I have a couple of announcements to start this week’s podcast. Next week is Film Week at CreativeLive. Join me on the August 2st through the 24th. I am super excited to be one of the instructors. I will be teaching a black-and-white film class on August 22, and I will be teaching a large-format photography class on August 24. I hope you can attend both sessions. You can find out more at the creative live website.
A recent trip to a big-box retailer taught me something interesting about my creative process. We were standing in line, and due to a product display blocking peoples view from two different directions, the line was having to merge similar to an on-ramp at a freeway. At one point, a couple ended up cutting us off. However, they felt they were in the right spot for the line. Rather than have a conversation about what was going on, they passive-aggressively turned their backs towards the rest of us in line and had a conversation about how rude it was for people to get in their way. They continue to push on other people’s carts and make sure that everybody knew that they were next in line. What struck me as odd, was that they did not take the time actually to have a conversation with anyone. They chose to avoid the conversation rather than work to resolve any issues they may be feeling towards the rest of us.
This event made me think a lot about my creative process. I believe there are times in my process that I also become passive aggressive with what I’m doing or how I’m reacting to work. And just like the couple at the store, I frequently will avoid the conversation and rather stew in my own stories and issues around what’s going on. I think this is very detrimental to my overall crazy process and likely detrimental to a lot of people’s creative process.
Creativity is all about dealing with the unknown and uncertainty. And just like in the store sometimes lines will merge things will appear in front of us, and we have to determine how organ respond to those in a way that’s going to make us more creative and more engaged with our work. In this week’s podcast, we examine some of the roles and ideas of this passive-aggressive behavior can have towards our understanding of creativity in our creative process.