Maybe I Don't Need That Book...
...How Decluttering and Packing Can Spark Your Creativity
The adventure hasn’t begun yet, but I already know I have a problem. What am I going to do with all these books? What about the hard drives and cables in the closet? A box full of MiniDV tapes from the early years of Chris Martin Studios? Posters? CDs and DVDs? The clothes I’ll never fit into ever again? Boxes of papers and random stuff to deal with at a later date? You never know how much stuff a person accumulates in a lifetime until you move or clear out a loved one’s home after they pass away.
The time has come to deal with my stuff and I’m already struggling with making decisions. Mainly because I’m treating a physical activity as an intellectual exercise. I can’t stay in my head and wonder what books I’ll keep, I need to take the book off the shelf and honestly ask, “Are you coming with me?” It then goes into a box or in a donation pile. It has nothing to do with sparking joy, as Marie Kondo has written about in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, but whether I want it to be one of many objects that will shape the next chapter of my life.
I wonder how the accumulation of all this stuff has affected my creativity. Sure, there are the physical objects that take up space, but what about projects that live in random folders on a hard drive? The hundreds of blog posts on my web server? The ideas that exist only in my mind? What environment does creativity thrive best in, minimalist, maximalist, or somewhere in-between? Perhaps the better question is what environment will my future creativity thrive best in?
The chapter ends, but the story continues on. What sparks creativity changes as we turn the page. I don’t need to hold onto what was, I can let it go and make room for what is to come.
Maybe I don’t need that book after all.
Spark Your Creativity!
What I’m going to suggest isn’t easy, especially for the collectors and creative packrats, but spark your creativity through the act of decluttering your workspace. Clear a shelf by donating or selling books, remove posters from a wall in your office and paint it a new color, or turn the stack of magazines in your closet into future art projects by cutting out pages and recycling the rest.
In the digital realm, I’m not going to be dogmatic and tell you to get your inbox to zero, but you probably don’t need 37,000 emails. Start small and see how freeing up space literally and figuratively helps you come up with new creative ideas.
The Patient Reawakening (GWTW903)
The longer your creative career lasts, the less written about your specific struggles. Writing and producing work for young professionals is enticing because there will always be an eager audience, hungry to succeed. They will 10x absolutely everything in order to keep up with the algorithm and crush the content calendar. The message never changes even though the audience does. But for the rest of us, time tempers all things. While your creativity continues to soar, your willingness to settle for long hours and low wages does not. You grow tired of playing the game. The message grows stale in your mouth. You still dream impossible dreams, but the truth is that you don’t need anything fancy, you just need to work on your craft. The patient reawakening has nothing to do with being the next hot commodity, it’s returning to you, practicing, focusing, and refining. Every single day. It’s not chasing popularity or relevance, it’s doing the work that resonates.
"Cosmic Accidents and Other Inciting Incidents” with Kelley Baker (BYIS3E27)
Kelley and I are kicking off this season in style with a lively chat about his independent filmmaking and writing journey from film school, working in the sound department, and directing shorts and features in Portland, Oregon to writing books and short stories. We talk about why living life is so important for artists, what makes a memorable story, what he looks for and what turns him off in movies, why book-to-film adaptations often fail to measure up to his imagination, and why you should always help your friends out on their creative journey. Sprinkled throughout is his approach to both filmmaking and writing books: do whatever you need to do to tell your stories.
Newsletter Notes:
Today’s sonic soundtrack is A Pale White Dot by Periphery.
The photo in the graphic above is Warehouse Products Storage from Envato Elements.
I set “Spark Your Creativity” in ITC Serif Gothic® and “On The Podcasts!” in Headline Gothic ATF Round.
