The first 100 days
Day 900 – Superpowers and Maple trees
The first blog post.
As anyone who cares to read this will likely decipher, my project of counting down 1000 days until I turn 40 is 100 days into existence, and so far I’ve managed only to post photos to my Instagram profile (@1000toforty for those who wish to play along).
I’ve collected a staggering 15 followers and found myself wondering what the hell is the point – isn’t what I’m doing just a daily accounting of things/images/ideas that tickle me? An exercise in consistent posting which certainly didn’t need a unique profile, let alone a website and blog page? Isn’t the internet already filled with enough inane content to add yet more time-wasting, irrelevant, and pointless shit to?
Regular posting has merits for sure and I have been encouraged that I have actually had the commitment to continue doing something for 100 consecutive days.
So why is today different? Why the first blog post now?
As it’s start of the new calendar year, I’ve been ploughing through a tonne of books on creativity, searching for the spark of inspiration and motivation to carry me through 2024. The once niche but now highly mainstream genre of artistic self-help books are my daily meals: Big Magic (Elizabeth Gilbert), The Ikigai Journey (Garcia & Miralles), and I finished another round of the “The Artists’ Way” (Julia Cameron) at the very end of December ‘23. So making art and following my passion is high on my thoughts.
Added to this, in a few days’ time I will be a guest on a friend’s podcast discussing creativity, and in preparation, my friend asked me to think about a question she asks all her guests: if you could have one superpower, what would you have and why?
It has become apparent to me reading all these books and in formulating a response to my friend’s question, that I have a strong propensity to take myself more seriously than the art I wish to make. I’ve flipped the well-known paradigm of not taking myself seriously but taking my art (one might say my vocation) seriously. To even use the phrase “my art” revelas the very high degree of lofty, stuffy seriousness I have in thinking about making.
Does a kindergarten kid finish their finger painting and declare to the teacher “see, here is my art!”?
It occurred to me as I wrote my response to the superpower question that I devote far more energy to how I see myself and how I perceive how others see me, than I do about taking action. In the roles of writer or actor and even parent partner son brother I spend much more time thinking about me in these roles, rather than getting on with the business of being them.
Put simply, my mental (and at times physical) devotion to living up to these constructed ideas is almost all-consuming, the main result of which is inertia.
A concrete example of this was the lengthy deliberation I took to respond to the question; concerned with providing a meaningful, poignant answer that would be both helpful and impactful to the listeners, but (almost more importantly) paint me in the best light possible: the light of considered, thoughtful and venerated Artiste!
I can also look at just how many books I’ve read and continue to read on the subject of creativity, to see that I spend far more time thinking about how I should be creative, than actually being creative.
My response to the question:
If I could have a superpower, right now I’d wish I could have the power to flick a switch so to take myself less seriously and my creative work/my art/vocation more seriously. Most of the time I feel like this is flipped for me and that balance is out of whack. I have a devotion to taking myself super seriously which actually, ironically, impacts my state in which to create and work on projects. I often think, if only I had the devotion to the project like I have to how I see myself and think about how others see me.
With that, I also provided the following caveat:
Asking what superpower I’d like to have is like whenever someone says to me “if you’d get a tattoo, what would you get and where?” - trouble is, you ask that question of me today and I might say “oh, the head of a stag on my shoulder blade, or the outline of a snow leopard on my pec (my favourite animals)” but I know my answer will probably change by tomorrow. Or next week. Or next decade. So I decide not to get the tattoo because I think “I’ll grow out of that choice or idea one day and that shit is permanent!”.
It occurs to me now that of course I had to provide a caveat! I’ve started to notice how often I use parenthesise and inverted commas to point out some irony along the way, as if I am both writer and critic at the same time. Like I’m offering an idea on one hand, while winking to the audience on the other, as if to say “it’s ok if you think this is too this or too that - I see that as well.” That’s me! I’m caveating and critiquing literally as write!!
So, thinking about creativity rather than being or doing… not getting the tattoo in case my taste changes somewhere down the track (as if I don’t understand that they absolutely will). Winking at the reader, making sure they know I can see I’m bonkers.
Anyone exhausted yet? I’m starting to be…
A parable in conclusion:
As I write, there is a plant growing on my balcony that has just caught my eye. This plant (I’m no green thumb so can’t tell you what it is) is one that climbs as it grows, and it is in the same pot as a small maple tree. The maple tree has seen much better days. It thrived in the old apartment, but in its new situation, lost all its leaves and none will now grow. Thought was given to repotting or simply to get rid of it, however somewhere along the way this other plant moved into the same pot, happily taking up residency as the maple’s chummy neighbour. Completely unbeknownst to me, it’s been there all this time, growing, growing, until today when I looked out and noticed it.
Looking through the lush green leaves and vines of this creeper, I can still see the withered and sad looking stalks of the maple tree.
The lesson that came to me, that I felt instinctively the moment I turned by gaze from the computer screen over to the balcony is this:
Most of the time I feel like the maple. I know I’ve got potential (have you seen how big and beautiful maples grow?) but sometimes the conditions just aren’t right. For whatever reason. While I’m no gardener I know I could research ways to revive poor Mavis the Maple, however in my distraction worrying about other things, something beautiful has been growing up all around it - probably for months - completely unnoticed until today.
And even in me noticing, the vine hasn’t changed at all. It was lush and vibrant the moment before I saw it, and remains unchanged by my writing about it. It’s still carrying on its silent steady growing.
So, perhaps this post, this project is like this old maple tree and neighbour. I started the project to track my inner and outer worlds as I creep towards turning 40 years old. I knew the idea would alter and change as I went, but for the first 100 days all I’ve really done is post photos on Instagram. Ground-breaking. But sort of… a vine was growing up alongside this whole time. And while I was busy worrying and fussing over my inertia, superpowers and other people’s views - and all the million other things that happen in life - creativity was there all along. All it took was me to pay it a little attention.
Things still don’t fully make sense. Even writing them down and reading them back feels messy and convoluted. However, my dance with art - creativity - is changing. The very invitation of the superpowerquestion propelled me to open up a Word document and start typing.
And at some point soon I will hit upload. I’ll see the things I could have changed, feel awkward about the ideas that aren’t quite formulated, be anxious about some word that should have been replaced by another. But at some point I just have to publish the thing. Caveats, winks and all.
That’s the Big Magic. The vine growing next to the maple.
The superpower has been there all along.