Bold New Directions in Creativity
(or, getting back to what works)
I’ve come to a fairly obvious conclusion. The right and left hemispheres of my brain do not like each other. I think I personally get along fairly well with both, but together, they do not want to play nicely. I came to this realization over the last few weeks in this place I now call home… the cubical near the front of the office at Cook where the whir of the laser printer prevents me from fully enjoying my music.
So I’ve been consumed with very technical tasks such as data entry, editing, text layout, orderforms and html over the last few weeks. During this time I was also responsible for a few scattered creative projects (all these projects are creative in some regard, but that said, there is still a distinction to be made) that now have either passed their expected due date or have been passed on to outside design houses. Why did this happen? I can assure you, not because I am not able to create the lovely pieces, but because I can’t start them! I am finding it impossible to switch my brain between the two worlds. I’ve tried to work on one creative piece over and over and it keeps looking like a spreadsheet or something!
So, today, I delivered an ultimatum to myself. Well, I delivered a few… One, I will go home at 6pm. No buts. Two, I will only work on creative projects and keep the printer going. Guess what! The pressure seems to be off! I’m nearing completion of the creative piece. All morning I poured myself into it. I allowed myself to drift around, to experiment, to undo, undo, undo… and I’m now getting somewhere!
I should have the piece done tomorrow, but I will not go back to orderforms until it is in the can. I can not go back and forth. It really drastically affects my creative output. It makes me feel bad about the process too… When doing an orderform you just keep moving. More and more fills the page. But with a creative project there are many points where a once colourful page gets erased and you start over and start over and start over. When in techno-mode I start to believe that maybe I’m failing when actually, it is just part of the process… but it is so easy to forget.
So, my tea is yummy, my artwork is pretty, and there are only 2 hours left in the workday! I feel a bit more successful.
