Creative Cogitation

Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda

Today I have been reminded by some­one very close to me about what he per­ceives to be all my fail­ings to act in the past. I find the entire exer­cise unpro­duc­tive. I am also find­ing it a neg­a­tive expe­ri­ence as he goes on and on about it, which has been tak­ing up far too much time in my brain hous­ing group. Of course before he started nat­ter­ing on I didn’t know what today’s blog was going to be about and now I do.

I can learn from the past to be sure, but I refuse to beat myself up about what may have been. The past is gone. Noth­ing I do today will change it.

I can only do what I do today. Sure I can make plans for tomor­row, but action only occurs in the present.

The first day to do any­thing is now. The first day to start that learn­ing a new lan­guage, exer­cise pro­gram, diet, mar­ket­ing plan, cook­ing class, get spend­ing under con­trol, start that paint­ing, take up underwater-basket-weaving, or what­ever evil lit­tle shoulda that is hang­ing out in your brain hous­ing group is today. It is do or not do. TRY is the pre­cur­sor to failure.

If you don’t do, “why not” can be a valid edu­ca­tional analy­sis but it should not stop you from act­ing tomor­row when tomor­row becomes today. “I failed to act yes­ter­day” is not a rea­son to not act today. Nor is there a chas­tise­ment to be applied to the fail­ure to act yes­ter­day; “I failed to act yes­ter­day” does not mean “I am a bad per­son” or “I am a fail­ure”; it sim­ply is, in the past, unchange­able. “I failed to act yes­ter­day because I watched SciFi reruns all day” may be a call to change behav­ior, change pri­or­i­ties or what­ever, but again it implies no value judg­ment in and of itself; it is a call to action.

Beware of the shoul­das that do not prop­erly belong to you. Some peo­ple live vic­ar­i­ously through other peo­ple and will implant shoul­das in the unwary peo­ple they hold influ­ence over. If you are a lit­tle pudgy, but not unhealthy, and some­one is berat­ing you about being fat maybe that is a shoulda you need to ignore. Maybe the proper shoulda on your list today is to tell your nag where to get off, or maybe it is just to ignore them.

I should blog more often (as a mar­ket­ing tool) is one of the shoul­das in my list, also I need to paint more, and I need improve on my mar­ket­ing efforts in gen­eral. These artis­tic goal cen­tric efforts are com­pet­ing with a mil­lion other shoul­das in my life. Pri­or­i­tiz­ing shoul­das requires you to develop a self­ish streak. I am no Objec­tivist, or Exis­ten­tial­ist, but from the cre­ative stand­point Ayn Rand or Søren Kierkegaard did present ideas that may res­onate with you. If your true goal is to be an inde­pen­dent cre­ative per­son, you must under­stand that those around you think you are nuts, wast­ing your time with pie-in-the-sky ideas, and need to find some­thing sen­si­ble to do with your life. They are more than will­ing to load up your plate with well-intended should ofs. I believe that after sat­is­fy­ing your basic needs of food and roof-over-your-head, your next pri­or­ity has to be cre­ative goal-centric, not clean­ing your house, fix­ing the drip in the kitchen faucet, respond­ing to irrel­e­vant email, blog­ging per­haps, deal­ing with con­tin­u­ous demands of sig­nif­i­cant others…

The act of cre­ation is self­ish; it is ful­fill­ing a need in you that oth­ers may not under­stand.  These oth­ers are more than happy to con­vey to you their dis­plea­sure with your cho­sen path over and over again.  They will also remind you over and over again how your effort has failed in the past thus prov­ing their the­sis that you need to be doing some­thing else; they, of course, will also tell you what that some­thing else woulda, coulda, shoulda been.  If you have not done so already it is time to ban­ish these unpro­duc­tive ghosts from your mind.

So hav­ing com­pleted my blog and mar­ket­ing effort for the day, and ban­ished my unpro­duc­tive ghost via this blog, I will move on to other self­ish pur­suits in the now.

I am curi­ous, hav­ing now espoused my phi­los­o­phy regard­ing the cre­ative effort, how do you make time for your art?

Yours in Art,

-Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

PS. I am still look­ing for Spon­sors & Con­tribut­ing Patrons to help me pay the esti­mated $8000 it is going to cost me to attend this event.  Every lit­tle bit helps.