A Year Of Bad Art
Two days ago I turned 26.
This age isn’t especially significant, but I took the opportunity to reflect on how I was living, what I was spending my time doing - you know the drill.
The long and short of it - I’m happy. Life is good. But I have a nagging itch that won’t go away.
It’s time to deal with it.
Many years ago I came across this video by ZeFrank:
In it, he describes the addiction one can have to their own ideas - never executing them, and thus forever being half-content, stuck in the ‘what if’ stage.
He calls it being addicted to ‘brain crack’.
I’m definitely a brain crack addict.
When I first saw it nearly ten years ago I knew how truly it described me - and, much like many others when faced with the truth too directly, I tucked it away in the back of my brain to face later.
Much more recently, I’ve come across similar ideas again - authors I admire have been recently speaking about owing it to themselves to at least give all of their ideas a go. Casey Neistat famously talks about the rule of “ABC" - Always Be Closing” - finish what you start. Jocko in a recent discussion on his podcast talked about the creative drive and so on.
It’s a terrifying idea to me, because I have a lot of ideas all of the time.
The only creative pursuit I’ve been somewhat consistent with is Improv, which I’ve done for the last 5 years. The thing about Improv is that, creatively, it’s not terrifying at all for several reasons:
There is no room to procrastinate onstage or in a scene. If you have an idea, you use it there and then.
Whether you do the best or worst show of your life, it’s gone forever* that means there’s no real risk of abject failure or great success
So while in the moment, getting up onstage in front of a crowd of strangers can be a bit nerve-wracking, it’s NOTHING compared with the eternity and exposure of the internet (at least, to my mind).
And despite all of my fears of putting anything online - which have existed for a long time - the feedback I’ve received about my blog and posts before continues to be overwhelmingly positive.
I’m at a stage in my life now where bizarrely, despite the chaos of the world (or perhaps even, urged to action by it) I’m in a place where internally I feel stable. I feel ready. So I’m going to give my creative side a bit more attention.
I’m making a pact with myself - for a year, I’m going to post more, and make more. It’s going to be A Year Of Bad Art.
This might be blog posts, short video essays, attempts at comedy or music or whatever. It just needs to exist and be a thing.
And hey, if anyone wants to join me, please do! I can’t imagine I’m the only one who feels this way… #ayoba.
Stay tuned!
*Obviously you can record improv, but it lacks the punch of being there live. The best improv ever recorded, in my opinion, will struggle to match up in impact to scripted mediums.