Tag Archives: creativity

Lost for words

The past few days I’ve been really stuck on my daily ink. The ideas are not flowing, and when they do come they feel more like essays than short daily writes. But then I’ve wasted too long staring at the blank page to have time to write long, drawn out ideas. So first my writing feels rushed, and then my whole morning routine does too.

This exercise of writing daily has been very positive for me. It has helped me feel creative. It’s not just an outlet for my writing it’s a drive to produce, to create something every single day.

Every. Single. Day.

Well recently I have felt like I don’t have a lot to share. I feel like the things I want to share infringe on the lives of people close to me that may not want their story shared publicly. And most of all I question myself, wondering why anyone would bother reading my daily dribble?

I remember a while back some people were sharing a daily photo. I love photography and tried a couple times to do ‘A Photo a Day’, but my love for photography made me stop both times within a couple weeks. I would look at these forced photos that I had taken and think to myself, ‘That’s a photo I had to take, not one I wanted to take.’ Then I’d quit.

I feel that way about writing right now… but I don’t want to quit. I don’t want a period of not feeling creative to undermine a habit I’ve built for almost 3 years now. What I’m fighting isn’t just writer’s block, it’s self doubt that I’d have anything else to share after all this time. Mental menopause preventing me from creating any fruitful work.

I’ll push through. I’ll accept that what I’m producing now will not be my best work. I’ll tell myself that the muse will come back. But for now it’s more of a chore than an expression of my passion for writing. I said earlier that I struggle with sharing stories of others that aren’t mine to share, well the story I can tell is my own. And for now, that story is how I’m struggling to write daily. The story to tell is that I’ll muscle through, and while it’s not easy, it’s not a time to give up either.

Spice it up

I make a pretty good rice stir fry. It’s a simple recipe that I made up one day when I saw we had a lot of veggies and leftover rice. My secret, very little soy and ‘way too much‘ hoisin sauce, sesame oil, garlic, and fresh ground pepper. And, a home made pepper sauce that is a family recipe my sister makes for me. I’m not a great cook, but I do some creative things at times and this is one of those times.

When I say ‘way too much‘ of something, I don’t mean drown in the flavour, but I notice that recipes always seem to be conservative with flavours and they try to find some kind of artistic balance. I say screw that when I’m being creative in the kitchen. Most recipes don’t add nearly enough garlic. Most recipes sprinkle black pepper. Most recipes that use sesame oil measure it in teaspoons or at most a couple table spoons. If you saw how much of these I add, you’d think I was ruining the dish… but none of these tastes are overpowering, and my dish is not boring or bland. It has kick, it has zest, and it sends my family back for seconds.

I make a few family concessions. My wife likes way more cilantro than my daughter, so I use a small amount in the dish, but have more chopped for my wife and I to add to the plate. My wife doesn’t like beef in it so I cook a side pot of beef in a similar sauce for my daughter and I. We each get our own version of the dish.

The point is, I really go crazy with certain ingredients, and I think that is seldom done in recipes you find in books. Some flavours deserve a good overdose, others you have to be careful with. Garlic, go nuts. Rosemary, be gentle. Fresh ground black pepper, double the recipe’s suggestion. Dill, be reserved.

Yes, you can have too much of a good thing, but more often than not a recipe simply won’t give you enough of the good stuff, and that’s how I go ‘off book’ on a recipe. That said, my brother-in-law shared some good advice with me recently. He said that the first time he follows a recipe he does it exactly as it is described. That way he can judge what earned it a place in the recipe book, before he gets creative. Good advice. Don’t try to fix something that isn’t broken. But if you taste a recipe and it needs more garlic, well then the next time you cook it, go a little garlic crazy.

Sometimes it will suck

I’m going to have to rush my morning routine because I’ve been writing ideas for my blog and each one of them will require more time than I have this morning to write them. So, I give them a title and shove them into my drafts for another day when I will be up earlier. And then I stared at the blank page, stuck.

On days like this I think of Seth Godin, who has written over 7,000 posts in his daily blog. Something that he wrote sticks with me… no matter how much you write, 50% of your work will be the worst 50%. You can’t escape this fact. So don’t worry about what you write, just write… and so today I’ll accept this post as the bottom half, but I am metaphorically putting pen to paper and I’ll hit ‘Publish’ soon. And maybe tomorrow I’ll put something in the top 50%… or at least the top 50% for now… because after another few thousand posts, who knows where it will rank?

