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An Aside on Creativity

I’ve been thinking a lot about creativity lately, and the process by which an idea turns into…something else. To sum it all up, I think it’s a process of improvisation and refinement. An idea gets expanded upon, then filtered thought the taste of a creator, then the decisions of that taste are put into action using the creator’s technical skill. Rinse and repeat, until repeating can’t be done any more and is summarily abandon.

This is an idea I’ve been rolling around in my head for probably a few years now. I’ve started probably 4 or 5 posts about it, but I’ve never really been able to put it into a single post. I think this idea’s been stuck long enough that I want to develop it into something more, hopefully a book.’

That size of a project doesn’t really fit into the plan I laid out last month, so I’ll find somewhere to make due.

Anywho, on with the news,,,

What I’ve been up to

in no particular order…

Distractions

In what is probably the biggest struggle to my productivity right now, Adderall has been in a national shortage for months now. This unfortunately has must further repercussion for me than just “I can’t focus too well,” and even that particular issue is having some serious problems. It seems like the shortage might be easing up, but it’s definitely not over yet.

Another event that has taken up much of my attention is the continued medical recovery I discussed earlier. I don’t wish to go into details, but suffice it to say that it has definitely divided my attention and taken much of my energy.

I write this not to make excuses or blame things, but to give myself grace. To acknowledge that these timelines and ideas and pressures are self inflicted, and some things are more important.

Music: fair to good

I’ve made 12 TikTok videos in the last month. Most of them were originals in some way, which is probably a first and something I’m going to try to do more of. The also included a small sample of an original song that is probably going to be on the upcoming record, which is exciting. Speaking of which,

I’ve also done a number of synth jams, which have been a really nice change of pace for me. I’ve been making a concentrated effort to get away from the piano a bit more, as I feel like I lean on it a little too much. I think there might be an EP of synth jams in the future. They were very low pressure and fairly easy to produce.

Forthcoming album

The album has been slowly moving forward, but I did get a demo finished. this is good because it means I have a workable arrangement and full lyrics. I also have a couple other ideas I’m working up.

Electronics experiments: not so great

This one is a little behind, unfortunately. I’ve been focusing more on the music and TikTok stuff this month, and I underestimated how broken some of the “used” equipment I’ve gathered really was. I’ll focus a bit more on is this month.

Journaling: yikes

This one unfortunately took a downturn. I’ve given up on daily journaling for now, but I still want to write more. I’ve gotten a couple of drafts closer, but the creativity question really took me down a rabbit hole. I think the plan here is to pivot this closer to the book, and maybe write more here in terms of the writing process for the book.

Plans for the next month

Not necessarily binding, but more like trying to get better about predicting how long thing will take

• Music: I want to have the lyrics for 3 more songs done, and one more demo recorded
• Electronics: I want to have made at least an envelope follower, and hopefully a compressor eurorack module.
• Writing: This one’s a hard one, but I think I want to have an outline for the book done, and perhaps some form of synopsis for a post for here.