Stifling Myself

Normally when I’ve had a long break between posts on here, I’ve been incredibly busy doing something like visiting another country, playing Ultimate, or just working hard at whatever teaching job I’ve had. That’s not the case this time. There haven’t been external factors preventing me from sitting down at the keyboard to type up a few words to share with all of you. There has only been one obstacle: my own fear, anxiety, laziness, and perfectionism.

In the time since I last wrote here, I have been entirely unemployed. I haven’t had a job to fill my time. I decided to try and strike away from teaching and get a job in the field I have skated alongside the edge of for years – the games industry.

I spent two months studying for a software testing certification. I was going to write a post about that, sharing my feelings of anxiety about the test. I chose not to write anything until after I passed or failed the test. I ended up passing the test comfortably. I was going to write the perfect post summarizing my journey. Then I thought I would wait until I actually had a job and share my happiness about that. I spent two months searching for a job. I was going to write a post about how despondent and disheartened I was becoming, but I thought that no-one would want to read such self-important garbage. People want to feel happy when they take the time away from their own busy, draining lives to read some mangled collection of words on the Internet. So I kept waiting for some positive news on the job front.

Every morning when I brushed my teeth, I would tell myself that this is the day that I would write that accursed blog post. I would find a particular angle to my experiences to try and spin it into an inspirational story about how sometimes chasing your dreams doesn’t quite work out the way that you wanted, but you learn from the experience. It would be motivational as hell. Then I would sit down at my laptop and never even open my blog. I was emotionally and creatively suffocated. In this time, I’d tell people I was funemployed, trying to change my career path. In reality, I just sat staring at translated versions of job postings, applying to any and every position I was even remotely qualified for, and many that I wasn’t. Days blurred together to the point that I would forget whether it was Monday or Wednesday. With every day that passed, it became harder to share what was happening.

All the while, I was going on miniature adventures: visiting friends across the country, exploring Seoul, completing video games, playing in Ultimate tournaments, even bonding more with my cat. I also have many events to look forward to. I’m heading back to South Africa in just over two weeks. I even have an interview for a potential position soon, and I am excited. It is partially a teaching position, and I will share more as time goes on. It has been something of a backup position for the past few months, and I am glad that it may work out. However, the knowledge of this position hasn’t changed for weeks. These experiences and anticipations were fogged by the drudgery of my job search. Not even the constant, unwavering support from my amazing wife stoked the fire of creativity within me. I felt that nothing I was doing was important or interesting enough to share. Until today.

Today, I just sat at my laptop, as I’ve done countless times in the last few months. I procrastinated, as I have so many times before. But then I actually opened my blog and started typing, like I should have months ago.  I knew it was an option but was still too caught up in myself to write. I’m not perfect. I’ve been less emotionally available in the past months than I can remember being. I’m working on it. It’s not easy. But I’m still here, and starting today, I won’t leave you in the dark, for both of our sakes.

 

A Month of Morning Pages

Every day, I am frustrated that I have lost momentum on this blog. I look at the number of articles I publish every month and I hang my head when I compare my output to that of when I first arrived in Korea. However, I have actually been writing more than ever, just not on this blog.

A few weeks back, in one of my favourite digital newsletters written by comics writers Kelly-Sue deConnick and Matt Fraction (which you should definitely subscribe to here), I was introduced to morning pages.

What are morning pages? The concept could not be simpler. Sit down soon after you wake up, while your body is still rousing itself, and write three A4-sized pages of stream-of-consciousness writing by hand. No more, no less. You never have to look at them again after you’re done. They are intended to be impermanent, fleeting glimpses into what you are really thinking and feeling, etched down before your mind has put up its defenses. Kelly-Sue deConnick praised how the simple act of writing three pages every day calmed her and gave her a grounded beginning to each day. I thought that it was something worth exploring.

