Creative: Another Squib

Ya, another squib. A ten-minute mess. A creative weakling. But that’s what I’ve got in me at the moment. I’m drinking my fourth bottle of water for the day. I lifted, cranked up the cardio on a spin bike, then finished with a half hour of roller and stretching. It’s Saturday. I’m restless. There is one chocolate doughnut left, and I fear I’ll soon have to deal with it. I know where it is, and my justification is that the box is taking up too much room in the fridge. I must consume.

Early in the morning, I made my heart-stopping coffee, ventured out to a damp patio, spread out my notebook, Kindle, and phone, which I was using to follow the Tour de France, and started reading. A book about foreign correspondents from the 1920s and 1930s, one of which focused on Russia. “Come here for two weeks and you will understand everything with certainty. Come for two months and you won’t understand a thing.” I believe this is a poignant metaphor for life. Live and learn. Attempt to keep living and learning, just know you might never figure things out.

At the moment, most things in life feel just beyond my grasp.

There are the things I want to do or envision doing, and then there are the things I’m actually doing. Most often, the envisioned items are more glorious than the actual things. My visions mimic my dreams. My actual resembles the buffet at Golden Coral. Everything is there, but I’m not sure I want to eat any of it. So, what to do? For me, it’s about a daily win. Oh crap, did I just enter my guru stage? Short answer, no. I’m no guru, I’m a guy who has thrown decades of things against the wall and seen at least one percent stick. A daily win feels pretty good.

The attached spread isn’t good. I like the kerning of the word “Darkest,” but nothing else about the text works. I flipped the “dawn” the other way, but that was deck chairs on the Titanic. I don’t even like the image, but it was there. Looking at the image and the spread made me squirm because it reminded me of how little I’ve shot since I arrived at my current location. There will be more work done in the coming days.

Small wins are essential for me. Sometimes the wins are for Blurb, or me, and sometimes they cross-pollinate, but I’ve found that the wins for me eventually become wins for Blurb. The thing about a daily win is that it doesn’t have to amount to much, and it doesn’t have to make sense or impact on anyone else. Like a cyclist taking EPO. A little goes a long way. I try to do something good every single day. Even a day like today, a Saturday, where I sit at a pool with eleven other people doing eleven other things. Technically, this day could be viewed as a vacation day, but I’m on the road too long for that to work; however, it is a day I don’t NEED to work. This might sound dreamy, but for me, it’s not good. I need to work, to do something, because I love to work.

At least fifty percent of what I do is self-assigned. Nobody paid me or told me to start this site. Nobody told me to start a YouTube channel. No one said, “Hey, you need to teach workshops.” No one said “journal, do projects, write, ride your bike, run, learn new shit,” or anything else. You could also say these things are distractions, utilized to keep me from figuring anything out. But my best guess is, we aren’t supposed to figure things out. Didn’t some spiritual figure talk about the end of suffering? Or was it that suffering was the point?

Regardless, I’ve got an idea for you to try. Instead of watching the next YouTube photography film, look at the timeline, note the duration, set a timer, and use that same amount of time to make something. Heck, use the time to think of something. What I’ve learned is that these little moments add up. They often come together like puzzle pieces. Suddenly, you are staring at an amalgam of “stuff” that emerges as something concrete, often in a way that feels like it came out of the blue. A subconscious connecting of the dots.

Can you imagine anyone on their deathbed saying, “Well, at least I’m leaving behind a YouTube channel and Instagram account.” Creative squibs. One of my favorite things is to read about the lifestyles and work habits of my creative heroes. I love hearing that Paul Bowles rose at dawn, worked until noon, then ventured out to experience the world, often taking crazy cool voyages around Morocco, recording music and ambient sound. Most of my favorite artists and writers worked every single day, at least for a moment or two. Another of my fav writers wrote a novel in three weeks, on “vacation.” This is precisely what I mean. Do you need time to disconnect and do nothing? Sure. Remember, Einstein “did nothing” for a year and developed several of the most important theories of our time. Maybe the short of it is that I don’t have any idea what I’m doing or saying? Anyone around this site long enough would probably agree.

I look at this spread and think, “Jesus, I haven’t progressed at all,” but I know that’s not true. This ten-minute experiment might have ended like Black Friday at Best Buy, with me being the guy getting stomped by the hordes heading for the 77-inch plasma, but ultimately, something good will come from it, maybe. Maybe is enough. It is. I made a picture after I wrote this post. It could be useful. It might be. Maybe. And that’s enough to get my mind working as to how best to use whatever power this little gem has. Rinse and repeat. Day after day.