I feel like creating consistently is a very important step for anyone who wants to get better at their art form and/or make a profit from their art. Within almost any field of life, those who are at the top spend a significant amount of time every day, or very close to every day, bettering themselves at their craft. When something becomes a standard part of your routine, it becomes a part of you in a deeper way. Maybe deeper isn’t the right word, but in a more practical way at least. Doing something every day slowly intertwines that thing with your DNA.
I think of driving… driving was really hard whenever you first learned because you had to learn not only how to operate a vehicle, but also simultaneously learn the rules of the road. That’s why it's good to get some practice time in an empty parking lot or something where rules don’t apply. Once you have a good handle of the car, following the rules of the road becomes easy because you're not thinking about driving anymore, you're just thinking about the rules. And once you understand the rules and they begin to become second nature, you can break those rules in an intelligent way.
I worked retail at Sportsman’s Warehouse for a minute. It was kinda seasonal; I was there a couple summers and a holiday season, always in the fishing department. At one store, I worked with this dude who was pretty new to fishing. He was stoked about getting into fishing, and he showed his best fish pictures to almost every person he met. Lots of massive fish in the pics, but it was funny to all the other guys in the department because he was probably the least knowledgeable and least skilled angler in the store. All those big fish were from expensive guided trips out of state, and half of the fish were species that didn’t inhabit any waters near our state. He bragged to customers the most, and some people would come in and ask specifically for him, which was funny, because his answers for how to fish locally were all really basic things that everyone knows, or he would just b.s. stuff for awhile. It was funny, because had those customers talked to one of the old guys who didn’t know how to show you a picture on their phone, they would’ve actually learned how to go catch fish.
What does that mid story have to do with this blog? I’m not sure, but let’s think. I feel like you want to be one of the old guys in the story that can’t use a phone, and you don’t want to be the braggy guy. You want to be the old guy that fishes every day, instead of fish once a year and brag about it for a while guy. Because the bragger guy is kinda a poser, and who wants to be a poser? I feel like creativity is like this. I don’t want to be the guy that finally makes a project once in a great great while and then talks about it to everybody forever until he starts creating again a couple years later. I want to be the guy who’s writing shit on napkins in the restaurant and staying up too late on a work night, beer in one hand and pencil in the other, rewriting an old poem in the back of a journal.
This also makes me think of how creating consistently helps get rid of the impostor syndrome. It’s easy to feel like an impostor, whenever you call yourself an artist, a writer, a painter, a composer, a whatever; but don’t give into the impostor thing. Keep calling yourself what you are. That said, one good way to chip away at the impostor syndrome is to spend so much time on your art that it truly feels a part of you. If you create every day, it doesn't matter how many views your stuff has, you ain’t a poser.
Getting into the habit of creating consistently can be challenging, but once you do, it’s not nearly as hard to maintain that consistency. You’ll feel so good, as you have a regular outflow for your thoughts and emotions. I’d say doing art is like exercising sometimes. It’s not always what you want to do, but once you force yourself to do it, it makes the rest of your day so much better. And once you get to a place where missing a day is an exception, it is really easy to maintain that consistency (much easier than building it), and the gains will come. With just the sheer amount of practice you’ll get from creating every day, you will seriously start improving at your craft.
Finally, something that may be the best reason to get into the habit of creating consistently, is that every moment is a unique and fleeting opportunity to make art from a place you’ll never be again. At any given moment, there is a unique combination of entities that inform what your expression could be. The time of day, what has been happening in your life, how tired you are, how warm it is, what’s the last conversation you had, are you feeling sentimental, are you feeling antsy, are you feeling yourself, etc. I could go on forever. The point is, every moment potentially holds the key to a piece of art, and you may never have a moment in time where that key exists again. I think one would learn a lot about themselves from creating in all different moods and settings and states of mind.
The hardest thing about this topic is that although we all know it’s good to create consistently, it can be so hard to do it. During the Creators Co. 30 Days of Creativity Challenge, I failed to make anything on day two and three. There were some unique circumstances, but still I could’ve made it happen. But I know that if I keep working towards creating every day, I’ll get all the benefits of the challenge, just maybe not the prize haha. That said, if you are reading this in the month of April then by all means please join us at Creators Co. in the 30 Days of Creativity Challenge! Check our socials for more information. Peace
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