Continuing the decent into odd tangents and over sharing weird shit, all whilst posting no photographs to this photography blog, yesterday I had a bizarre thought. One of the most common issues faced by many creatives is simply how to stay motivated. It’s perhaps one of the strangest aspects of psychology. Right now I could be doing actual photography related things which I love, but instead of become pre occupied with some leftfield hypothesis.
I remember talking to a model a few years ago that I seemed to of lost my creativity, I felt too comfortable, stable, lost the intensity I used to have. When I was creative I was flipping in and out of intense moods, but now, several self books into the topic I’m starting to feel they may of missed something nobody expected.
“The Artists way” is regarded as the ultimate book to regain or keep that creative motivation, it championed “Morning notes”. This was the act of jotting down 3 pages of notes in the morning (obviously) that had a few benefits. It cleared your head of stuff, made you think deeper about your artistic thoughts, acts as a reflective journal, installs discipline and routine. It tasks you to keep doing something each week towards art making. The tactic offered from books such “Chasing the big fish” is meditation. I do admit meditation does help anxiety, it does give benefits. Neither has got me close to creativity in my 30s.
Recently I’ve started to become aware I’m becoming a smidge unstable. My mood is all over the place. I’m also feeling aggressively creative. I feel exactly like I did in my 30s. Something weirds happened and I might know what it is. Thinking, Intelligent books, movies and galleries may never provide the rocket fuel desired, but strength training might.
“Oh come on, what the fucks this? Andrew Tates bloody artist advice?” I assume your thinking. Reaching an uneventful mid life crisis, I decided to join the queue of skinny teenage boys whose mothers had driven them to Decathon to purchase a set of dumbbells. Two weeks into my 3x a week “Critical Bench, 5 exercises are all you need” YouTube training video, I’m noticing hormones going askew. A combination of fatigue and testosterone levels over my baseline of a Zoo Panda on a Sunday morning.
Yesterday I was on fire and today I’ve listened to one too many Mazzy Star songs and I’ve flipped the other way. I prefer the swings, my desire for creativity is growing. The realisation I’ve made is that I was also resistance training on and off during my 30s. It’s a hypothesis that seems doomed to failure. Where’s the jacked artists? And why so few bodybuilders turning to the arts? How do woman fit into this stupid theory? Its my shitist blog post to date. But its an interesting, if not a little “bro-science” thing to think about.
Perhaps the keys to unlocking free flowing creativity lies in a combination of mind and bio body hacking, the possibilities of which no books currently consider. Anyway, this is the second blog post of the week so I can hopfully be forgiven if such ponderings turn out fruitless.
