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The Three Keys to Go From Preator to Creator

MarlonLeave a comment

I once had a conversation with a wannabe musician where they were bashing modern mainstream music by saying how unoriginal and uninspiring it was, and how if only he could make music, it’d be so much better than the “garbage” that gets massed produced these days.

After ranting and raving about the state of the industry he finally said, “I want to write music that’s original that no one’s ever heard before.”

“Okay,” I said. “Then what have you written so far?”

“Nothing yet,” he replied.

And without a moment’s hesitation, I retorted, “then mission accomplished.”

Sick burn, right? Somebody call the burn unit and get this man some aloe vera!

All joking and arrogance aside, though, this is an unfortunately common conversation I have had with some would be creators. I can’t even consider them as creators because they haven’t created anything yet. I like to call them “preators.” They’re always in the pre-planning stage of creating anything, but never actually put pen to paper or strike a single stroke of paint on their canvas.

All they do is blow hot air about how much better their work would be than the stuff that’s already out there. And even if they do create anything, their output is rather limited and unrefined, and with a little bit of work could actually contend with their imaginary contemporaries and rivals.

But they don’t.

Instead, they choose to cling onto their opinions and spout their “hot takes”—that are really just lukewarm at best—and spend most of their time criticizing established works that have been published, screened, and viewed by the masses. Why? Because it’s a lot easier to say something is bad than it is to actually do something that is better than the things that they disparage.

A true creator would respect the work of others who have put their skills and taste on display, and no matter how bad those displays may be, these preators would at least respect the fact that if there’s even the tiniest of an audience for this work they deem so bad, that it at least resonates with a tiny minority of people.

Whether you know a preator, or are one yourself, today I will discuss what it takes to go from preator to actual creator.

Here are The Three Keys to Going From Preator to Creator:

  1. Humility
  2. Courtesy
  3. Authenticity

The Key of Humility

Now before I get too far into the deep end of criticizing preators, I should touch upon the good interactions I’ve had with creators and my experience with turning preators into creators. Back in 2016, when I was a writing coach, I had the honour and privilege of working with some very bright and talented writers. They had great ideas, but had trouble executing them, and that’s where I came in to assist them in refining their ideas and habits so that they can finally find the confidence to put pen to paper.

Sometimes my fresh new suggestions for their stories were adapted, but most of the time a lot of my suggestions were considered, but my clients themselves came up with even better ideas than me. I was very proud of them for this and took as little credit as possible because ultimately they were the ones doing the work. All I did was provide the space for them to geek out about a project that they were passionate about while also asking just a few questions that would nudge them in the right direction.

How this was possible on both sides was thanks to a whole lot of humility. For them, it took a lot of humility to accept that their work needed some work and looked to me for some guidance. Then on my end, it took a lot of humility to accept that a lot of my suggestions were going to get rejected and sometimes even challenged. While it was gratifying to see my ideas show up in their next chapter, what gratified me even more was seeing them building something even better than what I suggested, and even more importantly, seeing them build something way better than what they started with.

To go from preator to creator is to accept that your work is not gonna start off as absolutely awesome. There are very rare cases where natural talent just allows someone to create a masterpiece from the get go, but in reality, 99% of the time, it takes a lot of hard work and practice to get proficient at any craft. You have to take classes or find some other alternative way to learn things, and with the advent of the Internet it’s even easier to find resources that help in this matter. From Skillshare classes, to free YouTube videos, or even hiring a Creative Consultant like myself, there is absolutely no shame in looking for help.

Returning back to the wannabe musician, he claimed that learning music theory would only stump his creativity and that he wants to break all the rules to make something truly magnificent and original. I’m sure in his mind, in all earnestness, he believed that that is what the current music industry needed. A huge break away from convention and something that’ll catch people off guard.

Well to that, I call BS because you have to know the rules before you can break them, and you don’t just do it for the hell of it. You do it if it helps the music improve. Yes, there are a lot of successful musicians out there that don’t know music theory, but that’s not the point. The point is that they still have to work hard at their craft to be in the position their in, which leads to my next point.

The Key of Courtesy

You gotta have respect for published works, no matter how bad some of them may be. If it’s viewable by the general public, that means a creator actually had the courage to put their skills and taste on display for the world to see. Creating is a very vulnerable thing to do because it can easily scrutinized and misunderstood when you intended something entirely different.

