Tag: creation

084b – trying to funnel life a bit

Been very busy— socially— over the last couple days. Haven’t had enough time to myself. Haven’t been sleeping too well either but I finally caught up on that earlier today. The sun hasn’t been out for almost a whole week now which sucked quite a bit although music and people have been keeping me sane and happy. 

Finally bought an electric guitar after many months of mulling over models etc. Excited to practice and learn a few songs this month. 

I’d been thinking about temporarily deactivating Instagram for a while now and I finally took the plunge. Current plan is to keep it deactivated for 2-3 weeks and then see if I need it or no. Reasoning behind deactivation is primarily that I want to minimise unnecessary stimulus. I want to be more careful and mindful about the kind of content I consume and Instagram is coming in the way a bit, I guess. Further, the two main reasons I was still keeping it around were that

  1. it was one of my primary ends for creative expression (especially with photos as well as “thought dumps”) but I think I’m more determined to focus on journaling/writing/music as the primary forms of expression, at least this month, so maybe Instagram is just a bit of a distraction from those goals.

  2. i think I also had a lot of space for new people and connections in life and I thought Instagram can be a good way to keep that channel open. And while it’s true that you do sometimes find interesting opportunities and people through social media, I just feel like I have enough on my plate for the next few weeks so maybe for now I’m alright. 

So yeah, figured it’s worth testing. 

Kind of excited about getting to 100K words soon(ish) but also wondering what the next steps would be. This is good practice, I feel like I tend to keep jumping ahead with things. Or maybe, I just leave this question here and let the answers come to me. If the answers haven’t arrived, then I can potentially keep going as well. [open question]

Focused on drums class, vocals exam, learning Corduroy Dreams on guitar this week, and that’s probably sufficient work to be thinking about, so maybe I can allow myself to not have to think about January planning etc. 

Still have a couple of people I want to meet once or twice before they go back to their bases. 

Lots of travel lined up this year and pretty excited about all of it. 

I’d like to think about (and do some research on) whether long-form content consumption (like books, for example) is actually healthier compared to social media content consumption or not. Like obviously, intuition says it is, and I’ve heard a lot of such sentiments in passing, but I don’t think I’ve ever read about it properly. So yeah, that’d be good to learn more about. [open question]

Cheers xx 

080b – missions

I’ve been finding things that feel really great and authentic to myself. Missions, I think I could call them. At least, at the moment. Things I’m passionate about, in other words. 

  1. Art— this has been consistent for a while now. More of writing, more of music. Write more, sing more, learn to play more instruments. Learn to play instruments better. Learn to sing better. Do more of original writing and original songwriting until it starts to feel like I don’t like or enjoy it.

  2. Healing, meeting my inner self— this has developed over the last couple months. I’m finding that there’s a lot more “experiencing of my soul” that I want to be doing, and that is aligned with one of my biggest values ie authenticity. Only by knowing yourself can you learn to “be” yourself.

  3. Creating and accessing more safe spaces— for myself and others. I find that I really like it when someone tells me they feel safe around me. It feels special. And I feel called to do more of this.

  4. Courage over convenience— what does this mean? I don’t know yet, maybe I mean “whenever possible, courage over convenience”. Of course we don’t want to be reckless and idealistic in a self-destructive way, but in steps, we want to be making the courageous choice as opposed to the convenience choice.

  5. Play, fun, beauty— @britchida says that play is the opposite of survival mode. So of course when things are tough, I will not be engaging in play as much. However, whenever I can, I want to be leaning towards play and fun and beauty. And of course this ties with #1 because art is the one space where I can be playful and have fun even when I’m in survival mode (emotionally, at least).

  6. Sustainability— this is of course the realist and rational part of me that wants to ensure that I approach life from a grounded place. I am at heart a romantic and a dreamer but I need to be an adult, I cannot operate like a child. Sustainability is going to be about that. About not being reckless. About remembering to think things through. Whatever that would mean to me.

  7. Learning— this is another top 5 value of mine. I enjoy learning, I enjoy being good at things. It’s not about validation from other people (though of course I can’t deny that that’s enjoyable too) but it’s more about the kind of doors that can open for you. But that’s secondary, I also just like being good at the things that I enjoy doing, it’s just an inherent thing. I like the processes, I just like learning and deep-diving into certain subjects and gathering more knowledge about them. This also ties to why I like people— because you can learn a lot from people. In ways that you wouldn’t from books and the internet, I think. (I want to write more about this, actually, because it might be important to think more about “what” I want to focus my learning abilities on). 

And that’s 80k words! December was a little slow with writing but that’s okay I think. There’s still 10 more days to do more of what I like. Sometimes I feel like I just want the words to keep flowing and never stop. Maybe this will be another thread.

Cheers xx

061a – training

Training hard, training myself to live in the present more and more. Yesterday was a very packed day, I chose action and activity a lot more over “sitting and thinking and doing nothing”. Tiring, but satisfying, in most ways. It’s a little scary to realise that most people might already be living this way, naturally. That they might be so well-adjusted that they don’t have to “do” this? Deliberately? Eh, I know this line of thinking isn’t very helpful, but it’s alright. 

