Six months ago, if you told me that by the end of 2012 I would find myself in a creative renaissance, overjoyed and content, I would have laughed at you. In January 2012, I felt my life was over, coasting toward obscurity. My youth and optimism lay fully in the past. I was nearing 35, halfway to 70, and feeling it.
Today, you are well aware of the events that have transpired since April 2012. In my last blog post on July 18, I had yet to begin officially working for Content Science. I had only just started with my work at Sophicity. In just those few weeks, it’s amazing to me how much I am enjoying life again, and at such a fast pace.
Every day, I wake up and work on creative projects that mean something to me. Let me tick through the list and share some of my creative adventures.
Standup Comedy (Part II): I vowed to take Jeff Justice’s Part II course after last year served as the final knockout punch to my confidence and self-esteem. Since the class started on July 23, Jeff’s Part II technique of deepening one’s comedy material is pushing me to my creative limits. The goal is to speak our honest, passionate thoughts into a voice recorder, react against those thoughts with additional voice recorded rants, and then use that honesty and passion as the basis for material.
I found myself so emotionally numb and weary after the last few months that I had nothing passionate to say. I sat with my phone’s voice recorder, pushed record, and stared at it - sitting at my kitchen table like the loneliest, most pathetic man in the universe. So many other people can go off on things. I had nothing.
I bombed with the material I presented to class on Monday. I did not feel any passion behind such “gems” as “I don’t like societal norms,” “Kids are too entitled nowadays,” or “Why do people buy such big houses?” Yawn. I even bored myself.
But I kept at it this week. When I drove places, I talked into my tape recorder. Finally, almost caught off guard, I realized my honesty and passion came out when I started talking about my road trip. Unlike the generic, banal topics I had thrown out earlier, this topic is unique, interesting, and ripe with comedic potential. As I began to rant and rave, I at least felt something.
This experience was a reminder that you cannot accept a first draft or the first thing that comes to mind. Creativity is fun, but it’s also difficult and painful. You have to dig deep. But that’s where the gold lies. In fact, Jeff just sent back his critique of this new material. And guess what? I’m on the right track!
Fiction Writing: While standup comedy is now devouring most of my creative time, I had a good streak in July writing about 25,000 words of a novel I had abandoned in December 2010. It was abandoned at Chapter 2, and I’m now at Chapter 9. It’s an interesting mix of the best bits from various abandoned novels and stories I’ve written in the 1990s and 2000s. It feels both ancient and modern at the same time. I find myself not only writing with more maturity (and weariness, but in a good way), but also understanding more about my characters. I used to be extremely self-absorbed and narcissistic in my fiction writing in my twenties, but I find (especially post-road trip) that I’ve fully shifted to paying attention to other people more. My main character is a woman, and my first person point of view forces me to constantly think from another’s perspective. I never thought I’d reinvigorate or care about my fiction ideas after so long, but I’m enjoying the process. My creative friends also continue to check up on me, and I now have the strongest creative support system that I’ve ever had in my entire life.
Content Science: I won’t say too much about work here, but Colleen Jones is pushing me to be a better writer and equipping me to understand what it really means to be a content strategist. I can say that I have not been this intellectually engaged with my professional work since 2005. I’m working but I also feel like I’m going to grad school for content strategy.
Sophicity: It’s fun to not have Sophicity’s business development responsibilities on my shoulders and simply focus on what I do best: content strategy and creation. Sophicity welcomed me back like family, and that felt good after a rough, existential year. But what has surprised me is my sincere interest in the subject matter. When I still worked at Sophicity during my business development days, I felt that I stopped caring about local government information technology as a topic. Now I see that I was suffering from long-term burnout as early as 2010. Maturity also helps. I find myself acting less like a child when it comes to learning more about areas that, on the surface, appear to stray from my interests. Local government’s evolution and its attempts to adapt technology into its operations is not only interesting but also civically educational. Their successes and failures directly impact us as taxpayers, and it’s not a bad use of my time to immerse myself in this world.
