Tumbledown

Photo by Karsten Würth
image courtesy of unsplash.com

Obviously running out of ideas must have something to do with it; if one has enough ideas and is excited enough about them, it almost takes effort not to try and make something out of them.  

But I don’t think it cuts to the heart of the issue.

Part of the problem I think has to do with where ideas come from in the first place, which we dealt with in an earlier entry.

Time spent in a quiet, thoughtful attitude, free and regular research into any area that resonates with one’s interests, and above all patience, and diligence in trying to produce SOMETHING, whether it’s a good idea or not.

If you’re trying to come up with SOME ideas every day, or even just one idea, sooner or later the law of averages says SOME of those ideas have to be better than others -- I think.

I would imagine that when all of these fail, for the various reasons that they fail, then we’re probably getting closer to what changes in the blogger when they decide, consciously or otherwise, to  give up their blog.

Or, like we said at the start, it’s simple: interests shift, and what is interesting and rewarding at one point becomes tedious, uninspired, and ultimately actually detrimental to one’s creative spirit.

In some ways, the deck is stacked against those of us inclined naturally to be more creative at heart.

For one thing, I think creativity is a mark of at least some kind of intelligence; I’m not saying that anyone who feels creative or acts creatively is automatically more creative than someone who does not, I’m only saying that nothing comes from nothing, and that something genuinely creative has to come from somewhere.

What measure do we have for intelligence after all, if not results?

What I’m getting at is, one of the hallmarks I think of an intelligent mind, or at least an undisciplined mind, like mine for instance, is that it easily gets addicted to distraction.

Addicted might be too strong a word, but I like to use it because when one tries to give up television, video games, social media, entertaining websites, and the thousand other ways we can embroider our free time these days, I find that one goes through something not unlike a withdrawal: restlessness, and at the same time purposelessness, irritability, and constant cravings to turn the TV or music or whatever back on.

I have a suspicion, confirmed by many other people who have written about this over the years, that a certain kind of boredom and the creative impulse go hand in hand.

Not just any kind of boredom, I don’t think -- we can go into that more later -- but a certain kind of boredom, which is relieved by making something, is probably also satisfied, or at least quieted down, by entertainments of any kind.

Why quieted down, and not satisfied?

Because sooner or later, as in now for instance, the person who sought entertainment and distraction for as long as they pleased starts to feel just as restless and irritable and purposeless feeling about entertainment as they did before about not having the entertainment, and they are driven back to try and be creative again.