How to become creative (and figure out who you are) | #28

new type of guy just dropped: muse guy

I was out until 3am last night at a coffee shop, co-working with one of my BFFLs.

We were talking about how tough it is to make time for creative work, especially with a full-time job.

"Didn't you say helping people be more creative was one of your life purposes a while back?"

"I sure did." I said with a smile.

I was proud of the certainty behind my answer. It was nice feeling like I had a direction in life. I had my thing.

But it wasn't always that way.

I struggled for years with charting a course for my life. I have a history of abandoning projects and switching careers.

It was disorienting and demoralizing (as you might imagine).

I wanted to find a game I could play the long game with. I was sick of starting things and then realizing they weren't for me.

Or were they? 🦋 Was this The Dip? Would things get better? Did I just need to be More Disciplined?

I was so frustrated. I felt like I didn't understand myself.

• What makes me happy?

• What's the difference between sustainable happiness and Cheap Dopamine?

• What's the difference between joy and getting high on validation from others?

• How do I tell the difference between what I want and what desires society and the media has slipped into my subconscious?

So I took every opportunity I could to learn about myself.

Journalling. Writing this newsletter. Writing every day for 100 days. Trying new hobbies (drawing, dancing, animation, etc). Meditating. Buying Introspect. Taking personality quizzes. Answering questions. Taking on clients.

I wanted to know so badly: what is consistent about me?

In this 28th edition of The Pole:

• What is Josh about?

  • learning

  • achieving

  • being creative

  • asking questions

  • creating scenes

• Condensing it

  • challenge 1: the benefits aren't legible

  • challenge 2: the barrier to entry is high (and unacknowledged)

• The final Twitter bio (at least for now)

What is Josh about?

I’m asked a version of "What is Josh about?" often enough that it bugged me to not have a good response. I wanted to know what I could say that I had conviction about.

I asked myself that question over and over. The answers started out vague: learning, achieving, being creative, asking questions, and creating scenes.

Over time, I stumbled upon more specific sentences that resonated.

learning

I watched myself dive into note-taking tools and rabbit-hole through Wikipedia. I looked at the commonalities between the questions my curiosity prompted me to ask. Over time, I realized that, to me,

learning meant categorizing and diagramming relationships between things

achieving

I watched myself struggle with planning and project management. I observed what goals I set for myself and why. I did this at my job as a software engineer and with hobbies like dancing. Over time, I realized that, to me,

achieving meant obtaining enough fluency that I no longer had to think about the basics - I could put all my effort towards creativity

being creative

I watched myself draw and animate. I paid attention to the moments that gave me satisfaction. Over time, I realized that, to me,

being creative meant finding new ways to explain ideas, tell stories, and express emotions

asking questions

I watched myself have intellectual conversations with friends. I paid attention to various debates on Twitter. Over time, I realized that, to me,

asking questions meant uncovering motivations, creating frames that invoke new perspectives, establishing shared context, and finding the roots of disagreement

creating scenes

I watched myself take part in various forms of camaraderie. Small talk, roasts, jokes, banter. I found myself inspired by jazz improvisation, despite little interest in jazz itself. Over time, I realized that, to me,

creating scenes meant creating spaces where we can inspire creativity in each other, co-create something beautiful, serendipitous, and fleeting, and walk away feeling connected to each other in a way no one else will ever understand or experience because they weren't there

Condensing it

At this point, I had a lot of material to work with.

But I wanted to get to the core. I wanted a digestible soundbite to give to people and stick in my social media bios. I wanted to present a vector, as

visakan veerasamy

says.

I asked myself once more: What do I think about a lot? What do I care about?

The sentence I came up with that felt like the best summary:

Helping myself and others be creative and take part in creative scenes.

But it still felt flat. Where's the story? What're the challenges people face towards being creative?

It seems to boil down to two things: the benefits aren't legible and the barrier to entry is high

challenge 1: the benefits aren't legible

Most creators, artists, writers, etc I talk to say that creation is an act of discovery.

I find this to be true for my own work as well. I might have an inkling of an idea at the beginning, but much of the direction and details come later.

I'd argue that the ambiguity and discovery are a necessary property of creativity. If we knew exactly what we were doing and what it'd look like, it'd be uninteresting.

