8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions

A
BLOG
FROM
NOWHERE

  • Boxed In Creativity

    This might not be a particularly new idea, but it is one that I have personally been clinging to a bit lately, paradoxical as it is: creativity is often encumbered by too much freedom.

    But let me put this another way, and via an example…

    As I noted previously on this blog, over the last year I have built up a pretty respectable sound production studio in my basement. Mics, amps, cables, a recorder, an effects pedal, a looper pedal, and of course my synth. All of it is more than enough to make something interesting.  

    And despite that great setup, can you guess what I do when I get stuck creatively?

    I go online and I start window shopping for more equipment. Maybe a drum machine. Maybe a pickup for my violin. Maybe a better synth, or… gulp, add to cart: cha-ching!

    In my mind, in that moment, any of it, all of it would mean more freedom and opportunity to do more stuff with sound and music… sure.  

    And yet another truth hits bone: none of it will do the work for me.

    What I know in my heart is that I just need to sit in the seat and do the work, play the notes, speak the words, and… just create. But having too much freedom to keep looking for something better, something additional, something else—all of it is entangling the effort of actually doing the thing itself.

    I’m boxed in by being unbound by opportunity to try something else, rather than just looking at my gear and reminding myself: this is what you get, now make it work.

  • Routine Reminder

    Make something.

    Just make the damn thing and post it.

    Share it.

    Push it out into the universe.

    Will people judge it, love it, hate it, mock it, share it? With they laugh, cry, ignore, overlook, steal, copy, complain, and all too often respond in a hundred other unpredictable ways? Yeah. Of course they will. Heck, humans are messy and there is always someone out there who will make you question your very participation, let alone the product itself.

    But look what is out there already. Everything! Unabashedly shared, no matter the quality or purpose. And worse:

    Are influencers asking your permission to post to your feeds?

    Are politicians asking for your blessing to push propaganda?

    Are companies asking if its okay if they inundate you with advertising?

    Of course not! No one else is asking, are they? They are making and flooding and just filling every space with their products.

    Meanwhile, you are sitting there wondering if you are good enough, or if that thing that you put your whole soul into will be well-received—or if maybe you will just be laughed at by some random loser in his mom’s basement (who by the way, mocks and laughs at everything because he is incapable of making anything but mockery). 

    So make something. Make it great. Make it how you want. Just make and share and participate in this great creative experiment, and maybe we’ll collectively overwhelm the world with beauty and hope and curiosity instead of all those other things.

  • Drifting Focus

    Not that you are counting my words, but when I set out write here on this blog project every weekday I told myself I had only one rule: keep it short and sweet.

    I was going to try not to stray beyond 200 words in any given post.

    If I couldn’t get the idea out in two hundred, maybe it wasn’t honed enough. Maybe I was babbling. Maybe it should have been something bigger than a blurb herein.

    But the problem? Every post last week was well over two hundred, the last one creeping up to nearly 300 words. 

    Is that a bad thing?

    Guardrails, even self-imposed ones can be important for the simple reason that creative restrictions often create a better product. In this particular case, volume was not my challenge. I know I can sit down any day and type-type-type out an essay-length post if I am so inclined. My challenge to myself and for the focus of this project was rather honing ideas to a sharp point, not muddling around in a big vat of chocolate-pudding-flavoured ideas.

    What are your guardrails? Do you step over them?  And does it ultimately, honestly, make the result better? Or not.

  • Creative Positive

    I need to routinely remind myself that every time I don’t post something positive in my feed it leaves a gap for something negative to slip in and take up the space I left for it.

    Our feeds, all of them, are filled to the brim with algorithmically pushed trash.

    Some of it is important. Some of if drives awareness of injustice and tragedy. Some of it sparks action and reaction. Some of it is vital to understanding the world, society and the universe.

    But creatives have an important role to play too: positive balance. 

    It is not our jobs to join the rage.

    It is our job to balance it all out, to remind people that there is beauty in the world worth fighting for, and it is our job to maintain the flame of art and story and music and hope in a wasteland of anger and AI slop.

    It is so easy as an artist to reject the darkness of these platforms and avoid them, and I have struggled myself, even recently, trying to understand my role there.

    The way I see it? Our role is not to repost angry memes, or rant about authoritarian politics, or even rage against the machine. 

    Rather, our role, the creative’s role, is to keep playing the music of humanity in all its forms and make sure when the dawn returns there is still a bit of our humanity left to remind us why we were fighting the darkness at all.

  • Resolved to Plot

    Almost two years ago now I was deep into writing a novel.

    It was not my first.

    It would not be my last.

    But yet here I sit not having finished writing it. 

    Sure, I made a plan. I sketched out the plot. And I got it about ninety percent of the way to completion, but then…?

    Then I hit a wall.

    Every morning, literally every morning, I wake up and feel guilty that I didn’t write another chapter in that novel the day before. Every morning, literally every morning, I wake up and part of me ponders if today will be the day that fact changes.

    So far, no.

    At the start of 2026 I resolved that just pining about standing in front of a metaphorical brick wall, a wall that I didn’t know how to climb over, or around or through was not the right approach either.

    Instead, I started a new novel.

    No. I haven’t quit the other one, rather I just need some more time to stare at that original brick wall and figure it out. But just staring at it wasn’t helping anything either. 

    Each day I get another day further from my last effort on that story, but it is not forgotten.

    And one day I’ll wake up, ponder if today, that day, will be the day… and I will be right.