Doom and Bloom: The Case for Creativity in a World Hooked on Panic

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Summary

Thoughts on how creativity and making your art leads to a fulfilling and satisfying life. Great illustrations.

Quotes and Notes

You can be creative or destructive. Can’t be both at the same time.

Three things are needed to start a fire - fuel (negative handling of emotions), oxygen (attention), heat (state of world). Need to reduce impact of these on your mental health.

Guilt about doing chores and other adulting things can take away enjoyment from creative pursuits. - Need to set a standard of what is “enough”, otherwise todo lists are endless and you can never relax/be creative. - Creating a bare minimum is the difference between gratitude and guilt. Some days you will blow past the bare minimum. Others won’t. You should be ok with either. - Need to create a bare minimum list - what to do so tomorrow is not worse - and a killing it list, for days to show when you are really on a roll

Journal to stop ruminating. Your thought loop isn't infinite - just write it down and get out of your head.

It's easy to be complacent (and high functioning complacent). Need creative pursuits that are hard and let you grow/bloom. - You can't spend all your time preparing - you must do!

You go through seasons. Recognize them and take advantage of them. Spring Time for new things. Be curious. Try lots of things. Let curiosity inform your goals. - Pick the 5 weirdest books from the library to read every month! - Don’t limit yourself to focusing too deeply on any one thing.

Summer Longer days, longer motivation to build cool things. - what don’t you focus on? - Most things. You need to put on constraints on what you actually want to do. Pick something and go for it. - What do you focus on first? - dig deep. Focus on that one thing for a long time. Become a master of it. Draw ibises for a year, then you can start deviating once you see where you can. Relish in completing things regularly.

Autumn - catharsis - the time to observe who you are and let go of what you aren’t. - Letting go allows room for new growth (personally and creatively). - leaves fall from trees. They leave the soil richer and leave for new growth in the spring.

Winter - rest - need to rest and reset after three seasons of work. - Mental rest. Creative rest.