Seek and Create
A simple guide for anyone who makes things.
What does it mean to seek? We seek by looking with our eyes. We seek by asking someone a question. We seek inside our minds when we think. When we want to know, we must seek to satisfy that want.
When we attempt to create something new, we often seek out the things others already made. If we're not cautious, however, we get sucked into a vortex of passive admiration.
Into the pit, we go.
We only get a small window of time and will to create each day. We who are still figuring it out can often run afoul of spending this limited time admiring all the wonderful artifacts other people created. These things were made possible only when their makers learned to avoid the pit.
But their voice isn't ours. If we don't have a creative voice yet, sometimes we have to borrow theirs to get started. We use our curiosity as leverage to reverse-engineer how they reached that place we admire. Our inner saboteur says, "It was easy for them." It wasn't. Our inner saboteur says, "It's in their genes." It isn't. Our inner saboteur says, "They have natural talent." They don't. At least not as a requirement. So what do they have? More to the point, what do they not have?
Whether through practice, temperament, pig-headed stubbornness, or a combination of all three, what they do not have is the ability, capacity, or inclination to stop creating. And when the saboteur who lives in all of us comes calling, he's easier to ignore over the strike of their hammer on the hot iron.
Developing the discipline to be consistent is harder than it used to be. The amount of information, news, art, opinions, politics, advice, and entertainment continues to grow giving us no relief from distractions. Distraction is our silent killer. When's the last time you went an entire day without experiencing a moment where you were supposed to be doing something and you have to stop in your tracks to remember what it was? Whenever that happens to me, I'm in the middle of doing something unrelated to the real thing. It's an activity I didn't want to do, but it elbowed its way to the front of my mind.
We are partially to blame. I say partially because while the software in our phones and computers is designed to grab our attention, each has functionality to stop the onslaught of notifications. Fear of missing out as a concept isn't new, but only in the internet age has it become a cottage industry. Attention is the golden idol, so that's where the incentives are placed. For our part, we can choose whether or not to allow this via various do-not-disturb filters. If so inclined, we can make our phones completely passive while still allowing important people to call us. Remember telephones before the Internet? Yeah, something like that.
Blocking out some time to shut the world out is the first necessary step. Without this, there is always something or someone tugging at our subconscious. The next step is keeping ourselves from doing the tugging. Having a separate space 100% dedicated to our practice, though not mandatory, helps establish an exclusion zone for everything that isn't our desired focus. Ideally, every element involved in our craft is at arm's length and every potential distraction is beyond our reach, especially our phone.
And we do this every day. If we're serious, we do this every day. We don't have to be serious, of course. But the ones who we look to for inspiration, the ones whose voices we borrowed so we could get started? They are serious. But they started out just like us. They started out just as unfocused, undisciplined, and unserious. So they found their own serious inspiration. And they created the proper conditions for their ideas to grow and take root. And they got started. And they still haven't stopped, because they can't. And if we do it right - if we pick a time, and pick a place, and do it every day because we're serious - we won't be able to stop. And one day the life we led before we started will be a distant memory.
Get out there and find what you seek.