Look at Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin film, for God’s sake. The man literally apologized for disappointing some fans with its over the top campiness and not being what people wanted or expected, then admitted that all he wanted to do was make something entertaining. May that man rest in peace because he gave it his best shot and was met with horrible criticism for something he simply wanted to have fun creating. Horrible as that movie was, I was at least entertained by it as a kid and it had an awesome soundtrack. It should not define his career.

It’s super easy to be passionate about a piece of art that just works on several levels. For preators stuck in the pre-creating stage, what you gotta do is be unabashedly proud of what you love and are inspired by, and do what you can to learn why it resonates with you so much. Far too many people think they look cool for criticizing something bad like Batman & Robin or even the Twilight Saga, but that’s just low hanging fruit. You want to be original? Then have the courage to express your passion for something you love because that’s all too rare these days with the advent of clickbait YouTube and Twitter criticisms of the latest film, book, or show.

Once you’re comfortable with having courtesy to acknowledge the creators you love, make that courtesy common by also giving it to the creators you might detest or at the very least think little of. Creating ain’t easy, and if you’re a preator, you might even bash things to hell because you’re actually intimidated by how hard it is to contend with even that.

But instead of seeing as everything and everyone as competition, see them as inspiration for you to do something similar. Similar, but not better. That’s for the audience to decide, not you. Your job is simply to create something and to do so from a place that isn’t bogged down by ego and wanting to prove a point. There are only a handful creators who create out of spite, greed, and malicious intent, but most of them out there are creating things from the final key that will unlock the creators within the preators.

The Key of Authenticity

To get that authentic stamp of approval, a creator must also be authentic in their approach. Their goal should not be fame and fortune. Fame and fortune should be the natural byproducts of their hard work, but not the end goal. A creator’s goal is to create something from an intimate place of authenticity. It sounds a little woo woo right now, so let me elaborate.

We’ve already beaten the dead horse of that wannabe musician from the intro of this post, so let’s talk about someone else who actually does know music and plays it. There were these fellow metalheads I once knew who actually did have some musical talent. One was a drummer and the other one was a saxaphone player. While they were friends with each other and myself, they both had other sets of friends who they intended to make bands with. So as someone who has been in a few bands in the past, I was intrigued to hear what both of these guys would produce.

I was expecting either of them to record a shoddy smartphone video of them jamming with their friends or put something up on Soundcloud for me to hear, but you know what happened instead? Months went by where both of these guys were flat out living the preator stereotype of trash talking musicians who are signed by labels, all the while only talking about being in a band without actually being in one. While these were two different guys with two different sets of friends that could’ve been bandmates, their stories were pretty much the same.

All they did was complain about modern metal and how so many good bands are selling out to make money and become popular. What did these guys do though? They talked endlessly about how they were just talking with their friends about what kind of music they wanted to make. “We want to make something like this band used to make, but better.”

Once again, I asked one of my douchey questions and said, “oh, okay, cool. So have you guys written anything yet?”

And both of their responses were to the effect of, “well we’re just talking about it right now.”

Preators talk the talk.

Creators walk the walk.

The fact that they didn’t even get together to jam and see what their musical chemistry is like was baffling to me. It was just a bunch of arrogant dudes trash talking the established bands out there, claiming what they’ll make will be so much better, but have little to nothing to show for it.

For a preator to become a creator, you need the humility to know that you’re gonna be very amateur at first, and maybe even for a very long time. Then you need the courtesy to respect those who came before you and even seek help from someone to get some mentorship. And lastly, you need to just get started and do something. And do it without the pretense of being amazing or even better than what should simply inspire you to do what you do.

From Preator to Creator

As you begin to actually execute on your ideas, you will find that it’ll be harder and harder to criticize those who came before you. You’ll start to realize that it’s not that easy to create anything of quality or value, let alone anything at all. This is the place where I think creators need to be in in order to create from a good place, rather than one of ego. Because more often than not, ego prevents people from even getting started, and even if they do get started, impatience gets in the way and they begin to believe that all their hard work needs to be rewarded and it needs to be rewarded right now!

