta be seen in someone's mind. They'd need to have the vision of a tiny metal ball being held in place enough to stop the ink from running out of control but still allowing for the ball to roll when moved over the page. Sure this is something that we use every day that we take for granted, but how incredible is that? If someone hadn't had that vision, we'd all be still using bird feathers dipped in ink.
Just imagine someone needing your signature on a document - pick one. "Just need your signature right here on the line - here's a feather & some ink...." Oh damn, that guy walked off w/my feather!"
Moving away from the ink pen, thoughts are things. They have an energy to become things - whatever those things may be. Thoughts are ideas and the wonderful thing about ideas is that they breed more ideas - even a bad idea can make way for a good one, a better one - often even a great one. Personally, I love the exchange of ideas, whether they're my own or someone else's. It's all part of the creative process.
These are my coffee thoughts on this beautiful morning. Now that I'm finished with the coffee part of the day, having spent the morning reading from Adam Moss' wonderful book, The Work of Art and seeing a word I've never seen - Bildungsroman, which was a total WTF moment. When I read from a book I own, I circle words I'm not familiar with. This one completely dumbfounded me - I couldn't really figure it out from the context it was used in. Of course I had to look it up. I may very well go the remainder of my life never seeing that word on a printed page again - and I certainly can't see myself using it. If you're curious, look it up, I'm moving on.
So now it's onward on this second day off. I've got seeds to plant, creatively speaking. Peace, good people.
CRO
