8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions ䷀

A
BLOG
FROM
NOWHERE

  • Strange Runs

    I took up distance running seriously in 2008, shortly after my daughter was born. I had been dabbling in the sport for a decade previous, but right around new years and that time of making resolutions I signed up to join a training clinic at the local running supply store. Nearly two decades later I’ve run tens of thousands of kilometres, completed hundreds of races, and found a network of people who are some of my closest friends.

    Being a runner also had a strange effect at the office. 

    There were enough of us runners that we found each other. In meetings, in the lunch room, or by winks and nudges from others who relayed that “did you know so and so is a runner, too?”

    This is not a post about running. 

    This is a post about networking.

    Taking up a sport, a hobby or a creative passion and being open about that in your professional life has a weird and magical way of interconnecting us in the otherwise dispassionate spaces of the work world. 

    …not that this is some deep insight. Shared interests forge tribes, after all. 

     But while you could just as easily find that tribe talking about a great band or the local sports club, finding out that your coworkers are aspiring authors, avid photographers, spending their evenings composing music, or just own a really expensive running watch, too, is a different level of camaraderie that shouldn’t be overlooked by creative spirits.   

  • Junk Drawer

    I have a collection of jars and each of them are filled with a mismatched array of screws left over from a long list of household projects: building our backyard deck, fixing the fence, installing drywall in the garage, assembling a doghouse with the kid, and a long list of other things I’ve long since forgotten. 

    Whenever I need to fix something, work on something or the urge strikes to connect two pieces of wood for some reason, I rummage through the screw jars and inevitably I find what I need.

    I hadn’t realized that not everyone does this. I assumed that it was just a universal trait of the average, everyday, homeowner: keeping a jar or two of mismatched screws on the shelf for those just-in-case moments.

    But no, and rather I have started to believe that it is more the habit of the creatively minded. A jar of screws has the potential to be useful in the future. And in the same way I also keep loops of string and bits of interesting wood I find on a walk or a bag of curious stones from the river or lists of writing ideas or recordings of curious sounds or introspective thoughts that lead to no where in particular… at least not yet.

    But maybe someday that junk will be worth more creatively than the collection itself.

  • Toys Tots

    Whatever happened to the artist you were as a child and can you find them again?

    As I start out to wrap my head around the roots and purposes of creativity inside this little blog I could not help but look back to the very beginning of the individual journey we each take. After all, by training I am a biologist and walking in perpetual lockstep with the core idea that development and childhood is intrinsically linked to both developmental purpose and evolutionary advantage. I don’t have the research chops or educational bonafides to dig into this in any scientific way, but it certainly seems to shade my approach to how I think about the play-like creativity that paints and colours the life of many (if not most) modern children in the western world. 

    Was it something about the opportunity youth presents or maybe the lack of structured limitations yet to be learned until later in life? Perhaps the notion of the creativity of youth is entangled with the lack of social expectations to be productive, make money, or have a formal role in this consumer-driven society. Maybe there really is an evolutionary and developmental aspect to kid seeming to be more creative (if generally less skilled at those creative pursuits) that has already been studied and I can unravel with deeper thinking and reading about it. Or it simply may be that my bias is glaring through the window of western privilege and the notion that kids are creative at all is wrapped around a generous interpretation of personal observation. 

    Who can say?

    Under the category of Toys & Tots, I’lll be writing more on this topic as the months wear on.

  • Deeper Seeking

    What is the meaning of it all?

    Oh sure, some people would be happy to tell you that they have all the answers. Some people will even sell you those answers—for the right price, of course.

    I’m not buying, but it doesn’t mean I am in a position to sell, either.

    As I sweep through my life and close in on my fiftieth birthday later this year, I knew better than to expect I would have figured everything out by this point—but I didn’t figure I would still be this far away from any satisfying answers.

    And the world really does seem in shambles right now, doesn’t it?

    How to fix that? Well. For a few months now I’ve been writing this week-daily blog it has done interesting things to the way I have been thinking about inspiration and personal creativity and motivation to make interesting stuff. It’s valuable to me—in other words. But lately it’s been pretty niche without much room for deeper thoughts on the meaning of life and the other sorts of things I’ve been yearning to write about more, too. Something inside of me said, hmmm, what if it also helped work through something a little more—um—metaphysical?

    Thus, here we are. My haunt. This blog. And I’m expanding a bit.

    I started writing on my list of ideas, and realized I had a lot of ground to cover in any such exploration. To that end, I don’t know exactly where I’m going, but I think I can probably cobble together a compass to help me figure out which way to start walking. 

    My plan is to not only keep writing on creativity and inspiration, but to write more posts on mindfulness, balance, clarity and hope, much of it in the context of work, culture, aging, and trying to find a fit for oneself in society, too. It all seems but a distant dot on an unfamiliar map, but I’m determined to get a little closer with each entry here.

  • Digital Analog

    Flip-flopping between digital art and physical media—and often the fuzzy spots in between—is a dichotomy of form that is something quite unique to the modern world. 

    As the fidelity of our digital tools improve many (if not most) art forms have found analogs in the digital realm: words, photography, design, sound, and sculpture to name but a few. 

    I consider myself an artist, and one who has (more recently as my access to powerful computer tech has increased) often started in the digital realm before investing in the physical tools to try my hand at the so-called real version of it.

    Why buy expensive paints when I have an app on the device I already own?

    Why purchase a space-consuming musical instrument when I can noddle on my laptop with some free software?

    But I also wonder: how has being a digital-first artist affected me? What is the effect on my approach because I have not needed to overcome that initial struggle incurred by the costs and barriers of physical media? Does the creative approach from using technology suffer because the media is more forgiving, erasable, redo-able? Is the technology a crutch or a learning tool?

    I can’t redo my approach, and honestly there are forms I would never have tried without first attempting with the safety net provided by digital modes. But what was the effect of that on my skill and my mind?