But that’s the thing about creativity; not everyone will understand or appreciate what you create at first. You need to be your own number one fan to keep yourself motivated. You can’t rely on the whims of a potential audience or even the encouragement of a mentor. The kind words can be things you prefer, but you gotta be indifferent from the influx or lack of positive reception and just do your thing.

If you take the time to craft these Three Keys to Going from Preator to Creator, I will guarantee you that you will have a whole lot more appreciation for the entire creative process, and if you don’t buckle from the pressure of it, eventually learn to hone in on your own process and maybe actually join the ranks of the greats.

The Beauty of Imperfection

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Many artists out there contend with the self doubt and imposter syndrome that they are not good enough to create anything. Other artists skew toward the opposite extreme and think their unreleased work—or released but poorly received work—is just so much better than what’s popular. Whichever way you slice it, art is our attempt at capturing perfection through the execution of our skills and imagination.

But what happens with our skills don’t match up with our imagination? I’ve heard some would-be musicians say they want to make music, but they could never write anything that sounds as good as what they hear in their heads. Or there’s even novelists, some of which I worked with back in my Writing Coaching days, that have fantastic story ideas mapped out in their heads, but have never put pen to paper. What hurt me more were the times I’d help create a mind map of their novels and they’d still refuse to put that organized visualization of their story into manuscript form.

It all comes to self worth and self perception when an artist is either too doubtful of themselves or overly confident about their abilities, that they forget that creating anything of value comes from a place of humility, respect, and authenticity as I’ve outlined before. So today we’re going to look at the top three things that should encourage you get started on that project you’ve only dreamed of:

1. So Many Fundamentally Flawed Works Are Published and Produced All the Time
2. Let That Inspire You to Risk Doing the Same
3. Doing Something Badly is Better Than Not Doing it at All

The World is Full of Flawed Work

You’ve probably heard your friends, online critics, or even your own mentors trash talk a piece of art out there in the world. In fact, that’s usually what we’re bombarded with most of the time; people being discontent with the state of art and literature as opposed to the rare few people out there who have the guts to be earnest with their love for art.

Think of infamous things like the Twilight Saga or basically reality TV (if you can even call that art), and you’ll start to see that the world is full of flawed artwork. Now you can easily pick them apart and say how much better they could be, especially if you’re well educated in your field of creativity, but the real beauty lies in trying to understand why it strikes a chord with some people.

While there are some pieces of art out there that are well known, but not popular at all, and definitely not well received at all, there are super mainstream things that everyone accepts as crap, but it’s loved anyway. Once again, case in point, The Twilight Saga. I remember in my writing class my teacher actually brought Twilight to dissect as it was an easy mark to display bad writing.

But as she was picking it apart for the low hanging fruit that it was, she was also surprised by and remarked on the passages of the book that were actually well written. This got me to thinking; is the book really all that bad or is hating it just a fad as much as it is for middle aged housewives and teenage girls alike to be in love with this romantic violent vampire story?

Upon reading it myself and watching the movie adaptation, I came to the conclusion that the answer is yes to both questions. It wasn’t really all that good as people hyped it up to be, nor was it really as bad as people trashed it to be, but I could see why they might see it that way. Either way, it doesn’t really matter because no matter what the critics say, Stephanie Meyer made a goddamn killing off this series and I’m sure she’s laying in bed at night, wiping her tears with $100 bills because some asshole on the internet said her book sucked.

Even putting money aside as a possible measurement for an artwork’s success and value, the very fact that she wrote these books is already a feat in its own. Writing a novel to completion is hard work. Trust me, I’ve done it, and I’ve yet to publish anything. So while I’m proud that I’ve completed several drafts of several different novels by now which is more than a lot of would-be writers can say, I’m still stumped by the onslaught of other books out there that were published by the sheet courage and determination by those authors. Stephanie Meyer or otherwise.

Let That Inspire You to Risk Doing the Same

So for every piece of got artwork out there, there’s thousands more that suck, but nonetheless they’re out there in the world for anyone to engage in. Crappy movies, shitty books, poorly produced TV shows, etc. This alone should inspire you to get your own work done and do away with what the critics might say. While every creator is different and handles criticism differently, the fact remains that their work is out there whether people like it or not.

