It's not what it looks like! (It's much weirder)

The twists, turns, and rage of creativity

At the outset of 2023, I resolved to draw a drawing a day for the whole year. At first I approached this with a questionable level of commitment. I wasn’t staking too much of my self worth on perfect execution because the odds of failure, due to simple forgetfulness or other factors, were good odds.?

But as some of the final hours of the year drew closed one by one, like window drapes along a long museum corridor, I completed the above drawing, "All Mushrooms Are Magic." And with that, I fulfilled the goal I had first set out to achieve: a 365-day drawing-a-day streak.

As with so many of my other drawings, this was the first thing that popped into my head when I touched pencil to paper. In that sense, it was an improvisation. (Also, in spite of the title, it is not about drugs; it is a nod to the weird and wonderful biological kingdom of fungi.)

There may be a lesson in that.

Where your best ideas lurk

Your best ideas might be lurking just below the surface at any given moment, but you can't see them through your "mind's eye." Creativity is revealed through action, not thought. (Actually, as Annie Murphy Paul makes clear again and again in the wonderful book The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain, action and thought do NOT fall into separate buckets, as we often pretend.) Research has also revealed, over and over, that creative ideas happen at random.

You "see" and think far more with your hands than we knowledge economy workers tend to appreciate.

I have sought through my drawings to share some part of myself that may be useful to other people. I know many people more organized than I am, and a decent number who are more creatively driven than I thought myself capable of being until recently.

So I mean what I say now:

If I managed to pull off a 365-day streak, odds are very high that so can you. I can't help but think of this endeavor, on some level, as an act of rage, because of the sheer amount of energy and stubbornness it took. But in spite of the negative connotation of that word, this directed rage was a source of joy and meaning in my life. It helped me greatly improve my skill at something I enjoy (and profit from), and taught me deep philosophical lessons in ways that only experience can.?

Experience and love ... and, of course, rage.

An ounce of rage is worth a pound of inspiration

Forget five days a week.

Forget letting inspiration dictate when you will do something creative or otherwise meaningful.

Forget 98 percent.

Pick something you love and do it for 30 consecutive days, or 100, or 365, or 1,000.

It will change you.

It will anchor you when you need an anchor.

It will make you proud.

Creativity begets creativity. Enjoy.

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P.S. - Four or five days into 2024, I deliberately allowed my streak to lapse. But I’ve continued drawing a few times a week, often for relatively long stretches, and I love it as much as I ever have. If the level of intensity and consistency I’m suggesting makes you worry about burnout, don’t. It doesn’t work that way.

P.P.S. - I’m selling an 8x10 in. print at a steep discount from my normal price for art prints because it's a part of myself that I want to share with anyone who finds it valuable or simply enjoyable. It's available in only one size, slightly smaller than the original, with perfectly preserved detail and unfiltered color.

Buy it here.

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