Without a doubt, I have now thoroughly failed at HiveBloPoMo, just like I have previously never been able to complete the original NaNoWriMo challenge. Granted, the fact that our power went out Monday last and we had no Internet for a full day is perhaps a legitimate excuse... but it doesn't alter the fact that I once again found myself unable to complete a 30 day challenge.
The main lesson learned — as if I really needed to learn it again — is that my personal cycles of creativity are ill suited do something that requires being worked on with dedication, every single day.
There is a certain irony in that, because most people — including myself — tend to think of me as being rather relentless, and possessing an unusual degree of stick-to-it-iveness.
When I look back over my creative endeavors, I clearly seem able to stick to something for about a week to 10 days and then I run out of steam. These would be what I think of as my creative microcycles. After 10 days I get antsy, I just feel like I have to get away and do something else for a while. However, my macrocycles are such that I have no problem stringing together 100 consecutive 10 day cycles.
To wit, I've managed to stick to it and publish over 1600 top level posts here on Hive, in the course of five years. However, those have come in bursts of as many as three or four a day for a while, followed by practically nothing for a while.
Part of the lesson here, which also helps explain why I was never able to hold on to jobs, is that I have have interests that stay with me for a very long time, but I simply prefer to bounce around a lot between each one... rather than just sticking to one thing.
And perhaps the deeper lesson here is that we shouldn't fight our natural tendencies, purely in service of complying with some external expectation, when the best thing we can do for ourselves — including for our creative productivity — is to work with the tools and cycles we were naturally born with.
Therein lies — perhaps — One of the great letdowns of the human condition: we are so often forced to shoehorn ourselves into standardized systems created by others, but which in no way fit the way we work. And so, many people are condemned to a (working) life of substandard creativity that so often just feels... "wrong."
Ironically, as I sit here writing this post, I am also aware that one of my creative microcycles is ramping up again.
Not at all related, tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in the United States. I expect many people will spend the day with family in spite of assorted lockdowns and quarantines... and I wish you all well!
Thanks for reading, and have a great remainder of your week!
How about YOU? Are you aware of your creative cycles? Or is your creativity pretty consistent, at all times? Do you prefer working on just one thing till you're "done," then starting something else? Or do you prefer to "task switch," back and forth? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
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Created at 20211124 12:15 PDT
0415/1659