In fact, people not liking your work is a guarantee. I’ve had people tell me straight up that something I made was boring and yes that was a huge punch to my confidence. But you know what? I shrugged it off and continued making stuff anyway.

Why? Because unless a critic gives me a valuable suggestion on how to improve my work, then I usually discount what they have to say because maybe what I make just doesn’t resonate with them, and that’s fine too.

If someone does give you useful feedback, it’s worthwhile thinking about and considering. Remember, it’s the mark of an intelligent person to entertain an idea without agreeing to it. This is why it’s valuable to join a critique group or get a mentor because having that outside perspective can really give you perspective on how you can improve.

But whether you take their criticisms to heart or not, what matters is that you create regardless of how you think it’s gonna be received. Of course we prefer people to praise us to high heavens, but you shouldn’t create anything to seek that kind of external validation. Nor should you not create due to the fear of being criticized because that just comes with the territory.

Doing Something Badly is Better Than Not Doing it at All

You can’t call yourself a creator if you don’t create. Even if you create badly, it’s better than being someone who is all talk and no walk. As I’ve harped on preators before, you will already be ahead of the curve if you just decide to work on something that is the expression of your purpose. Whether you express yourself through music or literature, it’s important to get that out of your system rather than letting be an anxiety that builds up over time.

Especially when there’s already so much artwork out there that gets scrutinized from now until kingdom come. Don’t let that stop you. In the wise words of Mr. Rogers:

Whether you’re a hobby artist or a professional one, don’t ever let the quality of your work prevent you from enjoying the process of creating it in the first place. If quality is what you strive for, there are tremendous resources out there that can help you get to the skill level you want to get at. It takes a lot of hard work and patience, and we will talk more about how to develop that patience in a future post!

Using Creative Anxiety to Your Advantage

MarlonLeave a comment

A lot of creative people are often intimidated by the magnitude of their own work. Contending with perfectionism, self doubt, and the overall difficulty of creating anything of value can prevent many would-be geniuses from ever expressing themselves, thus disallowing anyone to ever bask in the beauty of their work or even the creator granting themselves the glory of the act of creating in the first place.

I’ve noticed really creative people are very anxious a lot of the time, especially when they haven’t created for a while. It gives them anxiety how hard it is to get back into something they had long since abandoned, and then it feeds into the cycle of avoiding it even more and building the anxiety even more and more as well.

Today, I’m going to provide some advice that I’ve been reluctantly, but fruitfully taking myself, and I hope that despite of how hard it sounds to do, I hope you try it on and share your experience with me. The top three things anxious creators need to learn are:

  1. Anxiety is Unspent Energy
  2. The Results of Releasing That Energy
  3. How to Recharge and Harness That Energy

Anxiety is Unspent Energy

Creators are often anxious because the creative project that nags at them at the back of their heads is simply built up energy that is being left unspent. It’s not negative, per se, but it can definitely weight on you the longer you procrastinate on something you know that’s in you to express. Creators have something to express through their work and not allowing themselves the privilege can lead to a whole lot of anxiety.

It’s easier said than done, but you really just gotta go do damn the thing in order to spend that anxious energy wisely. Otherwise, the months and years will go by and maybe from time to time people will ask you “how’s that book coming along?” and you’ll be hard pressed to come up with a better excuse than the one you gave them five years ago as to why you still haven’t published it, let alone began writing it in the first place.

If this sounds like you, I highly suggest you get over yourself and the prospect of what others think, and just get to work on the thing you know you need to do. There’s a locked up emotion in you, be it anger, sadness, or even joy, and not expressing any of that emotion through your art is gonna lead to a psychological blockage until you get it done.

As creators, we generate themes and ideas in our hearts and minds all the time, and while it may not be possible for everyone to create an endless library of work that expresses every last theme and idea they want to express, it’s the very act of trying to do so that will lead to a much more fulfilling creative life than it would be to just not challenge yourself at all.

And that’s what we really need. We’re already making things hard for ourselves by anxiously thinking about that thing we know we need to be creating, so you might as well lean in to that difficulty by allowing yourself the privilege of being challenged by your own work. Creative work is not easy and it is not always fun, but believe me when I say it’s always a damn good time once you get to the other side of it.

