There are a few people I’ve met who are very creative. It’s like they have an endless supply of creative energy, always eager to make something new. In fact, explicit shoutout to Flyswatter - he’s always making new art.
It’s a wonderful thing to always want to make something - I also feel that urge strongly, though most stuff goes unfinished or is just private. Recently I have been learning to discipline these urges to get the most out of them. I’d say the most important thing to do is to keep these urges directed on things that actually matter.
Ingredients of the self
Food is a really good example of this, without food you’d die (fun fact). If creative-flows, writing sessions, music-producing sessions, etc. get in the way of cooking your own food, then you need to reprioritise. You are what you eat, creating your own food is creating yourself. If someone else always cooks for you, then they decide who you are. Worse still, if a significant amount of your food is bought directly: premade for shops or ordered in a resturant, then the industry decides who you are. The more ‘you’ yourself is, the more ‘you’ any art created by yourself will be. You don’t want your art to be a reflection of energy supplied by McDonalds.
Your creativity in cooking is of course only one part of the food. You must also consider the ingredients. The ingredients build the food which in turn builds you. Ingredients you’ve made from scratch are more ‘you’ and will make the resulting food more ‘you’ - so don’t be lazy with shop-bought sauces. It follows that you should look to start foraging and growing your own food as much as possible. Put down your headphones and pick up a trowel.
I highly reccomend one-pot dishes as a starting-point. For one, you do not need a recipe, you can be spontaneous and take the food in your own direction. Just add the grains, boil the water, then start adding the vegetables, what those grains are, what those vegetables are, and where you go from there are all up to you. Furthermore, the simple nature of soups encourages you to focus on the ingredients rather than overfocusing on the superficial form of the dish, keeping you focused on the chain of creative inputs and again not overfocusing on just the food.
Other bits
Money is pretty taboo, nobody likes talking about money or thinking about money when on an artistic wavelength. But where your money comes from is in all likelihood where many other components come from. Your workplace shapes you as much as your food does - probably even more so! You should therefore channel your creative energies into becoming independent of money and of the workplace. Making your own food and environment yourself plays into this step quite conveniently. Offices create drones - get out as soon as possible!
The medium you post your work through is a part of it. Create your own media: your own websites, books, tapes, etc. You should not want ’likes’ or ‘followers’ or even ‘views’ to infect your art, let alone the algorithms commonplace now on social media, Youtube, Spotify and even search-engines, they reduce creators to competitors. Make your own website, play by your own rules!
The creative urge can also be weaponised for self-improvement. I want to read more, so I am rewarding myself for sticking to reading by writing book reviews afterwards. I enjoy the reading in itself, but the urge to create is an overwhelming distraction otherwise, and not necessarily with a good outlet. The promise of writing about the book afterwards keeps this side of myself satisfied.
Summary
Everything is connected. Do not over-focus on the end products (music, graphics, writing, etc.), consider where the energy going into them comes from (food, money, etc.) and the later filters it will be distorted through (websites, platforms, etc.).
Fittingly, I am going to keep this article fairly short despite having a lot more to say, for the simple fact that I have other important things to do. 😉
I realise the irony of making this post only a week after spending HOURS writing the most useless, nonsensical article in the entire world and having an article on Googology of all things! I have a long way to go, but at least those thoughts are out of my system now and I can move on. 😛