Red Door Playhouse Writer’s Group: Hard to believe I’ve been leading this writer’s group since 2008. This group has served as one of the most healing, beneficial, and cathartic activities of my life. Since turning 30, it has become an essential activity that helps me stay childlike and encourages the joy of unexplored creativity in other adults who don’t want life’s mundane Chinese water torture burdens to do them in quite yet. Every month, I find absolute joy in connecting with these kindred spirits. Seth Decker, the owner of the Red Door Playhouse, and I are discussing some additional ways to pour fuel on this creative fire. I’ll keep you posted.
Reading and Intellectual Absorption: Because of my currently limited contracting hours (a purposeful limitation, as I’ve turned down numerous freelance gigs and full-time opportunities), I find myself with time to read, network, and fully immerse myself in intellectual pursuits with a rigor I have not experienced since graduate school. I’m currently reading Karl Marx’s Capital Volume 4, the Yahoo! Style Guide (I now always have a content strategy book that I’m reading), and Christopher Hitchens’s Arguably. I find my conversations with friends, acquaintances, and networking contacts to be enriched and vigorous. After 10 years of kicking around the Atlanta technology/marketing industry, I find I somehow learned some stuff along the way and can discuss a wide variety of topics with very sharp people who are generous with their conversation and ideas. And I’m purposely seeking out groups who discuss difficult business problems, difficult creative problems, and other interesting issues. My mind is thirsty, and it now has a giant playground again.
As a result of these experiences, I find a few observations popping out in my mind that excite me:
1. Learning by doing is more important than anything. True, I love reading. But I used to see reading as my dominant method of learning. Not anymore. Whether it is fiction writing, standup comedy, or tackling each professional challenge thrown my way, I throw myself into it, experience the nuance, and extract lessons from it. Reading is there at the end of the day to supplement my experiential learning and give me some meditation time. This is a major shift for me, and I find it thrills me - like I’ve discovered something that actually always existed as a path to knowledge. Before, I always seemed to jump into experiences with reluctance. Now, I seek them out like an addict. Those experiences light up every day.
2. Making mistakes is essential for learning. I embrace my mistakes more and more each day. While I always intellectually acknowledged mistakes as a path to knowledge, I secretly never wanted to make them. Now, I’m like, “What would I do without mistakes?” If I’m not making mistakes or failing at something each day, I grow suspect.
3. My joy lies in these creative activities. On the surface, I fear I grow more into a misanthrope as I get older. I stay in most weekends - with pleasure. I used to always believe my alone time stemmed from some hidden pain. Maybe it does, but I am not a child anymore. I’m 35. I clearly have freedom to do or go wherever I want. I could pursue any path of social or tribal pleasure. And I don’t. No offense to society, since I want people to enjoy themselves, but I do not enjoy most tribal activities. The road trip ironically highlighted that for me. While I enjoyed the community of many friends, acquaintances, and strangers over 7,000 miles, it ultimately was a solitary, introspective trip. And I loved it.
While I do get out quite a bit when the party and company is right, it is rare. I always thought solitude was my default activity because I never “figured out” socializing. Now I know that is not the case. I prefer my solitude, my reading on weekends, and my introspective creativity. If the rest of the world wants to yammer about Mitt Romney versus Obama, attend sporting events, or congregate for an entire day during an outdoor festival of some sort, be my guest. You are the normal ones, and that is healthy activity. For whatever reasons and because of how my brain is wired, I am not a part of that world. My joy comes from other sources, and I grow unhappy when I am denied those modest sources of happiness.
A rambly blog post, yes, but I at least wanted to share my most recent thoughts. I feel I’m in a good place - creative, professionally vital, intellectually interested, and lucky to have the time to pursue my interests more fully. It’s possible to simplify your life to the bare essentials and get to the heart of living in unconventional ways. Some would say I barely live at all, based on external appearances. But I can assure you that I pinch myself every day, wondering what dream I stepped into after turning 35.
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