The Results of Releasing That Energy

Another thing creators tend to contend with is simply feeling relief rather than pride upon completing a project. If you’ve turned your novel, painting, or song into something you “just need to get done,” then you’ve turned it into a chore, and it’s definitely no accident that chore rhymes with bore. Art can be difficult, but it should never be boring.

The frustration is normal because you are challenging yourself to create something with your full potential tapped into it, and with each passing project, you should be stretching your growth-edge further and further so that you can continue the ongoing growing pains that come with creating art. But just because it’s frustrating and isn’t always as easy, fun, and free flowing as it can be when you’re randomly motivated, it doesn’t mean it should be boring.

I’ve recently had the experience of choosing to “phone it in” with the fifth draft of It Starts at Home. The first three acts of the book, I wrote valiantly and with joy, but the last two acts, I started to just rush through it and wanted it over and done with rather than taking my time to enjoy the process. While the novel is technically done, it’s not at the quality I know that it deserves and the it’s certainly not at the quality that I could personally be happy with. Especially considering the 10th year anniversary of that novel’s conception will be in just a few months as of writing this blog post.

No matter how frustrating and elongated the creation process is, we must never disparage its place in our lives, and always remember what we’re trying to express through it, as well as honouring what it’s trying to teach us. Just because we come into a project with the intention to potentially teach others about a revelation we may have had, it doesn’t mean the project won’t surprise you in its creation process and give you something even more profound than whatever you intend to provide to your audience.

So in releasing that energy, remember to honour your art for what it is and not resent it for the difficulty it may give you. And you certainly don’t want to resent it for not garnering the views, likes, or even profit it fails to deliver because that’s kinda like having children you hate. Sure, they turned out crappy and no one likes them, but whose fault is that? It’s your responsibility to do the best you can with the knowledge you have, and have the trust and faith that no matter what missteps you may have taken along the way, that you’ll always have the opportunity to do better next time.

How to Recharge and Harness Creative Energy

Now here comes the slightly controversial part. When it’s all said and done, give yourself a huge break and turn your brain off a little bit. We’re not built for constant and consistent conscious use of our mental cognition. While I think a lot of brain fog can and will clear once we do the things we often procrastinate on, especially by engaging in mindless activities like scrolling through social media, it is actually that kind of mindless activity that can allow us to recharge after giving an artistic project our all.

Just don’t mess with the order, of course.

A lot of creative people are tempted to consume other art or even turn their brains off before they decide to sit down and right. Hell, before I wrote this blog post, I procrastinated for an entire hour before I sat down and decided it was time to write for the next four hours in the afternoon. What did I do? I watched a bunch of YouTube videos, almost all of which I didn’t even watch into completion. My excuse? I need to wake my brain up.

But writing this blog post is actually part of a big experiment that I’ve been trying out on myself and the hypothesis seems to be correct:

If you suffer from brain fog and anxiety, challenging yourself to do difficult things can actually clear all of that away, if not a huge portion of it. Before I decided to write today, I spent a couple hours debating myself over whether I even should write today. “I’m tired, though,” I rationed to myself. “I didn’t enjoy my weekend enough, so why not one more day?”

Because then I would have lost the energy I had today to write in my journal, to write this blog post, and write a script for a short film!

For the longest time, I thought that playing video games and watching movies felt better after getting some work done because I earned it by being productive. But that’s not what it’s really about. It has nothing to do with any moral licensing and earning anything, rather it’s more of a matter of mental activation.

I’m starting to realize lately that video games and movies are more enjoyable after getting some work done because writing demands all of my mental faculties and so I am forced to turn my brain on in doing so. Even if it feels like a drag the first few minutes, once I get going, I really get going. Video games and movies are passive activities, and while you do require some cognition and input for video games, it’s still reacting to spoon-fed stimuli, whereas creating a piece of art requires your full cognitive attention.

The brain wants to work in full activation. It needs to be depleted before being open to replenishment through entertainment.

CONCLUSION

If you’re a creative person with a whole lot of anxiety, just remember life is too short to leave your emotions unexpressed. Answer the project that calls to you so that you’re in a calm and civil conversation with it instead of having it become the thing that screams for your attention at the back of your mind for days, weeks, months, or even years on end.

