I have a SMENA 8M, a toy camera. This photo was taken with it – and I “scanned” it with my iPhone. I’m not sure what you photography enthusiasts think, but I like it a lot. A retro taste of SMENA 8M cheapened further by iPhone. If I’m correct, this photo was taken somewhere near Bateman’s Bay in Australia. One of those deserted beaches… That’s exactly the place I want to be right now!
creativity
There are 22 posts tagged creativity (this is page 3 of 4).
Japanese translation of "A Brief Guide to World Domination" (Day 16)
I’ve been working together with Etsuko Tsukagoshi to produce a Japanese version of Chris Guillebeau‘s “A Brief Guide to World Domination” for the past 3 months. Now it’s almost finished, and we’re in the final stage of this project: releasing this Japanese version.
I assume that most of you who read this blog are English speakers. If you haven’t done so, you should check Chris’s brief guide. It’s a short PDF you can download and read for free. The content is inspiring. It has inspired me (and a number of people all over the world) at least.
It didn’t have to take 3 months to complete this project. But I lost the momentum when it came to revising the first draft. So, in reality, I didn’t do much about this project for a month or so.
What made me act anyway was the Artist’s Way – there’s a chapter on creative U-turns. Have you ever given up something you had devoted your energy to just before its completion? You’re almost there, but you feel like you’re not going anywhere. In fact, you feel as though things will get worse if you keep going. Even though you can see your destination. You start imagining the worst trap in front of your goal. Not just the worst trap, but the absense of such a trap as well. What if I could just take a few more steps and get to the goal with no problem at all?
What’s really neat about this chapter on creative U-turns is that this is the part where you’re asked to read your morning pages. In these morning pages from 3 months ago, I wrote about this project of translating Chris’s e-book into Japanese and how it would help some Japanese people “dominate the world”. I had forgotten about this excitement until I read these morning pages.
It was great to remember those feelings and excitement I had about the project. More motivational than anything else.
If you’re about to make a creative U-turn, can you remember your initial excitement about your project? Perhaps that can help you keep going forward and finish your project.
A sense of possibilities (Day 12)
When you let yourself enjoy ease and delight, you get a sense of possibilities. Entertaining various possibilities–things that could have been otherwise. Whether these possibilities will ever be actualized is another matter. For the time being, find yourself among various possibilities. That may require some creativity, but you don’t have to be afraid, because you’re already creative. All you need to do is to ask delightful questions. No worries about where you’re going to end up, or how you’ll get there. If any of these doesn’t make sense to you, that’s fine too, because I don’t know what they mean either. The question is … what meanings will I give them? What meanings will you give them?
Reading the morning pages (Day 9)
I started reading my morning pages today.
During the course of the Artist’s Way, you are not meant to read your morning pages after writing them except when there’s an instruction to do so later in the course.
The last time I read my morning pages was the last time I worked on Week 9 of the Artist’s Way. That’s about 3 months ago. 2 notebooks and half a notebook make 3 months of my morning pages.
Since I wrote them by hand and right after I woke up, most of the pages are rather hard to read if not unreadable at all. But they give me a pleasant surprise. For example, I wrote that I would work on a certain project. After writing about it, I happened to find someone to collaborate with for that project, though I didn’t realize I had written about it when I actually started working on it. Another example is Spanish. I decided to learn Spanish recently-or so I thought. But in my morning pages from 3 months ago, I did write that I wanted to learn Spanish. What does this mean?
My interpretation is this. By writing morning pages, we can make small choices that slowly create shifts in our perspective. Sure, there are some fancy, folk theories that say things along this line… and I like simpler explanations than those fancy ones. So, the point is that if we become aware of what we are curious about and know that it’s okay to go along that curiosity, we start spotting what we want and move towards it, provided that we make deliberate choices to act and do act indeed.
I haven’t finished reading every bit of my morning pages yet. One thing that particularly caught my attention is a question I wrote-what will I be like in 3 months? That was a question from my self as of 3 months ago to my current self. This is a hard question to answer, especially when I feel I’ve been continuously me for the last 3 months.
Can you remember what you were like 3 months ago?
Sharpening awareness through meditating by hand (Day 6)
One of the basic tools of the Artist’s Way is the morning pages.
Every morning, you write down by hand whatever thoughts or emotions occuring to you at the time of writing. The minimal amount you’re expected to write is 3 pages. For me, it takes about 30 mins to do the morning pages. Since the morning pages are only for yourself, you’re encouraged to write anything you want to write. There’s no need to self-edit your thoughts as well.
One of the benefits of the morning pages is that you can train your muscle for listening to yourself. I bet you have some negative noises that you had to adapt as you grew up as well as your positive voice that cheers you up. That sounds pretty much like a folk explanation and nothing solid, but I believe you get the picture. Working on the morning pages lets you cultivate your awareness more.
Having sharp awareness is useful in any area. For example, I think it’s no exaggeration to say that awareness I developed through the morning pages helped me get better at Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. The reason is that now I’m more aware of what I want to do, am trying to do and am doing. Once you become aware of these things, it will be easier to improve your game. Similarly, better awareness helps you deal with your negative noises as well as listen carefully to your positive voice. Being able to note these things is the first step and that’s exactly what the morning pages help you achieve. Even if you have no intention to work on the Artist’s Way, try doing the morning pages for 30 days. Or even a week. See how that makes a difference in your daily life.
Once you’ve tried that or you’ve already been doing, come back here and tell me what your experiences were like!
Blurting is OK (Day 3)
I did write something for this blog in the morning, and I got busy with another project for the entire day. Now it’s almost 10pm and I have to get on with that project I’ve been working on for the entire day. In short, it seems that I won’t be able to edit a draft post and to post it today. Instead of working on that post I wrote originally, I am going to blurt.
Blurting is important, because if you just blurt and there’s no self-editing involved, there are chances that your blurts turn out to be pieces of gold.
I’m glad I set this 30 day blogging challenge to be a challenge of consistency and quantity rather than quality. Of course, if I could write a top quality post everyday like Seth Godin, that would have been better. But, that’s fine for now. Who knows, Seth might be just blurting whatever comes to his mind and his blurts turn out to be great … every time.
Do you sometimes notice that you self-edit your thoughts, ideas or images? If you do, what do you think about it? To me, it feels much better to get them out of my head anyway and look at them later if needed. I learnt this way of dealing with things from the Artist’s Way. Or, to be precise, I finally put that knowledge about this method into action by working on what’s called the morning pages. I’ve been writing 3 pages every morning since the last December. The Artist’s Way is a great book and I highly recommend it.
OK, I think that’s enough blurting for now!