{"id":2857,"date":"2012-11-23T01:47:23","date_gmt":"2012-11-23T08:47:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.inmff.net\/peidm\/?p=2857"},"modified":"2012-12-09T14:14:13","modified_gmt":"2012-12-09T21:14:13","slug":"the-urge-to-create","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.inmff.net\/peidm\/2012\/11\/23\/the-urge-to-create\/","title":{"rendered":"The Urge to Create"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve had a great thanksgiving with my aunt, uncle, and friends. Continuing a tradition that is over half a decade old.<\/p>\n<p>Thanksgiving and Black Friday are among other things, days of consumption: Eat lots of turkey and sides then go to the stores and buy lots of things.<\/p>\n<p>Even though today and tomorrow are about consumption, it is today that I&#8217;ve finally carved out the time for a little bit of time, in which I want to discuss creation.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>No, I&#8217;m not talking about biblical creation, I&#8217;m talking about the innate need many, including myself, have to produce and share with the world at large, or perhaps just our communities.<\/p>\n<p>I owe a small debt to Charlie McDonnell&#8217;s thoughts on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=_56nx3eHK4c\">being scared of his audience<\/a>, and Hank Green&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=fGmAekTPD5c\">response to Charlie<\/a>, which pointed me to Mickeleh&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=W6FyaoUAD0U\">response to Charlie<\/a>, and I also got to reading The Oatmeal&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/theoatmeal.com\/comics\/making_things\">indirect response to Charlie<\/a>. In all of those responses, I saw myself and the past two years reflected back at me.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>The urge to create is a fickle one. At times there are blog entries that demand at what time and place that they will be written, then there are those that I have to force out of my head into the keyboard. <\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t think I talked about it here, but I spent a reasonable part of the past year trying to create a company that I believe would have changed the music world in a small, but significant way. I jumped into starting that company after a long time where my creation of content had fallen to one of its lowest levels. One could say that trying to create something a big as I wanted to, was a reaction to not having created as much as I would&#8217;ve liked to.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>But Charlie, Hank, Mickeleh, and The Oatmeal note that creating is <strong>scary<\/strong>. The company I was working on scared and scares the shit out of me. An unpublished blog entry that has been sitting on my computer for two years scares me that it won&#8217;t be quite right. Every time, I get up and play bells there is part of me that is completely terrified that I will accidentally launch a handbell into the air that will go flying and strike someone on the head and simultaneously give them a concussion and a huge gash. (Okay, maybe I&#8217;m just scared that&#8217;ll I&#8217;ll screw up when playing bells and look at the audience like a deer staring into headlights.) Often when I sit down to create something on my own I often have to fight the urge procrastinate, which I often do by consuming content created by others.<\/p>\n<p>This is why I excel at creating when I have an interdependent responsibility to others:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>Putting on a solo monologue? I suck at that.<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Being part of a theatrical endeavor where I have one, two, or forty people who are depending on me? I&#8217;m good at that. <\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Sitting down and practicing piano? Eh. Not a strength of mine. <\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Putting lots of hours into rehearsing handbells with others? Great at that.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Creating makes me feel good. There is the satisfaction of having brought something into the world, perhaps of beauty, perhaps of utility, perhaps something that evokes a response, or just perhaps something that needs to exist outside of the forever milling cycle of my thoughts. <\/p>\n<p>Creating is part of who I am, and one of the ways in which I know I am alive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve had a great thanksgiving with my aunt, uncle, and friends. Continuing a tradition that is over half a decade old. Thanksgiving and Black Friday are among other things, days of consumption: Eat lots of turkey and sides then go to the stores and buy lots of things. Even though today and tomorrow are about [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[14,89,27],"class_list":["post-2857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-consumerism","tag-content","tag-creativity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.inmff.net\/peidm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.inmff.net\/peidm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.inmff.net\/peidm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inmff.net\/peidm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inmff.net\/peidm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2857"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.inmff.net\/peidm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2859,"href":"https:\/\/www.inmff.net\/peidm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2857\/revisions\/2859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.inmff.net\/peidm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inmff.net\/peidm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inmff.net\/peidm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}