Once you get to it, remember to honour it for its value to not only your potential audience, but to you as the creator having the intimate experience of being challenged by it and conquering that challenge by honing in on all your training and built up skill you intend to display through it. Chores turn into bores, so remember to enjoy the process even when it gets difficult.

And finally, allow yourself some passive consumption of art, social media, or anything else to give your brain the rest it needs. In a future post I’ll talk about the importance of active recreation, but for now bask in the permission to waste some time away. Not because you’ve “earned” it, but because you’ll just be giving your brain the variety and novelty it needs in shifts between the active and passive use of it.

The Top 3 Excuses For Not Journaling

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While I may have written quite the beast of a series on journaling last year, I still feel like there’s more to write about in regards to this therapeutic practice. Particularly when it comes to three common excuses people tell me as to why they don’t journal. I don’t mean any of this cynically as journaling is a choice people are free to make, but for the people who say they want to do it, but “can’t,” ie. simply don’t do it, I want to help you get out of your own way and get down to business.

Journaling is not easy, as I’ve said before. It requires you to take a hard and honest look at yourself, and it demands your full attention to really reflect on the thoughts and feelings you have about the events in your life. Some journaling can be easy breezy like simply writing about what you’re grateful for, or keeping track of your progress on a project, but real and soul searching journaling requires cognitive and emotional commitment.

No wonder people resist this simple, yet difficult practice, right? Sounds frustrating and often times it can be. Plus it also feels crazy to be arguing with yourself on a piece of paper, but like as Anne Frank said, “paper is more patient than people.” The biggest gift you can give yourself and to the world is the ability to express your thoughts and your entire being in the most clear and concise way possible, and one of the best ways to achieving that efficiency is taking the time to journal about your thoughts and feelings.

Here are The Top 3 Excuses For Journaling:

  1. “I always forget to journal for a long time and then it’s too late because I can’t even remember what happened a few months ago.”
  2. “I don’t even know what to write and I just get bored because I write about what I ate that morning.”
  3. “I want to, but I don’t have the time for it. I’m just soooo busy.”

To distill these excuses into mere concepts let’s rename them as:

  1. Lacking Memory
  2. Getting Bored
  3. Not Making the Time

Lacking Memory


“I always forget and I can’t remember things from long time ago.”

Unless you’re severely senile or have suffered brain damage, yes, you can. Otherwise, my heart goes out to you and props to you for being able to read this blog post. I say this with compassion, not cynicism.

But to those of you who do have the wonderful privilege of having their mental faculties in tact, you really do need to give yourself more credit rather than claiming absolute memory loss. While the easiest way to journal is to write about your day to day life as it unfolds, there’s also nothing wrong with taking many months or even years away from journaling before you get back to it. Especially if the intention is to write about all the things you’ve experienced from your time away from journaling. Writing about your past is just as important as writing about your present and future.

I’ve had times in my life where I’ve been fortunate enough to not really struggle for a while, and I’ve used those opportunities to reflect on the times I have struggled so that I can learn and grow from them more than the initial experience may have offered at the time. This way I am better equipped to face future challenges or even present challenges if I happen to be struggling at the moment. Either way, my journaling isn’t always as day to day as I’d like for it to be, but I am definitely okay with spending months away from my journal before chronicling my life in epochs whenever I get back to it.

In fact, as of writing this blog post, it is July 2023 (and I am only now posting it in June 2024), but all the things I’m journaling about are from earlier this year. As early as January, I’m writing about how my life has been this year and while most of it is chronological, a lot of it also structured by theme and predicament. Some things happened concurrently with others, while other things happened in a somewhat linear fashion.

How could I possibly remember this? Well, I just sit down and concentrate, thinking about key moments where I felt something strongly or something left an impression on me, and then work from there.

You can too if you just took the time to sit down and think about your life.

That’s all there is to it.

If you think you can’t remember your life from not too long ago, then you’re not thinking or trying very hard. But I promise you, if you decide to simply sit down and crack that journal open, you will remember. Give it some thought. Give it some time. Give it some attention. As you begin to write and recall specific events in your life, you will be engaging your memory bank and everything will come back flooding toward you.