Letting go of the worry of how good my writing is allows me to feel freer, and more open to sharing ideas. There is a time and place to think of just the right words, crafting an idea or even a sentence just the right way. And there are times to start writing and letting the words flow with little thought of how good the writing is. Sometimes suck is far better than stuck.

Spicing up a recipe

I shared this tweet before, but the post was more about life than cooking:

I’m not a big fan of cooking, but I have certain recipes that I do quite well. One of them is a stir fry. Last night’s was really good! I’m not just saying that because I enjoyed it, both my wife and daughter complimented it, and my daughter said, “I have to slow down so I can enjoy this longer.”

I didn’t use a recipe as my baseline. I didn’t measure anything. I just added things that I thought should go together. I cooked the peppers, red onion, carrots, and beans longer than the broccoli, which I cooked longer than the green onions and cilantro. I added way more sesame oil than any recipe I’ve ever followed, and way less soy. And I added a whole lot of garlic powder. This no-recipe-as-a-base approach doesn’t always work, but my stir fry always does.

One of my favourite things to do is to start with a recipe then go on a tangent. This is a lot less risky than flying by the seat of my pants, and it makes cooking fun for me. A couple days ago we made tacos, and when I went to the fridge for salsa I saw sweet chili pepper sauce and decided to try it instead… Absolutely delicious!

I don’t like easy puzzles, and to me a recipe is an easy puzzle… I like to spice things up a bit, and I’m usually glad I did.

Milestone

I just checked, this will be the 999th post on this blog. But I had almost 100 posts before I started writing daily, 901 days ago, on July 6th, 2019. So I still have 99 more posts after this one to hit 1,000 Daily-Inks that are actually daily. Still, I feel like I’ve hit a milestone.

The title of this blog came from Stephen Down’s OLDaily, and a former student’s (now defunct) blog, Wandering Ink. Originally, I was writing in a journal and posting a photograph of my writing. It was a novel, but dumb idea. My writing is notoriously messy, and the effort to write something legible was time consuming and unlikely to be sustained. I also started it in China and used a tool, Posterous, or something like that, (also now defunct), to upload my images and posts. And so now all the images I posted are dead and unrecoverable. So some of my older posts look like this:

Who knows, maybe I already wrote a version of my recent post, Human Intersections, in September of 2010, but unless I dig up my old journal buried in a box in my garage, I’ll never know what I wrote in the old post?

Still, yesterday marked the 900th daily post. I haven’t checked month by month to see if I missed any days, but I know that I’ve been very consistent and if I missed any, it would likely be less than 3 posts in two-and-a-half years. I’m not checking. I’m satisfied to call this daily.

Sometimes it’s really tough to get something out. I wrote 5 (now deleted) paragraphs on two separate ideas before I checked my stats for the first time in months and discovered how many posts I am at. Sometimes I start to write something and think I need to put it away as a draft and work on it when I have more time. Sometimes, like today, my writing wasn’t worth keeping. Other times I start to write and don’t pause until I am done.

But writing every day has been an amazing artistic outlet. It has given me the space and time to think creatively, and it has helped me commit to things because I’ve said them ‘out loud’.

And with that post 901 in a row is done. I won’t bother celebrating 1,000, I’ll just keep going and see where this leads me.

Creativity and NFT’s

I think by now everyone has heard of NFT’s.

NFTs (or “non-fungible tokens”) are a special kind of cryptoasset in which each token is unique — as opposed to “fungible” assets like Bitcoin and dollar bills, which are all worth exactly the same amount. Because every NFT is unique, they can be used to authenticate ownership of digital assets like artworks, recordings, and virtual real estate or pets. – Coinbase

Right now I think many people see this as a fad, and there are all kinds of tokens being created and sold for ridiculously high prices, which both make the news, and seem like a silly waste of money. But there is something here that is pretty special in two different ways. And when the dust settles and the fad-y-ness goes away, it is creatives who will benefit from these tokens.

1. Re-sale of art.

When an artist sells an original, they get the sale price and then they don’t benefit if the art is resold. Often an artist will take years to get popular (much less famous) and their early work is essentially given away compared to their later work when they become known. With NFT’s, artists can get a percentage of the resale value. The token can be tracked and if sold on an NFT market (rather than a private transaction) then the artist can keep a commission.

