It’s the easiest thing to get inspired on the internet. I open up my email and there are a dozen great newsletters in there, waiting to inspire me. My Google Bookmarks is bursting with links to my favorite blogs. Every time I get on social media I find new things to bookmark, new links to collect, new videos to watch, new stuff to check out. I have so many interests after all — I like music, photography, interior design, books, traveling, technology, etc. So I get easily whipped into a frenzy every time I’m online, thinking to myself, I’ll get to this link one day, and I’ll check out that app another day.
It’s too much for my brain.
In order to rest my brain — and to give myself space and time to really look at and enjoy the things and books and websites I already like — I realise I have to limit the amount of external input that comes in every day. That means not looking at social media for a few days on end. This includes deleting all the social media apps from my phone. No Facebook, no Instagram, no Reddit. And hence no noise. Life is much quieter. I love it.
It also means not mindlessly web-surfing and holding off on reading blogs and newsletters for a few days. I have serious gripes about social media and I’d love nothing more than to permanently quit them, but I love my blogs and newsletters. Most of them are wonderfully and lovingly maintained by people who truly love making and sharing things on the internet, and I’m inspired by them on a daily basis. But once in awhile, for the sake of giving my brain a rest, doing a short blog/newsletter fast can be beneficial.
So you cut down on the noise and the endless stimulation. Life ironically begins to expand. Suddenly you find that you have quite a bit of extra time.
You can choose to do one of the few things you already really enjoy doing. You can take the time to go deeper. To improving your craft. To demolishing your to-read list. Or you can choose to rest. Do nothing. Either way, the quiet is a welcome respite for your brain.
Enjoy it.
(I actually would like to further try a full information/technology fast. Maybe for three days or so. I’ll definitely write about it if that ever happens. Haha!)
“Daddy, are you out there?
Daddy, won’t you come and play?
Daddy, do you not care?
Is there nothing that you wanna say?
I know
You’re hurting too
But I need you, I do
Daddy, if you’re out there
Daddy, all I want to say
You’re so far away
Oh, you’re so far away
That’s okay, it’s okay
I’m okay
Daddy, are you out there?
Daddy, why’d you run away?
Daddy, are you okay?
Look, Dad, we got the same hair
And Daddy, it’s my birthday
And all I wanna say
Is you’re so far away
Oh, and you’re so far away
That’s okay, it’s okay
It’s okay
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
(Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh) You’re so far away
Won’t you come and won’t you stay?
Please stay, oh, please stay
Won’t you come and won’t you stay?
One day, just one day”
Human beings are at our core deeply creative; it seems, even if we don’t fully understand why, that we are here to make things, conjure stuff from out of nowhere. The energy that arises from the act of doing creative work is life-giving, joyful, pure.
Some of us of course desire to be recognised for our creative work. We attach our identity, even our happiness, to the reception of our creative work by the outside world.
Nick Drake was a very talented singer-songwriter who was active in the 60s and 70s, but during his lifetime, neither of his records sold more than 5,000 copies. This lack of success drove him to a dark, unrelenting depression. He died of an overdose of antidepressant medication in 1976, at the young age of 26, his talent buried, his name barely known.
In 2000, “Pink Moon” — the title track of one of his albums — was used in a Volkswagen advertisement and his songs began to explode in popularity. Posthumous sales of his records far exceeded those in his lifetime. He had made it. His talent was finally being recognised. But he was now dead for 24 years.
If Nick had become popular during his lifetime, would he have continued to be depressed? Does being popular, being accepted by the mainstream, have any bearing on whether he made good or bad music? Should he have stopped making music while he was still alive, since the reception was so bad (or rather, nonexistent)?
These questions are mostly unanswerable today but they are good food for thought. They help us to ask ourselves similarly difficult and confronting questions about art-making, success, money, public opinion, and the meaning of life.
We are made to create — I believe this is a self-evident truth. (And remember, “create” is a word that spans categories; one can create songs and paintings and novels as much as one can create connections, create spreadsheets, create businesses.) But must we connect our creativity to success? To financial rewards? To our self-esteem?
Is it possible to create in the purest sense of the word, which is to create for the sake of creating, without hoping for any reward to come our way?
This is what I propose, that we — creators of all stripes — learn to move forward on our creative paths with a sort of harmonic duality.
We create because we want to, because we are made to do it, because it is our calling.
If it is our desire to be conventionally recognised for our work, we must then be willing to treat our creative work as a profession, as a business even, and learn to market ourselves, do consistent work, connect with our audience, build visibility and relationships, etc.
However, if it becomes apparent after some years that our desire to create doesn’t seem to square with public recognition or any kind of viable financial reward, we must learn to be at peace with it and realise that not every singer becomes a Lady Gaga, not every painter becomes a Picasso, not every writer becomes a Neil Gaiman.
Maybe we are more of a Nick Drake — talented but without an audience in our lifetime. And it’s fine. (It’s interesting to note though that Nick Drake was famously resistant towards self-promotion and would shy away from performing his songs on TV, hence losing many opportunities to grow his fan base while he was still alive.) Our work might find an appreciative audience 24 years after we’re six feet under. But that doesn’t mean we’re not doing good work NOW. The joy, the life-giving force, the meaning of creative work — that is all already present every day in our lives, as we work to make things from out of nothing.
