It’s been a long time…

Greetings! It’s been quite a while since I’ve written a post for this blog. I was surprised to see this morning that the last one was all the way back in January 2023!

While my articles have been absent here online, it’s not because I haven’t been writing. In fact the words have been flowing steadily into my journal, and I’ve also drafted many articles that I’ve not completed for various reasons. Now it’s time to start finishing and sharing them!

Why the sudden burst of inspiration? There are several reasons:

1) I read an interview with Rick Rubin on NPR.org in which he discussed his new book and the creative process, and something he said resonated strongly with me. 

The author asked Rubin about setting artistic goals, and whether or not there’s worth in the creative process if you then don’t meet those goals.

Rubin responded that there is indeed worth in trying anything creative even if you don’t hit your personal goals, but he further said “…I don’t know that setting a goal is the way to do it…I feel like a goal could be a limitation…It’s more like, start finger painting and see what happens.”

When I read that, I realized something significant. Part of the reason I haven’t been posting my articles here is because I usually set out with a goal for a certain article, and I work on it until I hit that goal. After reading Rubin’s interview, I realized that sometimes focusing too strongly on my goals turns out to be exactly what Rubin said, a limitation. When I’m writing and I hit blocks related to the goals for whatever I’m working on (which has happened a lot lately), I sometimes pause on that piece because I see the goal starting to fragment and it can be a lot of work to pull it back together. I need to work harder to get beyond that and/or flex my goal to get the job done in the original spirit I intended. In other words more “finger painting”, and less goal-setting. 

With that inspiration in mind, hopefully I can finish some of the dozens of things I’ve drafted and want to share here.

Side note for the creatives who are reading this: Check out the interview linked above and Rick Rubin’s new book The Creative Act: A Way of Being mentioned in the NPR article above. The book is supposed to be excellent, so I briefly scanned it in the bookstore a few weeks ago to see what it’s about. I plan to steal my daughter’s copy that she’s getting for Christmas!

2) I saw “my photography puddle” the other day when I was on a walk, and it reminded me of a short article that I wrote back in January 2022 about the power of finding inspiration every day. Although I’ve been trying to do what I wrote about every day since then, sometimes I get a little off kilter (see #3 below). Seeing the puddle today, and the first pattern in the ice for this winter, was the simple thing that I needed to re-ignite my mind and remind me to find goodness and inspiration every day.

3) I haven’t felt great about U.S. society at large lately. Does anyone, really? And it’s likely that from that perspective 2024 will be worse than 2023, because the U.S. Presidential election will pull at the fabric of our society even more than the 2020 and 2016 elections did. It’s like a black cloud hanging over us that needs to pass. The whole environment just sucked the creative energy right out of me for large portions of the past year, and I turned a bit inward to focus on myself. Consequently, my drive to publish what I was writing waned a bit. But then something as utterly simple as #2 above was enough to reset me and get me out of that rut. It reminded and inspired me not to let things like insane politics, maniacal people, and the extremes of society suck my energy and distract my thinking from what I want to do. I have to ensure that #2 happens more often so I can stay inspired and block out the noise.

So with that said, I’m back! I hope the things that I post here in 2024 bring value and inspiration to whoever reads them. Enjoy!

And my puddle, you might ask? My latest photo taken the other day is below. It’s different every time, as shown here. Humorously, when I walked by there today I saw that the ice had been shattered by a vehicle that drove over it. But never fear, it too will be back, and so will my inspiration!