2. Tokens tied to real world rewards.

There is a DJ named 3LAU (Justin David Blau) who sold NFT’s of his work in an auction,

“The way 3LAU structured his auction was very cutting edge and the mechanics of the auction should be noted. There were 33 available winning slots in total for the auction. Slot #1 was the Platinum Tier, slots #2 – 6 was for the Gold Tier, and slots #7 – 33 was the Silver Tier. Each tier contained digital artwork, music, and physical goods (Vinyl) connected with the project. The winner of the Platinum Tier also won a custom song created by 3LAU with the winner’s creative direction, tokenized as a 1 of 1 NFT.” ~ Dennis Martin

In another auction, the top tier included lifetime tickets to every concert he does. And since this is an NFT that can trade hands, it can be sold if the buyer no longer wants this.

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So while you’ll read things like, A Rare CryptoPunk Ape NFT Was Sold for $10 Million USD in Ethereum, and wonder why? Or how this can be sustained? Or if this is just a fad? NFT’s will have value desired by others. Yes, there will be silly collectables selling for way too much. But there will also be the ability to play games and earn items of value that can be traded rather than just hoarded. And that is another way NFT’s will be used to trade items people will want to pay for.

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Collectables and video games aside, NFT’s will be a game changer for artists and creatives. And in a world where automation is making items better, cheaper, and faster; and where jobs themselves are becoming more automated, there will be more time and space for artists to hone their crafts as a way of making a living. NFT’s will be part of that future where artists can sell their work, provide experiences for their fans, and benefit from the resale of their work as their popularity grows.

NFT’s might seem like a fad to you, but they are here to stay, and some time in the near future you’ll end up owning one if you attend a live show, or buy a piece of art, or maybe even choose to pay for a song of artist you love to listen to.

More on writing every day

“When we stop worrying about whether we’ve done it perfectly, we can start working on the process instead. Saturday Night Live doesn’t go on at 11:30pm because it’s ready, It goes on because it’s 11:30. We don’t ship because we are creative, we are creative because we ship. Take what you get, and commit to a process to make it better.” Seth Godin, ‘The Practice’.

Seth has written over 7,000 blog posts on his daily blog, dating back to 2002. One interesting point that he makes is that no matter how many posts he writes, 50% of them are his worst 50%, and not as good as the other half. It’s impossible to do better than that. It’s not about doing great work every day, it’s about ‘shipping’ work every day. It’s about being creative every day, it’s about the process… the practice.

I’ve written pieces that I’ve thought were quite good, and no one will probably ever look back at them. I’ve knocked off a quick post with little thought, and it garnishes comments and positive feedback… and occasionally these two things coincide. But it’s not accolades or attention that matters to me nearly as much as the commitment to write every day. To do the creative work. To wordsmith, to ponder, to question, and to practice the art of writing.

So forgive the typos, the comma splices, the run on sentences. Indulge me when I intentionally break convention. Like this. This is my muse, and I do my best to ship every day. And exactly half of the time, you’ll get better than average work from me.

Story plot

I’ve been enjoying Dune, by Frank Herbert, as an audiobook. It’s 20+ hours long and I’ve got about 3 hours left. It’s basically a messiah heroes journey and it’s very well written. This gave me an idea for a plot of a book or movie.

I’d call it ‘The Reluctant Messiah’. Basically it’s about 2 best friends, and one of them is the Chosen One. He doesn’t want to be, and the friend is jealous of him. For 2/3rds of the move the chosen one is the protagonist, we get to hear inside his head. We see things the friend doesn’t. Then something totally unexpected happens. The chosen one reluctantly goes up against a weak nemesis that he feels is below him and he is killed. The protagonist is gone and nothing is resolved.

The best friend now reluctantly picks up the reins and is forced to take over, but to this point there is not a single hint that this will happen. Now he gets his chance he has been jealous of, but totally doesn’t want it, and doesn’t feel ready for it, (he is actually the reluctant messiah).

Further, the reader is in full knowledge of things the new messiah should know, but doesn’t… because he wasn’t part of different aspects of the training involved while the reader was there, with the original messiah. So the reader has to watch this new messiah totally mess up the prophesies, and make almost fatal errors, with devastating collateral damage, on his way to saving the day in a totally different way. And thus the new messiah creates folklore that is absolutely nothing like the old folklore told at the start of the story.

The really novel thing here is going through 2/3rds of the book having absolutely no idea who the real protagonist is, and having the original protagonist die in a completely unexpected way before the climax of the story is close.

That’s the idea, I’d love to see someone pull it off.

Public and private work

At Inquiry Hub students learn the difference between a working portfolio and a presentation portfolio. They don’t get electives in the same way a student in a large high school gets theirs. Instead of a Grade 9 looking at a large catalogue of courses to choose from, students get a couple ‘mandatory electives’… yet they end up with more choice and variety than students in big schools with many elective choices. This is possible because one of the mandatory courses is Foundations of Inquiry, where students get to choose their own topics.

