Creative Process
Ambition Gets The Best…
I have an ugly habit.
This habit involves my inability to leave things alone. You see, I’m an experimenter. I always have been. I’ve always enjoyed playing with things…seeing what makes them tick…getting them JUST right.
I also like to do things. I like to have projects going. I like to create. Nothing wrong with that.
HOWEVER…these things combined have a tendency to produce too many irons in the proverbial fire. I establish ideas and goals in my head that I want to pursue creatively and then I start feeling PRESSURE (?!?) to achieve them. To be clear - these are things that didn’t even exist a few days before, but now that they’ve moved into concrete reality, I feel compulsion to kick them through the uprights.
The pressure to accomplish is self-imposed, of course, but it is still real. Somewhere in the back of my head I believe that I am running out of time and I need to get as much done as possible as quickly as possible. I feel death’s breath on the back of my neck. (Huh?!?)
The irony of the situation is that the more pressure I feel to produce, the less capable I am of making something great. I don’t understand it, but it’s real. The other irony is that this inability to produce great stuff can and will heap even MORE pressure onto the already quivering pile of expectations.
This is common with many artists I meet. Why do we do this to ourselves? Is it a compulsion to let others see what’s inside us? Is it a need to feel useful?
As I was doing some writing yesterday, I accidentally kicked out a phrase that is now affixed to the front of my notebook. It says:
“Purity, Not Utility”
During this season I am focusing on making things that are pure and great and trusting that I will find utility for them. The act is the important thing right now. The purity of my desire to create. This is what is beautiful.
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This is all too familiar to me - what my Aunt calls dancing at too many weddings with one ass, a lifelong struggle for me. As I approach my 40th birthday, I’ve come to the realization that, perhaps, my perpetual curiosity and impulsive starting of various projects/pursuits has a cost, both financially and emotionally.
This feeling you refer to in the whiteboard sesion this week of always feeling like you should be doing something else is distracting and, over time, destructive.
The strategies you suggest in the whiteboard session for creating more focus and keeping that focus are not new to me, but in some ways, I feel like I’m at a very different listening place right now.
I particularly like the quarterly rhythm approach (rather than imagining that one can create “the ultimate” statement of focus) — this allows me to commmit and focus in a more defined way rather than feel I need to give up on all the other potential pursuits. Sort of like being a serial monogomist rather than a polygamist? Hmmm..not sure about the analogy.