It’s been awhile. The past few months have been excellent. One of the challenges about writing is that when I’m engaged and inspired to do things, I have less time and energy to distill and communicate what’s going on. There’s no way I can take effective stock of the things I’ve done without slowing down the momentum I have. Sometimes I’ll get into a flow where I’m super productive and the things I create feel like they’re being made through magic. Whenever I’ve tried to stop to explain what’s going on, whether it be because someone wants to learn or I’m trying to update people on my life, much of the magic is lost in trying to translate how my mind and the process works. I imagine this is not uncommon for people who create things. This is because there always seems to be a need to simplify concepts and observations (at least at first) when explaining to someone else how you see and do things. And when you do that, the other person is left with only an approximation or analogy of what you do and who you are.
This communication process, however imperfect it is, can lead to beautiful connections – but it is usually also frustrating! I usually end up feeling like I’m being misinterpreted and that the communication was not necessary or useful in the end. After all, it appears that most people, whether they are aware or not, are way more interested in the result of your creativity, not the process itself. Even those who like “works in progress”, tend to still want to see an aesthetically or intellectually stimulating milestone, as opposed to witnessing you staring at your computer screen or pacing your house envisioning in your mind an algorithm for procedurally generating a bland, suburban dungeon. They want to SEE the dungeon and be able to click a button to regenerate it and SEE how it’s different every time. THEN maybe they’ll wonder about how it’s done. I can’t blame them, I’m the same way regarding most things. Give me something to react to. But creating something worth reacting to takes time and energy. And while I’m creating, I can’t be writing.
For this reason, when I started this blog I only gave it a small chance of surviving beyond a few posts. And right now its odds of survival aren’t any higher than they were. However, I am trying my hardest to get this thing going. Because as frustrating as it is, anything I create is created in the context of and for other people/society. I create because I want to connect with people. I want to give them something that inspires them and makes them feel like they’re living a meaningful life and that they’re not alone. I’m hoping that once I DO create something worth reacting to, people can THEN ask the question of how the creation came about. And instead of me trying to sum up elegantly, retroactively in a quick conversation with them how mushy and zig-zag the creative process was, they can come read these writings. And realize I didn’t really know what I was doing until I was done. I just kept going. And then they can think, “huh, well I guess that means I can create something, too.”