I’ve spent a lot of time wondering about creativity. Why do I feel compelled to do this? Am I writing for myself? For others? Why bother sharing it with everybody on the internet? It’s not as though I have anything particularly insightful or revolutionary to say. I suppose that the whole rationale is to explore the question of creativity; the answer may not be forthcoming.
Writing is an interesting art form and this is a meaningless sentence. Music comes in a myriad of genres, played by thousands of instruments. Visual art is limited only by the availability of media, and can involve everything from charcoal to bodily fluids. Maybe I’m looking at writing the wrong way, but it seems that it’s defined by a much more narrow scope. A reductionist might suggest that a blog is, in its essence, no different than scratching lines into a clay tablet. We’ve all agreed on an alphabet and some rules about spelling, grammar and sentence structure (except for the post-structuralists, but let’s face it, nobody wants to read that mess). Unlike music, it’s not something that can be universally understood. Yet here we are, producing and consuming written language, because we’ve all felt at some point that we can extract meaning and relevance and beauty and all sorts of other nonsense from it, despite the limitations of language.
I was once an English major at the U of A. Writing was my entire life. I was completely entangled in a paradigm of analysis, sentence structure, argument, persuasion. I spent hours agonizing over sentences and paragraphs, reading and re-reading, revising and editing. It was the most painful thing ever, but here I am working through it again. Why? Things did not go as planned the first time around. Perhaps I’m doing this because I feel that with the benefit of hindsight and a bit more maturity and life experience, I’ll have more relevant things to say this time. I will also have the benefit of greater freedom of expression, having no real constrains outside of my self-imposed one week timeline.
The point of this blog is to start writing again, and to make a commitment to creativity and catharsis - not just this occasional journal entry cop-out bullshit. Once upon a time, I produced some writing that I was proud of. It felt good to be creative. Every time I put pen to paper, I discovered new ways of looking at life and new angles and elements of ideas that were already floating around in my brain. Writing led me to fascinating places. Sometimes hours would feel like minutes when I was deep into a writing session. I would wake up from a trance, and find that I had somehow managed a dozen pages of text. I miss that.
I’ve been working a job that I do not enjoy. It’s mundane, repetitive, and the pay is low. There is a payoff, though - I am not obligated to deal with customers at all, nor is it necessary to converse at length with any of my co-workers. This leaves me ample time each day to listen to my iPod. After numerous repeats of my favourite albums began to grow tiresome, I finally wised up to podcasts and it has changed my life. No exaggeration. I’ve been able to listen to fascinating lectures and interesting talk shows about science, philosophy, religious studies, comedy, and all sorts of other interesting topics. The Joe Rogan Experience is a particular favourite, as I am a huge fan of his comedy. The discussion is humourous, insightful, and always interesting, and it has encouraged me to think about life in ways that I had never considered before.
Which brings me to this new endeavor. One thousands words per week, every week, no excuses. Sometimes it’ll be essays. Sometimes comedy or rants or poetry. I’m working on putting together a stand-up comedy act, so I’m quite certain that writing diligently every week and probing for interesting topics will provide me with ample material for the stage. I’m leaving it pretty open, just to see what happens as it rolls along. My writing is nowhere near the level that I once attained, but I’d love to get back to that place and have the freedom with words that I once experienced. I am writing because I intend to return to a different realm of possibility with words - a place where I can craft my thoughts into interesting, well-organized and aesthetically pleasing forms.
The first batch of writings is going to suck. Sorry. It’ll get better. I don’t know if anybody has the patience to read 1000 words on the internet anymore, but here it is. Maybe if this goes well, I’ll revise each week into a 3 minute YouTube clip for easier digestion. I’ve been driven to do this because of a lack of creative output. I feel like I’ve been taking in all kinds of sensory information, art, ideas... but I haven’t had a decent outlet for them in a long time. It’s largely because I haven’t had the discipline to make it happen, but I’m working hard to change that. The goal is 1000 words per week. I’m going to keep doing it through school, holidays, the works. There’s a million ideas floating around in my brain and there’s no lack of things to write about. The consistency won’t be great. Sometimes the topics will be interesting, other times they won’t. Sometimes I’ll rant and rave and cuss (sorry, Mom) and other times, I’ll express my utter joy and delight and love for everything. Sometimes I might even cast off the yoke of post-secondary English training and forgo proper punctuation, just for a gag (gag!). Feel free, by the way, to point out the irony of the preceding sentence as you pick apart my inappropriate uses of commas, dashes and semi-colons throughout this document.
I’m a big believer in the payoff of work and dedication. When I was younger, a lot of people told me that I was smart. It wasn’t the best thing for me, though, because I got into the habit of thinking that because I was smart, I didn’t really need to apply myself in order to be successful. It worked to a point, but now when I think about my accomplishments, all I can think of is how much better I could have done if I had really put in some hours. I could have excelled. I know now that having discipline and work ethic is many orders of magnitude higher on the importance scale when it comes to success and getting what you want I guess that this blog is a way of getting in to the habit of being disciplined, rather than just being smart. Maybe I’ll be able to successfully integrate the two from time to time and come up with something really stellar. Stay tuned; when it happens, I’ll be as surprised as you are.
