20160920_185856Well, did you?

Dear reader, whoever you are. I have failed you. Following last week’s incredible amounts of creative output this week the well hath doth runneth dry-th. From last to this Tuesday, other than the abstract act of thinking about writing, I have written nothing.

Well, what did you do instead? I hope it’s good.

I mean, sort of?

The first thing that comes to mind is that I worked a bunch. My day job occupied a lot of my time and when you’re busy at work it’s hard to come home and switch gears into a creative head space.

I also helped the Italian family that I married into turn 16 bushels of tomatoes into sauce. That kind of ate up my Saturday.

Also, Rocket League. There’s this new expansion where it adds Mario Kart style powerups to the beloved formula of rocket powered car soccer. I could go on, but that would be more for the old style “Perspicacious Geek” so I won’t.

So You’re Making Excuses?

I honestly went back into my calendar to see what the hell happened last week that I didn’t manage to find any sort of time at all to get some writing and I was pretty disappointed to see that I had almost nothing planned.

I suppose there are a few things that I did that take up my normal “writing time”. Namely, researching Patreon and what it could mean to have the website move to a fan supported model, you know, instead of a us-supported model. I think the big thing that worries me about that is the fact that I’m pretty confident we don’t really have that many fans.

It would be nice however, if we could get a few donations a month pay for our hosting fees, maybe get Sophie some art supplies, that sort of thing. I mean, worst case it’s just another waste of time putting a Patreon page together and everyone knows that pretty much everything we do on this site is glorified time wasting.

How will you recover creatively?

Well, part of the plan was to have this little time each week to assess where I’m at creatively, and honestly, writing this blog about how I didn’t get anything done on any number of creative writing endeavours kind of makes me feel like shit. I’ve shamed myself into not wanting to repeat this exercise again next week which is a pretty powerful motivator.

That being said, Sarah and I did check out the World Press Photography Contest Exhibit in the Old Port on Sunday and that was pretty cool. One thing that particularly stood out where the categories for general news and spot photography. So much emotion and drama captured in a photo that was only really taken with a more practical end in mind. These were photos that were intended to be taken to cover a news piece, but ended up being works of art. The fact that most of them were tragic (many of the most powerful images at the exhibition were revolving around various aspects of the Syrian refugee crisis) was even more amazing. To be there as an observer, working for a newspaper, witnessing the heights of human drama and capturing it in an instant. Gave me chills.

I don’t really have a point to that anecdote, but I guess if I did it would be that sometimes, even if your end goal is not at all related to the art in question, it’s good to go out and appreciate other people’s creativity.

I think I should spend more time in art galleries.

Keith does all sorts of things here on 9to5.cc, he works with the other founders on 9to5 (illustrated), co-hosts our two podcasts: The 9to5 Entertainment System and Go Plug Yourself and blogs here as The Perspicacious Geek.