This week and the previous week has been more action-oriented, for sure, and I think it’s been good that way. Making stuff can be addictive though, and I do have a tendency to go all in, even at the cost of food, health, sleep, social needs and/or other healthy habits. Don’t want that for myself. Want to maintain balance even when I’m inspired and active with “work”. 

I’ve had a couple of really crazy nights, I think I had “trips” without any intoxicants, I’ve experienced some new feelings (mostly positive) over the last couple days, I don’t know whether I just thunk myself into this new territory or whether they were real, only time can tell, but it was interesting, at the least. 

Two conflicts remain though: 

  1. Can I (and how) spare 3-4 hours a week for social work? I really want to, but how much do I want to? It’s draining for sure, but it’s also an opportunity, and it’s work that’s aligned with my values, I think if I set a schedule it shouldn’t be tough. Let’s figure this out this week.
  2. Do “good” work and share it is the advice Austin Kleon gives in his book “Steal Like An Artist”. I’ve always believed you get good at something only by doing a ton of it. But even after that (let’s say after a certain units of said thing), how do you differentiate between work and “good” work? I’ve been focused on action, and I’m going to continue to do that for the next couple months, see how much capacity I have for even just “doing the work”, but at some point I’m also going to have to start thinking about how to focus on doing “good” work, I guess.
    Of course, would need to think more about what “good” even means. (To me, to him, to the world). Okay, it’s a fair concern, but a concern for future-me. 

Anyway, as I was going over this book again, two of my other worries were somewhat addressed. People, other people I mean, people who haven’t engaged enough with “multiple passions” I suppose, always keep telling me I need to focus on something if I want to “get somewhere”. But Austin says you don’t need to cut out any of your interests. In fact, it’s futile and counterproductive to do so. So, I’m going to trust him on that. 

The other thing which I’d been worried about (like I’ve mentioned in previous few posts as well) is the sharing aspect of creation. It’s tough not only because of the pipelines but also because sometimes the things you make/share don’t get enough engagement etc. But again, Austin (bless him lol) says that in the beginning, obscurity can be good. It keeps you free from pressure and expectations. You can experiment without thinking about it too much. So, yeah, I’m going to try to make the most of obscurity. If it ever lifts, great, if not, I still have everything I want.

Will end this with beautiful thoughts by John Kim: Give less fucks on what people think about you and where you should be in life and more (real) fucks on what you can do and how you can be present and be of service to yourself and the world. (I’ve modified these for myself but I’ve added a link to the post in case anyone’s look for motivation!)

047b – sadness is freeing

There is a question that various artists and creators have addressed over the decades: Is sadness, pain necessary to create art? [1]

Everyone has their own answers, and I’m not going to attempt to share a version of my answer to this today. But I do want to share another observation, somewhat related. I do find that there is a certain freedom in sadness that I don’t feel in happiness. With happiness, I find myself getting attached, wanting to hold on to it longer, wanting to preserve, and overall just very afraid to mess something up. With sadness, or other “negative” emotions, on the other hand, I feel extremely free. There is no pressure to be a certain way, “you’re already sad”, things can’t really get worse, and I feel like that opens up ideas, the page, the canvas, everything. 

So while pain may not be “necessary” to create art, I do think it lends better to most art than positive emotions do. But of course, this may differ for people. 

One part of this could be my particular relation with positive emotions. Why is it that positive emotions demand more attention and preservation from me? I guess it’s insecurity at some level. Maybe I’m more confident in giving up control when it comes to negative emotions (because I learnt that I needed to, and there wasn’t another way), and in that way I’ve actually learnt to process them even better than positive emotions. I need to let positive emotions also take their own course. I need to accept that those, too, cannot last. 

The other part though is the “sharing” of art, and not just its creation. Firstly, I do believe that more sharing leads to more creation, and that is the primary reason why sharing is important. But even with sharing, it’s easier to share stuff related to negative emotions (for me), because even though happiness gets more rewarded on social media, I’m almost worried about conveying that I’m happy and sorted. Because if I convey that once, I worry that people are not going to be around when I’m sad again. But maybe that’s related to same thought around permanence. Maybe because I want happiness to be somewhat permanent, I think that other people look at it the same way as well. Maybe I feel the world has an idea of permanence around happiness as well. 

Okay, to summarise: I feel more freedom around negative emotions as compared to positive emotions. I think negative emotions are not necessary but do lend better to the creation as well as sharing of art. I worry that the world also has the same ideas as me when it comes to relating happiness or positive emotions with a certain amount of permanence. 

[1] Ocean Vuong talks about this in “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” 

011 – consumption, creation and the desire to feel special

Been wanting to think about this for a while. This post of mine from almost a year ago came back to me recently and I was thinking about how much things have changed. I was gravitating towards (media, art) consumption because the desire to feel something was trumping the desire to create something?