I thought that such writing would spout forth ideas for future creative projects. As it turns out, I have used this morning ritual to clean out my mental cobwebs, almost like a journal. I rant about what happened the previous day. I set out my plans for the current day. I generally muse about whatever I’m thinking about in the bleary-eyed hours of the day. In my first full month of habitually doing morning pages, I have only had one creative session. It was a reflection on the beauty of Seoul and people in the early hours of the morning. Apart from that, the chicken-scratch-etched pages like those in the featured image above have largely been filled with mundanities.

I too have found them to be immensely calming. They allow me to get my bearings for the day, vent any residual frustrations, make more concrete any ideas I might have had in the night. On the days when I do them when I am more awake, I find that they are harder to write and less effective at guiding me.

All in all, I am excited to continue spewing my morning self onto paper. The process can take between 20 and 40 minutes, depending on how well my mind and pen are flowing, but it is time well-spent. I highly recommend trying it out, even if only for a couple of days. Buy an A4 notebook from your local stationery store. Get up when your alarm sounds in the morning, and spill your soul onto the blank pages. You might be surprised at what comes out.

Breathing in and Collecting

There have been many analogies for the creative process, and how it is to live as a person in which the creative fire burns hotter than the average. Two of my favourites come from The Oatmeal and Amanda Palmer. One likens living as a creative to breathing, and the other sees the creative process as a process of join-the-dots. Right now, I’m struggling to do both.

The breathing analogy comes from The Oatmeal, explored in this comic. It’s great and you should definitely give it a look, but slapping it here would disrupt the flow of this piece and might get me a grumpy email from him, so I’d rather not. Essentially, he details how his friend told him that creativity is like breathing. Exhaling is the production of your work, be it cartoons, writing, songs, or whatever creative outlet you could possibly choose. The inhaling is taking in all of the influences around you – your social interactions, books you read, games you play, adventures you go on. Inhale, then exhale. While most people see only the exhalation of words onto a page or melody in their ears, inhaling is also vitally important. Without inspiration and experiences to draw from, it is hard to find a unique perspective on anything.

Amanda Palmer’s image of creativity is as unique and striking as The Oatmeal’s. She divides creativity into three stages: collecting, connecting, and sharing.

Collecting is similar to The Oatmeal’s breathing in – the creative looks at the world around them and sees an array of dots – ideas that are poignant, striking, mundane yet interesting, or in any way worthy of retaining in their creative toolbox. After they have been collected, the creative will then connect these ideas in ways that most people wouldn’t see. They can make deep connections, humorous connections, or even bizarre connections – everyone connects differently. Once the connections have been made, they are shared. This can be a blog post, a tweet, a painting, a song, a piece of graffiti, a game, anything.

For the past few months, I’ve been inhaling and far more than I should. I’ve been lucky enough to have a supportive fiancee who has taken most of the financial responsibility in the house whilst I find myself, my medium, and my material. It’s not fair, and I see the jealousy in her eyes every day. What she doesn’t see is my agonizing over being able to find my mysterious, yet-to-be-harnessed ‘voice’. How do I express myself? Am I a singer? A writer? A caster? What am I? I still don’t even know. I’m still breathing in. Every now and then I let out a little puff of work, and I feel satisfied for a day or two before once again looking at the precipice of my own mediocrity.

Where I should have a deep pit of connections to share with the world, I look into my hands and see an embarrassingly small collection of mangled, fragmented ideas that still need nurturing, care, and forging before they can be deemed worthy of sharing with anyone.

I have been said to be living the dream, and most of the time I share their sentiment. I’m living comfortably with the one that I love and a cat that is not always an utter asshole. But on days like today, I wish that I would be satisfied with this, and not feel like I should be doing something more, something else. I wish the grass didn’t look so damn green. I wish that I didn’t see the twinkle of uniqueness every once in a while just to tease me into believing that I would have something interesting to share with the world. I wish my brain would just shut up and be content. But it isn’t. And it won’t. I’ll keep on collecting, connecting. Breathing in. I hope I can take a long breath out before I burst.