10 Things for Building Your Creative Lifestyle
A ten point map to developing your Creative Lifestyle for a lifetime.
I was thinking that, since we are all reading and writing about this or that element, it is easy to get lost in the details of life. Some times we need a simple overview or a recipe or a short and sweet set of instructions to figure out where we are in the process and what comes next. So I thought it might help just to lay out the idea of building a creative lifestyle in ten simply and succinctly described mile markers. You start here, then you go there, then you do this, then that and bang there you are. This is the foundation to build your edifice upon.
A Bullet Point Map to Developing your Creative Lifestyle
Define your artistic drive and interest.
Recognize that you are a creative person and working on your creative projects is a priority in your life.
Decide to design your life around your creative interests. Not the other way around.
Start and keep a daily journal even if it is minimal. The important part is daily even if it is just to sign in to leave a record that you showed up like a punch card at a factory. If you happen to write something, all the better.
Dedicate and budget your time on a daily or weekly basis to working, practicing, developing, planning, studying, mastering, contemplating, dreaming, imagining.
Establish dedicated studio/workspace even if just a table top, desk or easel at the beginning.
Make the commitment through practice of showing up to work. Preferably every day even if only for 10 minutes.
Build the habit of working until it is second nature and you are confident that it can be maintained no matter what.
Discipline yourself to organize and document your creative efforts as you go along.
Resolve to build your creative life for a lifetime as if it is one single ongoing work of art. Your archive in its totality: your art, artifacts, photographs, thoughts, stories, journals, documentation, interactions, exhibitions, etc. is your Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of artwork). Make it as rich in detail as possible.
If you do these ten things together for a year the chances are, you are set for a lifetime. That is the foundation that you will build on. The year I got to step no.10 was 2010 - I was about 54 years old. I definitely wish I had thought about it and practiced it 30 years earlier. From a documentational point of view, a lot was lost. Do I mourn over it? Not really. But still, it would have been nice to be able to look back over those years of what I had done with clarity and detail. You have to be your own historian and archivist. You are the only one who knows day by day where you have been, what you have done and what you were thinking at the time.
Are there more than these ten things? Of course there are, but this is the basic road map. You’ll have to hit all of these markers. The rest of the ten thousand things we’ll figure out as we go. Take the first step, then keep going no matter what. Be relentless, be patient. Slow and steady wins the race.
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