creativity

INFJs Let Their Perfectionist Nature Hold Them Back From Living Complete Lives

  • Reading time:9 mins read

I am an INFJ, and I know that I have an elephant in my room. I don’t like talking about it with others, of course, but more than that, I don’t like talking about it with myself. In fact, I make up stories to hide this elephant, every time it comes up in everyday situations. I hate making mistakes.

I am an idealistic perfectionist, which means that unless conditions are absolutely perfect, I do not make a single move in the directions of the things I want. 

For example, I live in Chiang Mai (CM), Thailand. Everyone I know whizzes around on tiny motorbikes, free as a bird. I tried learning how to ride a motorbike as well, the first time I landed in CM three years ago. 

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Napping Is Becoming A Daily Part Of My Creative Process

  • Reading time:6 mins read

When I was younger, in my teens, or twenties, I used to believe that napping is a huge waste of time. I used to look at a sign of weakness. If I couldn’t get through the long days without sleeping, then that meant that I wasn’t strong enough to live in the real world.

Even if I was exhausted because of the long hours, waking up at 5am, and going all the way till 10pm, I refused to succumb and take a rejuvenating nap in the middle of the day.

Part of it has to be because I grew up in a high-achieving, Type-A personality, perfectionism-seeking family. Which meant that if I did ever fall asleep in the middle of the day, it would result in all of these queries about my health. “Are you not feeling well? Are you alright? You are still young, you shouldn’t need to sleep in the middle of the day.” And so on.

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Some Days, I Would Rather Do Anything Else, Than Work

  • Reading time:8 mins read

This happens to me all the time. Especially since I work from home, and I have no one really telling me that I need to get to work, or I need to get shit done. In fact, I could spend my entire day contemplating the length of my fingernails, and no one would be the wiser. That's one of the dilemmas of people like me, who work from home, who are creative, who need to get in the mood to create shit, and who sometimes are just not in the mood to do anything. Just today, as I psyched myself up to write this blog post, I spent 3 hours procrastinating in the following manner. I read manga on a couch that got more and more comfortable as time went on, took a 15 minute nap, cut my fingernails, ate my lunch, drank some coconut water, read some more manga, browsed Facebook for something (anything, please God). Finally, I sat down on…

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[Ep 88] Having A Hard Time Getting Ideas?

  • Reading time:2 mins read

In this episode, I’ll be talking to you about muses and how I get all the ideas for all of the awesome, cool, different things I do every single day. And the real heroine of the show is my muse! Ta-da! For those who are unsure, a muse is a force that is the source of inspiration and it’s where all our ideas come from. Not only mine, or yours, but every single creative person on the planet gets their ideas from their own muse. Muses are always floating around in the air with ideas attached to them. Searching for a human like us, creative, and determined to get their idea out into the world. I have so many ideas coming to me all throughout the day and it is confusing me as to why some people don’t. Why do some people come up with ideas easily and others do not? The answer is as simple as do you trust your muse…

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You Cannot Fool Your Spirit Or Soul Forever With Lies

  • Reading time:6 mins read

When I was a child, I thought that I had eons to do all of the things that I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be a writer, and that was a dream that had stuck with me forever and ever. But, I was told that it was not the most lucrative and realistic dream to have. I decided it would be more lucrative to become a doctor. So I persevered at that. As hard as I could.

But that wasn’t hard enough or good enough. Because I didn’t get in. Three times I applied, and three times, I failed. It was fine. I still had other options. I could try something else. Maybe get a business degree, and become a marketing guru. Or get into a technology company and try to work in social media. Whatever it might be. Whatever it could be, it wasn’t going to be writing, of course.

Writing wasn’t worth it. It wasn’t going to make me any money. No way, no how.

As much as I tried to avoid the truth, my soul or spirit or whatever you want to call it (I like to call it my essence) kept on prodding at me, kept on poking at me. ‘Hey, you,’ it said, over and over again, ‘you are getting distracted from your true purpose. You are supposed to be doing something else.’ (more…)

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It Isn’t Enough To Be Talented Anymore, You Need To Have Edge

  • Reading time:12 mins read

If you spend any time on social media of any kind, or any online forum, you realize one thing quickly enough. There are a lot of extremely talented, creative, and mindblowingly original artists and people out there. Seriously! There are so many crazy weird ways to be creative nowadays, that it absolutely makes my mind spin and boggle.

Okay, so there are a lot of talented people out there. What does this mean for the rest of us? That’s the real question, isn’t it? That’s the main question that runs through my head. When I read someone else’s brilliant writing, that cuts my writing to pieces, I think to myself, ‘Now what?’

Now what do I do? What is the next step here? Do I sit down in my room, and cry myself to sleep, because my writing is not even close to good, when compared to so many talented writers out there? Or do I keep on writing, so that one day, maybe in the far off future, my writing will come up to par? (more…)

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My Gypsy Heart Is So Ecstatic To Be In This Creative Sinkhole

  • Reading time:12 mins read

When I was younger, I always knew that I wanted to be a writer. It was like, that had been imprinted into the insides of my heart, irrevocably and forever my destiny. But, as the world intervened, I was made to realize (falsely) that I will never make any money from being a writer, and I should find some other vocation. Some other vocation that paid better, much better, has more security, and more stability associated with it.

Ah, if only, I had been stronger in my mindset, and realized that it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how much money I could have made from the writing thing, because it was something that my gypsy heart wanted to do.

For the next 20 years (I am 34 now), I worked on various odd and end jobs. Marketing. Sales. Officiating. And so much more. It was all for naught. There was no point to it. My heart kept on going back to creating, and writing. It wanted to do that so badly. (more…)

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Is A Project Only Successful If It Makes Money?

  • Reading time:12 mins read

You guys know most of the posts I write on here are based on real life meanderings of my brain. I literally spend hours in my apartment pondering over random ideas, thoughts, feelings, emotions, and other stuff. I share most of it on here, because I have a philosophy in life – If I am going through something, there are probably hundreds others who are going through exactly the same thing. It is a certainty to me, as it gets proven over and over to me.

Okay, so what are we going to talk about in this blog post?? Projects, creativity, money, and the misleading idea of success. A lot to cover in the next few thousand words, so let’s get on with it. Shall we??

I just launched a major new creative project. When I say, major, I mean, my life’s work, my opus, my grand oeuvre. Whatever you want to call it, I cared about this project a lot. It was important to me. More important to me than my kidneys (as I skipped going to pee a lot, while working on it). More important to me than my relationships (as I skipped a lot of family and friends’ gatherings to work on it). (more…)

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Why Are So Many People So Interested In Supporting Creative People?

  • Reading time:11 mins read

Recently, a friend of mine and I were chatting about how there are so many communities out there, Patreon, being just one of them, that is a way for ‘normal’, i.e., non-creative people, to support the ‘creative’ folks. Supporting creative people who are not like them.

The creative people are the dreamers, the doers, and the change-makers of society. But that crazy, kooky way of life, resulted in the past a lot of starving artist mode. Where you lived in your parent’s basement until you made it big (if you ever did).

But the Internet, and all of those amazing creative communities online, MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and so many more, are all changing the way the world views creative people. For the first time in history, everyone who is connected to the Internet can view creative people from all over planet Earth.

Someone in Okhlahoma can listen to a Turkish band. And anyone from Australia can be a fan of a indy band from a little town in Alaska.

The possibilities are endless. (more…)

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