The next challenge is to be able to structure your thoughts and feelings surrounding these past events in a way that at least makes sense to you. Remember, your journal is almost always for your eyes and your eyes only. So who cares if you write in run on sentences or go all over the place chronologically with what you write about? As long as you’re making the connections yourself the best you can and engaging your capacity to remember, that’s all that matters.

If it makes sense to you, then good. If not, then slow down and try to take it one thought at a time.

Getting Bored

“I don’t know what to write so I just get bored.”

I had a friend tell me that she got bored of journaling and eventually stopped after a mere two or three days at it. She said she didn’t know what to write about and got bored, thinking it was silly that all she did was write about what she had for breakfast and all these other mundane day to day things she does throughout the day. And then I figured, yeah, no wonder you got bored, you wrote about boring things!

Try thinking of journaling as a way to dramatize your life like it’s a novel. Rarely ever do you see characters in a novel doing mundane tasks like brushing their teeth or mowing the lawn unless they’re thinking about something important, having an important dialogue with another character, or at the very least revealing the nuance of the character with how they do these day to day activities in a unique way.

Likewise, with yourself, you can even journal about getting frustrated while doing the dishes. Maybe a spec of dirt refused to get wiped off by your sponge. Who ate so poorly as to let these morsels get this dry? Why is this sponge so weak? Why hasn’t anyone in the damn house bought a new one yet? Stupid little questions and frustrations like this, silly and mundane as they may seem, can also lead to some revelations about yourself in regards to what actually sets you off and what you need to do around your home to improve it.

But obviously you will tire rather quickly if you dramatize dumb little things to this degree all the time. What you want to do is write about the big moments in your life, or even the small ones that lead up to them. For me personally, I had one hell of a time journaling about my brother’s wedding last year as I reflected what his marriage brought out in me and my conceptions of love and romance. Where he and his wife shared schmaltzy and heartfelt vows with each other and responded to each other so smoothly, I was involved in a relationship where I wanted to express that same kind of affection, but it was toward a woman who just wasn’t into that kind of communication. That totally gave me a wake up call, making me realize how much of an uphill battle I was fighting at the time.

Hell, even as of today’s journal entry, I wrote about the process it took for me to build my gaming and music production PC. To most people it’s not a big deal. It just a one and done occurrence, but for me it was a gauntlet of self doubt and triumph because it was my first time doing it. Then on top of that, once I somehow managed to build this PC to the point of getting it to run as it should, as opposed to having it explode upon turning it on for the first time, I also had to sell my old PC to my nephew to make space in my room and to make back some of the money I spent on the NEW PC’s parts.

To most people this will look and sound like a convenient sale within the family, but when you dig deeper as I have in my journal entry, I learned that it meant a lot to him to finally have a gaming PC because out of my other gamer cousins and I, my nephew would be the last of us and his friends to get a gaming PC to escape console poverty.

Even the tiniest thing like that can have significance in your life if you look hard enough, but otherwise, you can and always should bank up on some more significant things in your life like a break up or new relationship, a death in the family, or a conflict with a friend as something to journal about and get some revelations from.

Not Making the Time

“I want to journal, but I don’t have time to.”

Yes, you do. If you want to, you will make the time. Proclaiming how much you wanna do it is just blowing hot air and accomplishing nothing. Unless you work a demanding job where you’re on call 24/7, got a spouse and some kids to support, along with a whole lot of other responsibilities to tend to, you have the time to journal. Otherwise, you really need to take a hard look at your schedule and priorities as no one should be living that kind of a constricting life.

If journaling is something you really want to do, then I suggest you get the fuck off your phone, stop binging Netflix, and definitely turn off the evening news, and do something way more productive with your time and journal. You will have a much better time being in quiet conversation with yourself and tracking every thought and feeling as you put pen to paper, much quicker than you would wasting your time on the shit that most people consume on the daily basis.

You do this one thing and you’re already ahead of the curve because most people don’t even stop to think they should journal, let alone engage in any personal development. But ego stuff aside, it is just so much better to live the conscious and purposeful life rather than living life by default. It may feel easier and more comfortable, and living on purpose has its difficulties, but at the end of your life, I guarantee that you’ll wish you made the time for more important things like journaling rather than arguing with idiots online while you take a shit in the morning.

