8 Clicks from Nowhere ䷀

Dispatches ⌂

Category: Part 6 – Clicking Deeper

And in the end, some will tell you that the only thing that matters is building a self identity and a methodical life around creative expression, putting in the hours, and learning from the effort, that this the true heart of creating stuff. They may have a point.

Chapter List

  • Photo Flow

    I have been on the socials preaching a little bit on the gospel according to carefree photography.

    I’ll elaborate.

    I go on the various photo sharing feeds and I follow a lot of photographers. A lot.  And after a while it all starts to look the same. Beautiful close ups of animals. Gloriously lit mountain ranges. So many photos of our downtown cityscape with one of our two iconic bridges in the foreground that I start to feel like no one will ever find a way to photograph them in an original way ever again.

    My hot take comes down to the value of skill in combination with something almost more important: flow.

    All these photographers are amazingly skilled: they can meter a scene, frame a shot, and get the balance of colour and shape and tone just perfect—and sometimes super-realistic. I applaud it. Sometimes I even envy it.

    But I also know that those folks are almost certainly leaning into gear and time and technology to find those pictures.

    My challenge has long been this: take the dumbest, most terrible camera you can find—or use your phone—and find great shots while in the flow. I run the trails and pause for literal seconds to snap interesting shots. But there countless ways to replicate this approach in your own way: snap pics in motion or in the moment. Ditch the technology. Leave the expensive gear at home. Give yourself seconds, not minutes or hours to wait out the scene: be in the moment, rather than waiting for the moment.

    That’s where the interesting stuff is. 

    Because if all these amazing photogs could bring that skill and talent to more interesting subjects, tell stories as well as presenting perfection, just imagine the amazing photography that might emerge.

  • Navel Gazing 

    I don’t think I’ll ever stop being fascinated by the simple idea that iterative work can lead to huge accomplishments.

    I was sitting down to write this post, pondering a topic, and I noticed that at some point last week I’d passed the one hundred post milestone on this writing project.

    Navel gazing could have easily followed, and maybe that’s all this post is. But I’d like to think that it is a self-referential example of my point, too.

    A few times per week for the last five months I’ve sat down with a hot tea and my keyboard and written out a few words on a topic related to the mission of this project: to talk about the fun and frustration of creative exploration, to poke at the obvious and pry into the obscure, and to generally reflect on the thousands upon thousands of aspects of what it takes to bootstrap oneself into a creative professional life no matter your career stage—the first person perspective version of that.

    And so I write, and often I’ve preached upon the simplest of simple topics: just putting in the work. Doing it. Actually writing, making, or creating—no matter how small or incremental it might seem.

    By example, one of the things I create incrementally is this collection of words, writing oft disconnected thoughts about the process itself: navel gazing upon navel gazing.

    One hundred posts later my incremental effort sits around forty thousand words: a short book worth of text and ideas posted here for people to read and enjoy. If that’s not something huge from a hundred little iterative efforts I don’t know what is.

  • Routine Back

    Nothing reminds me so much of the value of my everyday get-up-and-do-stuff routine as when I step out of it for a few days.

    Every few months I take on a weird side project (for pay) that becomes all-consuming. A contract here, a part-time gig there, and always an interesting side-quest from the main project of my semi-retired creative life. The week before I wrote these words I was at it again, up north having a little adventure in the rural Canadian prairies. 

    And while the details change, the post mortem is almost always the same: I have been decoupled from my routine and then I need to spend a week or two trying to find the routine back.

    Routine is, after all, a cognitive shortcut for feeling productive. Whether or not productivity is your end goal, or if the effort it is meant for something less clinical and more spiritual, routine is often way more important than we give it credit for being.

    Routine is habit. Routine is a temporal obligation to be somewhere doing something on a clockwork regularity that, bluntly, gets stuff done.

    For me, routine is sitting in a cafe for an hour in the morning sipping a hot drink and typing something, writing, making, creating with a regularity and scheduled purpose. Without the routine I may get it done, but more than likely I would not. Deciding with a planned regularity that this is where I need to be and when I need to be doing something means I don’t need to find the motivation or overcome the paralysis of deciding: it is just due.

  • Sonic Vibes

    Since I started writing this collection I have been working on a parallel personal project: I’ve been honing, refining and curating a playlist for working.

    As I write this, it contains nearly seven hours of music.

    I’ve gone through countless musical phases in my life when it comes to finding something chill to plug into my ears while I’m trying to write or be creative. For a few years I was really into LoFi but I think I’ve grown out of that at the moment, so instead I started putting songs into a “working” playlist. When I turn that on I have confidence that I’ll have a quiet, downbeat, ambient, vocal-lite collection of songs and sounds to listen to that meet a number of criteria: they are calming, they are limited in their distraction, and they fill the background.

    Your own playlist will certainly vary by taste, but I can’t help but highly recommend the exercise of making one.

    Make one for quiet working.

    Make one for inspired sketching.

    Make one to play as you get into the mood to make other music.

    Make one each for lightness and darkness and happiness and melancholy, too.

    Sound can be an integral part of your creative space, and it is a worthwhile exercise to take the time and effort to decorate that space with a sonic vibe that fits the need of the moments you will spend there creating.

  • Go Board 

    About a year ago I started getting advertisements for a neat little writing setup called a distraction-free word processor. There were a couple varieties, but usually they were little more than a cheap little keyboard attached to a simple screen and marketed as a “this device does one thing” tool. It was intended to keep distractible writers on task by removing the allure of all the other apps on our computers and phones.

    I didn’t buy one.

    But I did realize that the idea itself is solid, and if implemented in other ways has a secondary and perhaps more important benefit.

    For my own version, I bought a small, lightweight bluetooth keyboard, tethered a small phone stand to the wrist strap (yes, my keyboard has a wrist strap) and I keep it handy when I go out to run errands or on travel jaunts or am just playing dad’s taxi. 

    It is not only about eliminating distractions, but it also becomes about casual convenience and opportunity. 

    I am sitting in a cafe right now writing this on my portable setup while I wait for an appointment. I could have brought my computer but I didn’t want to lug it around all morning. I could have brought a book, but why read when I can write? I went light, and then realized I had both time to kill …and a keyboard in my car.

    In this case the distractionlessness is secondary to the opportunity to create—and to create on the go.

    I’m not selling anything here except the idea that the best creative tool is the one you have ready when you are ready and able to create something. A sketchbook in your pocket. A camera on your phone. A keyboard in the glovebox of your vehicle.

    You might think that a simpler and more convenient tool is not going to showcase your best work, but when the alternative is making nothing at all I would argue that making something in the moment is better than having the best tools and never having them around when opportunity strikes.