Word count: 1,167.
Writing is an interesting art form and this is a meaningless sentence. Music comes in a myriad of genres, played by thousands of instruments. Visual art is limited only by the availability of media, and can involve everything from charcoal to bodily fluids. Maybe I’m looking at writing the wrong way, but it seems that it’s defined by a much more narrow scope. A reductionist might suggest that a blog is, in its essence, no different than scratching lines into a clay tablet. We’ve all agreed on an alphabet and some rules about spelling, grammar and sentence structure (except for the post-structuralists, but let’s face it, nobody wants to read that mess). Unlike music, it’s not something that can be universally understood. Yet here we are, producing and consuming written language, because we’ve all felt at some point that we can extract meaning and relevance and beauty and all sorts of other nonsense from it, despite the limitations of language.
I was once an English major at the U of A. Writing was my entire life. I was completely entangled in a paradigm of analysis, sentence structure, argument, persuasion. I spent hours agonizing over sentences and paragraphs, reading and re-reading, revising and editing. It was the most painful thing ever, but here I am working through it again. Why? Things did not go as planned the first time around. Perhaps I’m doing this because I feel that with the benefit of hindsight and a bit more maturity and life experience, I’ll have more relevant things to say this time. I will also have the benefit of greater freedom of expression, having no real constrains outside of my self-imposed one week timeline.
The point of this blog is to start writing again, and to make a commitment to creativity and catharsis - not just this occasional journal entry cop-out bullshit. Once upon a time, I produced some writing that I was proud of. It felt good to be creative. Every time I put pen to paper, I discovered new ways of looking at life and new angles and elements of ideas that were already floating around in my brain. Writing led me to fascinating places. Sometimes hours would feel like minutes when I was deep into a writing session. I would wake up from a trance, and find that I had somehow managed a dozen pages of text. I miss that.
I’ve been working a job that I do not enjoy. It’s mundane, repetitive, and the pay is low. There is a payoff, though - I am not obligated to deal with customers at all, nor is it necessary to converse at length with any of my co-workers. This leaves me ample time each day to listen to my iPod. After numerous repeats of my favourite albums began to grow tiresome, I finally wised up to podcasts and it has changed my life. No exaggeration. I’ve been able to listen to fascinating lectures and interesting talk shows about science, philosophy, religious studies, comedy, and all sorts of other interesting topics. The Joe Rogan Experience is a particular favourite, as I am a huge fan of his comedy. The discussion is humourous, insightful, and always interesting, and it has encouraged me to think about life in ways that I had never considered before.
Which brings me to this new endeavor. One thousands words per week, every week, no excuses. Sometimes it’ll be essays. Sometimes comedy or rants or poetry. I’m working on putting together a stand-up comedy act, so I’m quite certain that writing diligently every week and probing for interesting topics will provide me with ample material for the stage. I’m leaving it pretty open, just to see what happens as it rolls along. My writing is nowhere near the level that I once attained, but I’d love to get back to that place and have the freedom with words that I once experienced. I am writing because I intend to return to a different realm of possibility with words - a place where I can craft my thoughts into interesting, well-organized and aesthetically pleasing forms.
The first batch of writings is going to suck. Sorry. It’ll get better. I don’t know if anybody has the patience to read 1000 words on the internet anymore, but here it is. Maybe if this goes well, I’ll revise each week into a 3 minute YouTube clip for easier digestion. I’ve been driven to do this because of a lack of creative output. I feel like I’ve been taking in all kinds of sensory information, art, ideas... but I haven’t had a decent outlet for them in a long time. It’s largely because I haven’t had the discipline to make it happen, but I’m working hard to change that. The goal is 1000 words per week. I’m going to keep doing it through school, holidays, the works. There’s a million ideas floating around in my brain and there’s no lack of things to write about. The consistency won’t be great. Sometimes the topics will be interesting, other times they won’t. Sometimes I’ll rant and rave and cuss (sorry, Mom) and other times, I’ll express my utter joy and delight and love for everything. Sometimes I might even cast off the yoke of post-secondary English training and forgo proper punctuation, just for a gag (gag!). Feel free, by the way, to point out the irony of the preceding sentence as you pick apart my inappropriate uses of commas, dashes and semi-colons throughout this document.
I’m a big believer in the payoff of work and dedication. When I was younger, a lot of people told me that I was smart. It wasn’t the best thing for me, though, because I got into the habit of thinking that because I was smart, I didn’t really need to apply myself in order to be successful. It worked to a point, but now when I think about my accomplishments, all I can think of is how much better I could have done if I had really put in some hours. I could have excelled. I know now that having discipline and work ethic is many orders of magnitude higher on the importance scale when it comes to success and getting what you want I guess that this blog is a way of getting in to the habit of being disciplined, rather than just being smart. Maybe I’ll be able to successfully integrate the two from time to time and come up with something really stellar. Stay tuned; when it happens, I’ll be as surprised as you are.
Word count: 1,167.
Good for you, John. As you know I'm a big fan of the written word. I'm inspired by your blog having hit a bit of a writing slump myself. Good luck!
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