8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions

Tag: meta monday

If you found this tag you may have noticed that I wrote a blog post for each of the main chapters of the site. For a span of time every Monday post was about one of those top level topics, posted in order.

Chapter List

  • Past Present

    Over and over I stumble across advice for creativity.  Heck, it’s the basis of this blog, isn’t it? Here’s what has worked for me, for others, for everyone else in the past, present and certainly will do in the future, too.

    Right?

    And the smart money, the guy who wants this site to be successful and to captivate you and to hold your attention would tell you that there are answers buried inside if you read deeply enough.

    The honest guy would tell you that creativity is just like any other job. You get out what you put in, and the effort pays off when you do the work.

    The fuzzy spaces between, though, are filled with an endless doubting void that slurps up every bit of advice, superstition, ritual, inspiration, and randomness distilled from the universe as possible.

    I’m just the guy sitting here telling you to embrace that uncertainty.

    Look at the advice.

    But also find your own way.

    Do the work.

    But embrace the chaos.

    Dig into ideas that shift your mind, body, and soul to new perspectives.

    But ride the efforts of a billion people who have gone this way before you.

    Under the category of Past & Present, I’ll be writing more on this topic as the months wear on.

  • Science Politics

    I spent four of my years of post-secondary education studying for (and receiving) a bachelors degree in biological sciences. I studied molecular biology, genetics, and a bit of ecology, cellular biology, botany, and entomology blurred into that mix. 

    I got a job doing computer stuff and never really looked back.

    But you don’t spend four intensive years studying the methods and tools of science without it changing how you look at the world. And it definitely changed how I look at the world.

    Now I find myself right here… and in this moment: we exist in this highly charged political time, a time when truth and reality are constantly being questioned. 

    One half of my very soul and identity often seem political and running against the grain of the populist movements that shape our news each day.

    I figure I could choose to reject it, go against all that I know and understand, or I can do what I’ve always done and embrace it—use it as the backbone to what I make, how I engage with the other half of my soul and identity: the creative artistic writer guy.

    Here I am.  Take it or leave it.

    Science, rational evidence-based thought, and critical thinking are part of who I am, what I make and how I engage with both sides of my personality. 

    Under the category of Science & Politics, I’ll be writing more on this topic as the months wear on.

  • People Places

    I am writing this from within the abyss of the political dark ages of the mid twenty-twenties. 

    Nationalism is in a kind of haphazard resurgence. The media is faltering. Artificial intelligence is clouding the internet with a seemingly unlimited supply of slop and misinformation.

    It is dire.

    And artists have this important role to play: continuing to make stuff despite the inanity. 

    Despite wars. Despite clashing cultures. Despite self-dealing politicians. Despite generative algorithms pumping out dead-on-arrival content.

    And to top it all of, half of the people that could read this will discount it as the words of a man sitting across on the other side of a funhouse mirror making up a reality they disagree with. We can’t even see eye to eye on that anymore.

    Culture is opinion. Opinion is truth. And truth (whatever that might be) has always shaped the stories we tell through our words, sounds, music, and art.

    I write this very blog in competition with countless algorithms that will fight to ensure it only get seen if it generates money for a shareholder somewhere, profit for a corporate bottom line, or revenue for someone who is probably not me.

    We are humans caught up in a system and we are treading water in a creative torrent that we can barely understand. The abyss is below. The sky is above—so long as we can keep our heads above the flow of society.

    Under the category of People & Places, I’ll be writing more on this topic as the months wear on.

  • Gifts Dangers 

    For me, personally, I have often struggled to keep a clear line between the work I do for money and the work I do for fun.  That is not to say that the creative aspects of my job have been particularly lucrative in my life, but the overlap of my creative talents has often benefited employers–and vice versa, my hobbies have often benefited people and companies I don’t actually work for (or get paid by…)

    Coincidentally, I was reminded of this recently: a photo I took on a running adventure with my friends found its way through a bit of sharing in a corporate newsletter that landed back on my inbox: weird thing that, getting your own work sent back to you by a company who is using it for something they didn’t inform you about or pay you for.

    Legal blurriness aside (this is not a post about that, really, and if any company was going to benefit from my work in this way this is one of about three companies in the whole world I would look away and say, okay, you guys have given me so much over the years, blah, blah, blah, I’m gonna ignore this one… but I digress.)

    Creativity is a gift, but it can be a dangerous minefield of people taking what you can do for granted. It happens routinely. You become the guy with the camera. The dude who can make websites. The man to go to if someone needs something sketched. We all have those things: plumbers are going get asked about leaky faucets, doctors are gonna get asked about that mole on my back and chefs are going to be expected to bring the best dish to a potluck. Navigating the overlap is the hard part for all of us.

    Under the category of Gifts & Dangers, I’ll be writing more on this topic as the months wear on.

  • Gaps Spaces

    It’s a sad reality of the modern age that art (usually) doesn’t pay very well.

    Artists at the top of their game can, of course, find great fame and wealth in creative practice, but the reality is that most of us are struggling to hone skill, practice our crafts, write our fiction, and justify expensive equipment purchases in the gaps and spaces of otherwise busy lives.

    Work schedules. Parenting duties. Trying to eat well. Doing housework. Commuting. Nurturing  relationships. All of it is important and barring some sociopathic commitment to leaving it all behind to focus on watercolour painting or recording a solo album, most of us are working with the leftovers.

    Malcom Gladwell wrote about a famously misinterpreted theory of the ten thousand hour rule in his book Outliers [1], which a lot of people took to mean if you do something for ten thousand hours then you will become an expert, tada, wipes hands, mission complete. But the actual basis of that theory is that the people who became successful simply had access to ten thousand free hours because of the support systems in their lives: someone else was paying the bills, caring for the kids, and washing the dishes—all while they honed their craft.

    Limited free time to pursue creativity is the norm. I don’t have a lot of answers, but I do have some ideas.

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