How out of touch from my feelings must I have been? Or was the tank really just empty? Guess I won’t know but if I had to hazard a guess it was likely the former.

I think when my “feelings tank” is full, consumption rarely helps. It can sometimes help in the moment by providing a distraction of sorts, but more often than not it just acts as a temporary numbing agent. But when the feelings tank is empty, it looks like consumption can help me feel something? I feel like whenever I’m at this point – if I change my consumption of (media, art) to that of (experiences, people) instead, could I possibly feel more valuable things? 

Gosh, I don’t know, this is getting a little dense for me right now. I watched Call Me By Your Name for the second time and enjoyed it so much more than I had the first time around. I realized I’d missed so much of the brilliance when I’d seen it earlier. I ordered the book as well, looking forward to reading it. But my motivation today to start watching it wasn’t to “feel” something, my feelings tank was definitely quite full, but it was more to resolve one or more of these feelings — the feeling of loneliness, the feeling of not being fully understood by the people around me? and other related feelings.

And this is pretty much the same reason I’ve been posting as well, to resolve the feeling of not being fully understood. 

This might be one of the rare phases that consumption and creation were driven by the same motivation. Or maybe they always can be, and us choosing one is perhaps based on other factors? 

Last week I kept feeling like consuming isn’t as exciting as creating. But watching this movie was a thoroughly exciting experience. 

I think it’s safe to say that both consuming and creating can help resolve certain feelings, and give rise to new ones as well. Should we always pick creation though, since it adds more value to the world? Or is that even true? I’m sure when we consume certain things, we are in some (many) ways adding value to the ones who created them. So it’s also safe to say that both are equally valuable to the world.

So it looks like both activities can 

  1. help resolve certain feelings 
  2. help create new feelings 
  3. add some value to the world

So how do we even pick between them? Is it even a competition? Maybe they can work together for us.

Or maybe we can think about what are the requirements for each of these. 

consuming 

I feel like when we want to consume to resolve certain feelings, we might need to have an idea of what we want to consume for that to happen. If that’s not the case it’ll probably just end up working as a numbing agent.

And when we’re doing it to create new feelings, the main things we need are probably time and an open-mind. 

creating 

In this case, when the driving factor is feelings resolution, I think it’s simpler – if we follow them, they pretty much do the work we need. It might be safe to say that we need at least one of (ideas, feelings) to create something. I suppose the best things come around when the two work together?

Eh, I don’t know where I’m going with this. There’s not much more to say on this right now so I’ll give it a rest and stop forcing myself to come up with something.

—

*12 hours later*

Went back to Visa’s post about “reflecting on why” since I remember reading some stuff about this topic on it. He talks about how being really, deeply useful to a lot of people is something that could fulfill him. I think that’s a good, different framing for “adding value to the world”, and I think that’s one of my unfulfilled needs at this time as well. This often comes to us in different words, right? Impact, purpose, calling. Feeling needed, feeling like you exist, for something or someone else. It doesn’t have to be a single thing or person, as long as the sum of the value you’re adding to the world is enough for your own satisfaction.

I suppose my dissatisfaction is coming from the fact (or the feeling) that for the last few months I’ve only been “taking” support from people. Taking, taking and taking. At work as well as personal relationships. So bear in mind that when I say “creating”, I don’t only mean art or media, it can really be anything. I guess at its core I probably just mean “creating value”. 

Not to say there’s anything wrong with seeking support and maybe needing that for extended periods of time as well. I do believe in the idea of “secure your own mask first before assisting others”. Or with things that cannot be fully resolved, it’s okay to do it somewhat parallely as well. But yes, it does create an unfulfilled need. Finding small ways of adding value could probably help with that. Creating small units of “content” has been quite nice for the same reason, so far. Offering support to junior team members at work is another – I plan to do this the coming week. Of course, one would say, if you really wanna add so much “value” to the world, why don’t you go out and do some social work? Honestly, it’s a valid counter. I wonder why the thought of it is not as exciting. Is there something about me wanting to provide value in “my own, unique”ways? Wanting to feel special, even?

It makes sense then why creating could generally be more exciting than consuming. Consuming in “my own special way” can only work if I can communicate that to someone (examples: give an artist feedback about how their work impacted me, or tell someone a story about how a particular experience shaped me). Creating on the other hand probably has that “uniqueness” built in itself. 

Do I want to summarize this? Not really sure. I’ll just end with maybe the factors I might want to look out for the next time I have a chunk of time and I can’t decide what to do with it. When picking between two activities, I probably want to optimize for these and ask myself if the activity will:

  • help resolve certain feelings 
    • do i know which feelings i want to resolve and what kind of content or activities can help me do that? 
  • help create new feelings 
    • am i open-minded at this point of time? emotionally, intellectually 
  • add value to the world 
    • do i have ideas and skills
  • add value that only i can provide / honor my uniqueness
    • do i have ideas and skills