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This is the Most Important Thing You Need for Creative Work
It’s not any piece of technology, system, or habit. It’s far more drastic than that.
“Creativity thrives on solitude.”
Painter, videographer, and author Brian Rutenberg lays down this truth in the introduction to his book Clear Seeing Place. The book is full of offhand drops of wisdom like that; in this particular case, he unpacks it:
Locking your door achieves two essential goals at once — it tells the world to stay out, and it confines you to a place where self-awareness, the enemy of art, can be rinsed away; it’s easier to fall in love with the sound of your voice while no one’s listening”
But what if solitude scares you?
The fear of being alone with your own thoughts is real, and there’s not much more connected to your thoughts than your Work.
I’m talking about your creative Work, with a capital-W, not the busy-work that late-stage capitalism foists on us to distract from it.
There are a lot of advantages to this kind of avoidance mechanism. After all, if you’re not alone with your Work, then you escape all kinds of stress:
- You don’t have to worry if you or the Work is “good enough”…