There might be no reward from the outside world, but there is already a reward, in and of itself, in the act of doing the work we are called to do. And that must not be taken lightly. This internal reward is a great gift, since it is self-sustaining and independent of external forces. It is real, rooted, and most importantly, ours.
I want to add a quick footnote: Creative work doesn’t need to be our profession in order for it to be valid. We can be a banker by day and painter by night. We can be a tuition teacher who writes in the mornings. We can be working a boring admin job but lead a wild life online as an indie app developer. But that doesn’t stop us from thinking and seeing ourselves as a painter, a writer, an indie web developer. If very few people are willing to pay us to create, we can still pay ourselves to do it by working a day job.
Another footnote: Chances are, if you really enjoy the creative work you do and you do it in a consistent manner and you are willing to put your work out there for people to see, an audience will build over time. It is almost a law. You might not end up becoming world-famous, but it’s not hard to eventually have 1,000 true fans. And that, most of the time, is more than enough.
“Lying in bed and smoking my sixth or seventh cigarette of the morning, I’m wondering what the hell I’m going to do today. Oh yeah, I gotta write this thing. But that’s not work, really, is it? It feels somehow shifty and… dishonest, making a buck writing. Writing anything is a treason of sorts. Even the cold recitation of facts — which is hardly what I’ve been up to — is never the thing itself. And the events described are somehow diminished in the telling. A perfect bowl of bouillabaisse, that first, all-important oyster, plucked from the Bassin d’Arcachon, both are made cheaper, less distinct in my memory, once I’ve written about them. Whether I missed a few other things or described them inadequately, like the adventures of the amazing Steven Tempel or my Day in the Life, is less important. Our movements through time and space seem somehow trivial compared to a heap of boiled meat in broth, the smell of saffron, garlic, fish bones and Pernod.”
— “Kitchen Confidential”, Anthony Bourdain
Started learning French via Duolingo. So far an amazing experience. I am in awe. The app is fun and addictive… and I’ve just realised “fun and addictive” are also part of their official marketing language. So it’s interesting to see that users of the app (i.e. myself) are experiencing the process the way they wanted us to.
I spend about an hour every day on the app, though not always at one go (it’s a great alternative to social media by the way). Already I’ve learned about 100 new words in less than four days (according to the app at least) and have gotten a faint grasp of French grammar and sentence structure without much strain or struggle, thanks to the gamification of the learning process. I’m still at the very first modules (what the app calls “skills”) so I haven’t quite teased out what Duolingo’s flaws are yet, but as of now it’s been, well, fun and addictive. And mainly because it’s really quite strangely satisfying to be learning a new language without breaking into much of a sweat.
(Of course, as we ascend the skill levels, things are going to get harder and I have no doubt we will need to put in more effort into reinforcing the new knowledge. But the app strives to smoothen this process and make it as enjoyable as possible.)
A 65-year-old woman on the app (they have tiny forums embedded within each skill level for people to engage in discussions) has been on a Duolingo streak for more than a year and she can now read and speak French, albeit limitedly. That’s quite an inspiring story and proves many things — that we can start learning new things at any age, that smart and well-designed products like Duolingo can bring extraordinary value (even joy) to people, and that by consistently chipping away at something every day, even something as “tough” as learning a new language can be totally doable and conquerable.
Sometimes I feel like words are barely enough. And yet sometimes words are everything. In fact, words can turn out to be one’s salvation, if you allow them to to save you.
And not only words but music too and movies, photography, and any other kind of art. I don’t have the words to explain why this is so, but I know it in my gut. I know it intuitively. That sometimes we are saved by beautiful things and it doesn’t even matter why or how.
Words.
First there are the words written by other people. Novels, poetry, articles on the internet, a fucking blog post. Any of these can save or change a life. Any of this can be a match struck in a dark night, just when you most need it.
Then there are the words you write. If you allow yourself to write honestly, to write from your soul (if you believe in such a thing), then writing can be salvation too, no matter how inept you are at it. It doesn’t matter if the words you write are ever only seen by yourself. It doesn’t matter if you only ever write in your private diaries. The point is to write, to allow the darkness in you to transform itself into understanding. Because to write is to come to a little more understanding of yourself, and a little understanding goes a long way.
There are many times when I sit before a blank page and believe one hundred percent in the thought in my head that goes, “You have nothing to write about”. On days when I have no resolve I simply give up, so another day goes by without me writing. But on some days I sit before the blank page long enough to force the words out of me, and then I realise that I have endless things to write about, and that my thoughts are often lying to me about what I can and cannot do.
Reading and writing can transform your suffering. I believe that with my entire heart. So I continue to read… and I continue to write.
Singapore is on its third day of soft lockdown – we are to stay home for one month and are no longer allowed by law to visit anyone who is living at a different address, although we can still go out to buy food and exercise.
Is it surreal? A little. But flow we must.
Cal Newport on how to be less overwhelmed and more meaningfully productive:
1. Do fewer things.
2. Do them better.
3. Know why you’re doing them.
A nice reminder for these times. And for all times, really.
