#26 - Collecting Sticks
A meditation on building a creative practice.
This morning I meditated on the phone with a writer/presenter friend of mine on how much time it takes to build a creative practice and what is involved. We both reflected on the kind of time, consistency, and dedication to a set of ideas it took both of us to develop domain expertise.
He is much farther along than me, and this is so important too because it’s critical to have mentors as a creative person who also serve as models and archetypes, not just advisors.
But anyway, I landed on this metaphor of collecting sticks, something my toddler nephew does with great enthusiasm, and something I think all of us can relate to from childhood.
All of us have wandered, deep in the flow of searching for treasures in our respective life worlds, noticing what catches our eye and what we choose to pick up.
For me, building a creative practice very much feels like collecting sticks during my wanderings, examining them in those early moments of beholding, realizing which ones are special, and keeping those in an ornate drum by the door of my mind.
They all make a unique sound falling in, like pencils of varying length dropping into a tin cup. A lot of time goes into this phase of collecting and curating sticks. You have to accumulate a critical mass before you can pull them out and figure out how they go together — which ones are similar or complementary.
This phase of the creative process is woefully underrated and truncated at the expense of truly knowing oneself and one’s interests. What I love about this metaphor and season of creativity is that it’s less controlled and affords us time to meander.
It necessarily enriches the time of “not doing” with the value it deserves.
So if you want to do things, stop panicking. Collect your sticks. Know that the practice of doing so with no end or outcome in sight is valuable. It imparts clarity and a body of work that you can take no shortcuts building.
If you put in the time, the good work will come.