Creative Detours
I recently found myself delving into the JohnOfJordan archives for a video project. And the final project was seriously removed from my initial vision. I wanted to put together a package of emotional moments in my life (captured for the benefit of YouTube) and underscore it with an original composition. I started going through the webcam footage looking for a key piece for this project. There were literally hundreds of video files in this particular folder, all with incredibly useful filenames like Video 103. What this meant was I had to go through each and every file until I reached the ones I required.
So I was going through these videos, one by one down the list and I was struck by a couple of things. I was struck by how differently I made videos today than I did when I started two years ago. Obviously the humble webcam (as lovely as it is) had some technical limitations compared to more sophisticated camera technology, but there were lots of little things that I never used to consider – things that, today, I often get quite hung up on. Like what I’m wearing, the angle of the camera, white balance, lighting. I don’t even try to record video at night these days, back then I would just experiment with a single desk lamp and hope for the best. I tinkered with colour and brightness and contrast controls to give not the most accurate representation of the scene I was recording, but just the most interesting one. I would hit the switch and hope for the best. Obviously there were lots of takes that never saw the light of day. There were things I had never used and may never use. But as I watched these videos I wondered if my creativity had suffered a terrible blow as my production values had improved.
I’ve always struggled to find my place in the sun on YouTube. The rhetoric is always the same wherever you go; find one thing you do well, mine the hell out of it and do it on a regular enough basis that an audience knows what they are getting and knows when they can get their next ‘hit.’ The truth is I get distracted very easily. What amuses me one day might bore me the next. People dust off the same advice when it comes to finding a job or a career or “your life’s purpose” too. Intellectually I understand our economies are founded on the premise of specialization and that specialists are in greater demand, but, frankly, the idea of doing one thing for the rest of my (working) life terrifies me. So, actually, I just have this vague desire to do things that are personally satisfying, I want to be appreciated for what I do and (if it isn’t too much to ask) I would like to derive some income from it too.
One of the computer programming adages that is permanently etched into my brain is: Don’t reinvent the wheel. But, actually, when you have no idea what you’re doing it can be remarkably tempting. When you don’t know what you want to do with your life but just want to be appreciated and “successful” the desire to just emulate other people who are appreciated and successful is significant. (And when Tony Robbins tells you to go out and emulate the most successful people in your field it seems oddly compelling.) But, frankly, the world doesn’t need another Michael Buckley or another Robofillet or another Sam Proof. We already have those.
I was listening to a presentation that John Gruber and Merlin Mann made recently. (I really like Merlin Mann incidentally. It is easy to get caught up in the machinations of being productive for productivity’s sake. Mann’s focus is much more about devoting the time and resources to building something that really matters to you. That resonates with me.)
John Gruber:
Our instincts I think serve us wrong and we call it like a “Lizard brain” thing. Our instincts tell us if you want to write something – I mean, and that is part of these assumptions that we’re making, that if you want to write – and we say ‘write’ because that’s what we do. But it could be photography, it could be a series of just making a short film a week, any kind of thing. But I mean obviously the whole reason that you’re publishing it is you do want to find a readership [...] you want to find an audience. [...] The mismatch is that our instincts tell us that if we want to find an audience you should try to make something that is like the things people are already enjoying.
That makes sense. But what does a person do until they figure who they are and what it is they are supposed to be doing? And how does a person figure that out anyway? I feel like I’m tinkering with a lot of different things, experimenting, hoping that something will ‘stick.’ But I can just as easily see myself tinkering until the day I die and being one of those people who puts the trite cliched notion “Jack of all trades, master of none” on their Twitter biographies.
In a funny way I think I’ve come full circle. I feel like I finally understand what Todd Henry means when he talks about “unnecessary creating.” In my haste to create a workflow, I’ve created a series of paths of least resistance. Shortcuts. Tried and tested techniques that give me a predictable result. Somehow, somewhere I stopped being an artist and started working in a factory producing a product. Somehow the need to experiment got replaced by the need to meet a deadline. And the whole process became more and more about the product and the feedback; I’d produce something, wait anxiously for comments from people and let those comments dictate (to some extent) future creation.
And those webcam takes… those hundreds of random, silly, nonsensical, profound webcam takes. That is unnecessary creating. I realise now that even in my most popular vlogs it was the improvised moments, the moments where the words coming out of my mouth surprised even me, that really reasonated with people. I need to find a way to reconnect with that.
Oh! You think I’m successful? Like, Michael Buckly successful? That’s confusing but… thank you I suppose!