In fact, so much great work can come from starting the creative process with no idea at all. Many of my favorite creations are the result of me sitting down and thinking,

ugh, I don't feel creative at all, but I'll tinker a little anyway and see what happens...

And if you don't have an artistic practice, you probably won't have any ideas in the beginning. You don't have the vocabulary to articulate them.

But, I can almost assure you that, if you picked something and played around with it, you'd start having ideas. Having those ideas and bringing them to life is incredibly satisfying.

Unfortunately, even as an artist, it's easy to forget that. I've blown off writing plenty of times because I didn't feel inspired. The voice of laziness is loud and the voice of serendipity is quiet.

Hence, if you as a non-artist haven't experienced that satisfaction, it could be even harder to convince you to pick up a creative hobby.

The social benefits of creativity are also illegible.

Think back to your favorite, most memorable conversations. Did you plan them?

Imagine person A telling you that a few weeks ago, they had one of the most amazing, memorable conversations of their life with person B.

If you were there, eavesdropping, would you be able to tell that's how A felt at the time? Sure, you might be able to identify the conversation as a good one.

And maybe you'd even enjoy being around the energy that A and B were giving off. But do you think you'd get nearly as much out of being there as A did?

I bring this up to illustrate the stark difference between being in the creator bubble and looking at it from the outside.

Watching the band perform tells you nothing about the experience of being in the band.

It's so invigorating to have your specific tastes be recognized by another artists. It's so satisfying to bond over those esoteric shared opinions. It's so electric to co-create with others who share the same highly contextual language.

If you haven't done any of that, you have no idea what you're missing. And that's what I want for everyone.

I want everyone to experience that feeling of "jamming with your fellow band members".

It breaks my heart that so many people, if they sat down, developed a body of work, and fined tuned their tastes, would then find others with similar tastes they could jam with, and form immensely satisfying friendships.

But they haven't.

challenge 2: the barrier to entry is high (and unacknowledged)

When I was first learning to dance, I sucked and everything was a drag.

It took all my effort to do the basic Salsa move (1, 2, 3, pause, 5, 6, 7, pause), and it was still bad.

It took a month before things stopped sucking. It took another month to learn enough to feel somewhat fluent.

At some point, I didn't feel like I was treading water anymore. I started getting ideas for combos. It became fun.

I've gone through this journey with many skills: juggling, programming, analyzing data, video editing, animating...

What blows my mind each time is how intimidating it is at first and how normal is looking back.

With dancing, for example, all the moves looked the same. Everyone went so fast. It felt chaotic to try and keep track of everything. Is that a Salsa or Bachata song? No idea!

Fast-forward to now, a few months later, I can just tell. It feels so unremarkable. It's incredibly easy to forget how different my experience is from that of a beginner. It's easy to forget how far I've come.

In my experience, this is RARELY emphasized or accommodated for when teaching others. The curse of knowledge is a very real thing.

When I was learning Adobe After Effects. There were so many YouTube tutorials I watched that frustrated me.

They'd gloss over important (but "obvious") details. They'd speed through boring (but necessary) processes.

As a beginner, it can make you feel like you're not cut out for it. Like you should be further along, you should be picking this up quicker.

It can make you question if you made the right decision to learn this stuff. And if you have no ideas or inspiration to keep going, it can be what makes you blow it off.

The final Twitter bio (at least for now)

So, with all this circling around in my mind, I started passively thinking about the soundbite version.

Then, a few days ago, I woke up and had an idea. After a few amendments, I came up with this:

"the muse guy" | showing you your creative capacity, helping you master unwieldy tools, pointing out what makes art great, making you a part of beautiful scenes

Which I think summarizes everything I just wrote about. But if you have a better summary, let me know!

It also has the benefit of helping steer where this newsletter will go from now on. I'm still figuring out the format, but I want to make content that

• encourages people to be creative (particularly beginners)

• breaks down what makes media good (e.g. funny, persuasive, clear)

• teaches how to use creative tools (After Effects, Illustrator, Photoshop, etc)

• encourages introspection (it can be annoying, fickle, and uncomfortable, but figuring out what you like, who you are, etc, is so important for finding others like you)

Until next time!