4.19.2012

taking care

 
my best ideas come when i'm least expecting it, usually when i'm driving or drifting off to sleep or doing something so entirely consuming i can't stop a minute to make note of it.  it's hard to hang on to those ideas, they seem to drift out of sight like dandelion seeds in the wind.  but sometimes they stick around, sometimes they grow on me.  these days, i carry a calendar around as an insurance policy. each day has a set of empty lines and each idea gets marked down so i don't lose track of it.  i go back often, retrieve seeds of ideas, put them together, they develop into paintings or projects or lists that get me from here to there. it seems to work, making my somewhat hodge-podge of a professional life more productive than it's ever been.

 even still, i have my moments.  today, i found myself trying to do too many things at once, remember too many things at once.  i opened my trusty notebook while driving windy old chuckanut, struggled one-handed to find a pencil in the bottom of my bottom-less bag.  the radio was blarin and i was rockin out, singing along, in an anthemic "TAKIN CARE OF BUSINESS, EVERY DAY!"  do you ever find that when you try to do too much at once, you get nothing done at all, or worse yet, you fuck shit up because you're in a hurry?  it happens.  but as mr. ben franklin said himself: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  stop it,  i had to say to myself.  slow the fuck down.  concentrate on one thing at a time.

2 comments:

  1. You have to read a book called Imagine: How Creativity Works! I'm listening to it on my drives and it totally talks about everything you say here... and basically, you're right about everything AS USUAL! ;-) For real, though, that split attention is something they talk about as having the potential to be really productive, with some caveats. And of course some of the other things that help lead to creative productivity are being happy, taking walks, drifting off to sleep, and driving!

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  2. I love this one, Jess! Jaunty bear.

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