The 365: Let’s Commit Tiny Acts of Incremental Creativity Together
The Year of the Owl
Last year, I decided to draw an Owl every day for the entire year. Today, one year, one day, and well over 365 owls later, my little experiment has ended.
It was in 2019 that I started this odd experiment of drawing, “something” every day. The first year was rabbits and although I missed a few days, at the end of the year, I still had made hundreds of rabbit drawings and retired the rabbit as subject at the end of the year.
In 2020, I was much more diligent. On the rare day that I missed an owl, I always made it up. I also often drew bonus owls. My daily owls soon coalesced into a small cast of random owls, regularly appearing owls, and the most regular owl of all, called (rather unimaginatively) Owl.
As January 1 loomed ever-closer, I had to decide what to do about the owls? Should I retire the Owl?
The problem is that the Owl was no longer just mine. After I started sharing my owl drawings on social media, Owl developed a small but caring following of people who seemed invested in the kind and curious little Owl. Owl’s newfound friends seemed to want to know how Owl would navigate this new world in which we all found ourselves. Heck, I wanted to know too.
At some point, I was no longer drawing the Owls for just me and indeed I often felt like I was just carving out a space for the Owl to appear. The Owl also seemed to be able to generate hope and happiness in a world in need of it. It didn’t seem right to end the Owl’s story, when in many ways it seemed like it was just beginning. Besides, if I am going to do a book on the Owls (more info coming soon), it felt unkind to banish the Owl at the end of the year. It didn’t seem right to end it just because that is what I had done in the past.
What Next?
I didn’t want to let go of the Owls, yet it seemed odd to not do something new and creative at the start of the year. I didn’t want to lose sight of two of the major lessons I learned from a year of drawing owls. The first: the power of the tiniest of increments in generating a body creative work. In other words, set the bar low, and clear it often. Repetition begets evolution. Lesson two: the transformative power of sharing your work. I have never really shared my drawings before and I didn’t anticipate how having people engage with it would alter the process of creating it. I didn’t and don’t want that to stop, rather I wanted to build on it.
The 365?
Thus, I was casting about for what do to this year? I was initially going to commit to writing 365 words a day, which, at years end, would’ve resulted in an impressive 133,225 words — -an amount that sounded as exhausting as it did impressive. Yet, a mere two days into the new year, knowing how I write, and how slow and cumbersome a process that can be, I felt a bit daunted at the prospect. I didn’t want to feel daunted. I reconsidered the charge and instead aimed at the power of repetition and, at least the inward perception (however misguided), of manageability. How about committing tiny acts of incremental creativity, once-a-day for 365 days. Yes! That sounds great!
Yet, as I wrote this out, I keep scaling it back. My Creative Brain wants to throw a party. Meanwhile my Fear Brain is going, “Do you know how much that is going to cost!!!! We don’t have time to plan! What will people think! No one will come! and for the LOVE OF GAWD don’t tell anyone because if you screw it up, EVERYONE will know.” Fear Brain is yelly. Fear Brain also hired a corporate copy writer who replaced one-a-day with “attempt to consistently engage with creative acts.” Fear Brain is no fun at parties.
Fear Brain also also wants to be the project micro-manager and just wants me to save a copy of this here hunk of writing to my In Progress writing folder and leave it there, stuck in a folder labeled “in progress” but never being able to make any because the file is never opened or looked at again! Hah!
Maybe I should rename that folder.
Or maybe I just shouldn’t Fear Brain get its sticky neurons all over it. So rather than consigning the fate of this piece to be forever trapped in draft form (like some weird version of the Ghost of Christmas that Never Got to Go Anywhere because Charles Dickens let his fear brain run the show). Nope. Sorry Fear Brain, I’m putting it here. Merry Christmas. And I’m also going to commit to this in-front of all three of my readers. Take that!
In 2020, I pledge to commit 365: Tiny Acts of Incremental Creativity. Just in case you too would like to participate in the 365, I have included the pledge below.
- Create something every day/do something that supports the creative process/share previous work, or support the creativity of others,
- If you miss a day, make it up, or skip over it but don’t lose momentum,
- Have a bias towards sharing.
That’s it. Of course it is much easier to take a pledge than do the work, but to actually make progress, you have to start somewhere. When you can’t do everything, you do something. As the year progresses, I will report on the progress and if you want to join the effort, let me know.