Marrying Your Creativity

MarlonLeave a comment

Managing your creativity is a lot like managing a healthy marriage. They both start off with a honeymoon period where everything is fun, fresh, and exciting, but then the prospect of living happily ever after gets challenged when reality starts to set in. You knew it couldn’t always be rainbows and unicorns forever. When the dust has settled and the initial excitement is gone, you are then left with confronting some challenging aspects of your project. And in turn, if you have any sense, confronting your own demons in the process as well.

Today, we’re going to take a look at how you can manage your creativity in the same way so that you don’t end up with the proverbial divorce, or at the very least, unhappy marriage that you feel stuck in. Once you understand how the phases of a project mirror the phases of a marriage, and how cyclical they actually often turn out to be, the better equipped you’ll be with committing to your creativity with all earnestness instead of committing to it out of necessity, or worse, outright abandoning it.

There are three phases in a creative project that mirror a marriage and they are:

  1. The Honeymoon
  2. Slap From Reality
  3. Renewing Your Vows

The Honeymoon

The Honeymoon is every creator’s favourite part and wish could last forever. And how could you not? Little to no effort is required. All you gotta do is sit back and relax enjoying the company of your favourite person in the world. Likewise, with a creative project, getting to work on it at the beginning can feel so effortless because you’re overwhelmed by your excitement for the novelty of a fresh new idea, so you hit the ground running and work at it to your heart’s content, and sometimes even to the point of burn out.

But what if I told you that despite of how great this phase is in a project, it’s actually not the best part of it? It’s definitely there to entice you and motivate you to accept all cognitive demand it may require. Whether you’re writing a novel, composing a song, or painting a picture, you know that it takes a lot of patience and focus to create. It just doesn’t feel that way because the initial euphoria of stumbling upon a fresh new idea makes the difficulty of its conception feel easy breezy.

Much like in a new relationship or a marriage, you look past the red flags and do your best to keep the peace because you just want to bask in all the positives of your partner. Likewise with your project, you want to build it up in your mind as this next best thing that your genius has conjured up, so you’re bound to look past its flaws and maybe even your own flaws as a creator.

Until, of course, you get a…

Slap From Reality

After several weeks into a project, you start to see where it may not be the greatest thing after all. Maybe you have a plot-hole you’ve yet to figure how to cover up. Maybe an entire section of your song bogs down the pacing. Or maybe you have some bland colours that aren’t really making your image pop the way it should be popping. Whatever the case may be, creators are always confronted with the things their ego begin to remind them of: you and everything you make will always have fundamental flaws in them.

And so the resistance becomes stronger. Your initial passion for the project begins to wane and you wake up less and less excited each morning to tackle it. Instead of wanting to do it first thing in the morning, you shy away from it, anxious and exhausted merely from avoiding it. You might even start to feel guilty for doing so and the sunk cost fallacy makes you believe that you might as well continue ignoring your problems because if you’ve already gone this long on procrastinating, what are the chances of actually recovering if you gave it a shot now?

Well, you never know until you try is what I always say. In my opinion, this slap from reality is actually the best part of the creative process. Many people fear it for being difficult, but growth is found in overcoming difficult obstacles. And in order for you and your project/marriage to grow, you’ve got to be willing to fight for what you once had and breathe new life into it. You made a commitment and you’ve got to be willing to see it to the end, and with all earnestness, not obligation.

Renewing Your Vows

Marriages and creators who have stood the test of time have done so because of their commitment to renewal. Of course anything can get boring and difficult when you have too much of it. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing, after all. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have that good thing forever and always and still be able to appreciate it further down the line. It takes a renewal of perspective and the courage to grow in order to maintain it.

So with whatever project you’re working on right now, if it has you down in the dumps, try and revive your love for it by reminding you of what got you interested in the first place. If it no longer resonates with you, try and think hard about what new meaning you can add to it in your life and how this renewed version of it can push you forward. Or if you haven’t even started on a project in fear of reality slapping you in the face, you now at least know to expect that phase to disrupt your initial joy with it.

But don’t fret because like a good marriage, projects will have their ups and downs. Your true character and your commitment to your craft will often be tested to see how badly you want to express whatever your current project is meant to express. Whether it’s what you truly feel or you’re discovering what you truly feel through it, you will never know unless you see it through to the end.

And if you can do that, maybe you will get to experience a happily ever after.