Here is a Grade 10 student, Thia, describing her inquiries in her grade 9 year:

In Foundations of Inquiry, students create a working portfolio. Using OneNote, they share their documentation of work and progress with their teacher. They will include photographs, videos, and journaling, as well as reflections, progress reports, and copies of presentations done as part of the process. These notes are not public, beyond teacher access. In a way, these portfolios are the rough draft of what’s being done.

We also encourage students to publicly share their work. This can include on a blog or website, or a presentation beyond the classroom. It can include contacting mentors and experts and sharing what they have done. And it can include creating videos or doing presentations to family and community at school. These are public opportunities to share their portfolio, and this portfolio is polished and ready for sharing out in the open.

A daily journal like this is sort of a mix between the two kinds of portfolios. Writing every day, I don’t get to share polished work. I have no editors, I am generally sharing my first draft, looked over only by myself, once or twice, before scheduling the post to go live at 7:22am on most mornings… a random time I have selected and stick to on weekdays, when I’m up and writing before 5:30am. Weekends I publish later, and immediately after writing, rather than scheduling.

This is by all means a working portfolio. Some of my ideas are half baked. Some are fleeting thoughts expanded into a handful of sentences. Some are ideas like this where I give a long background before getting to the idea at hand. Some are thoughtful reflections that seem far more thought out than they actually are. And some really aren’t that good, and wouldn’t pass an editor, or even myself if I looked at it two days later.

A journal like my Daily-Ink is a constant work in progress, it is a working portfolio of ideas and thoughts. Yet, it is also very public. When I schedule a post, it automatically goes to RRS feeds, it gets put onto a Facebook page, and it is shared through Twitter and LinkedIn posts. It is put on public display on many fronts for anyone interested to see. It’s a glimpse into my mind, and it shows the rough edges. It is at once a draft and a final copy.

I don’t think many people would be comfortable doing this every day. I have to say that it is a huge commitment, but a rewarding one. Sometimes words flow and I feel an incredible sense of satisfaction. Sometimes I stare at a blank page with no idea what to write, questioning why I do this to myself? But, I wrote this one day and now share it as my blog tag line:

Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.

As I state in the post, “The act of writing makes me a better writer. The commitment to this act every single day is itself a reward, making me feel like I’ve accomplished something before I even start my work day.”

It’s not perfect, (in fact I found a typo in the quote above that I went back and changed). This is a working portfolio… it just happens to be one that I share publicly.

Students design the school

Seven years ago a student and her father wrote a grant proposal and got money to beautify the school. Most of the money went to get concrete picnic benches in our courtyard, but there was also money earmarked for an outdoor mural.

The student who submitted the grant and 3 of her friends started polling students about what to put on the mural. At the time, we had a school slogan of, “Connect, Create, Learn”, and these students came up with the most popular adaptation to this: “Dream, Create, Learn.”

I hated it. We were a very small school with no catchment, meaning every kid must choose to come to us rather than a school near their home, and I thought the word ‘Dream’ was not a good word to recruit students or their parents. “Parents don’t want to send their kids to a school that’s about dreaming,” I would say. “We love it. and that’s what we want the mural to say,” they responded I acquiesced. The mural was created as the students wished.

Now, the dedicated self-directed time we give students to work is called DCL… their time to Dream, Create, and Learn. This idea I originally hated has become woven into the vernacular and culture of the school.

This year, we had the Grade 10’s design murals for the school as one of their SCRUM projects. Here are the designs they came up with.

One of these murals is a play off of DCL, Dream, Create, Launch. While this won’t replace DCL, it’s an idea inspired by one of our teacher, John Sarte, who is our STEAM teacher, (except the ‘M’ isn’t for Math, it’s for Marketing). John loves the notion of seeing Inquiry Hub as being an idea incubator, with students designing real world solutions and projects. I love the student design, and that this mural is at the entrance to the part of the building that is our school.

Allowing students the opportunity to create these murals, and giving them a lot of choice about what to design and where to put them is something that I think makes them so appealing. ‘Your journey starts here’ is in our office. ‘Nature calls’ is in our bathrooms. Our pentapus mascot (a 5 legged octopus named ‘Ollie’, also chosen by students) and ‘Live your dream’ are in our learning commons. And, the sunflower mural livens up a beautiful atrium that most people didn’t even notice we had. Oh, and our school logo, also designed by a student.

Students ideas and artwork bring our school alive.