Reinvention or ADD?

The Creative Rebellion • Dispatch #009 • 6 min read

I've got creative ADD.

Its symptoms are similar to how most people would describe classic ADD but on a longer timeframe.

I don't have trouble focusing on a single task, organizing, planning, or even executing on projects and tasks. But I do get bored after awhile. And I'm back and forth on whether it's a good thing or a bad thing.

See, all the hustle bros and solopreneurs will tell you that the key to being successful online is to choose a niche (and choose it wisely!). Narrow your focus and go deep. Become the expert in your niche. Oh, and choose something you love and could talk about for 30+ minutes without notice. Because you'll be talking about it a lot as you build your platform/audience/community.

Niche, niche, niche.

I've either got too many niches or too broad a niche. Creativity is not a niche. But I love a million things about it and under its umbrella.

Paintings, movies, design, books, music, problem-solving, poetry, theatre, screenwriting, illustrations, video games, etc.

So I either have to go "too broad" or I have to reinvent myself when I get board of my current niche.

When the going gets boring, the bored get going

Surely I'm not the only creative out there who feels a constant pull towards a new adventure.

I started as many kids do, with crayons, a pencil, LEGO ​bricks​...

I stuck with the pencil and drawing became my hobby. I got pretty good at it.

Over the years I've picked up musical instruments from the recorder (Hot Cross Buns, anyone?) to the guitar, dabbled with the drums and keyboard. I even bought a violin off of eBay once! The only one I could pick up and not embarrass myself with today is the acoustic guitar. Most songs only need 3 or 4 chords anyway. ;)

I've painted, used chalks, stippled with pens and markers, and jumped at the chance to draw with a Wacom tablet in Photoshop when they came out, and then the Apple Pencil on an iPad Pro. I've participated in Inktober and various other illustration challenges.

I have photos of me as a kid holding old 35mm film cameras of my dad's. I saw him taking photos so I wanted to take photos, too. I bought a digital Sony in the early 2000's and started wedding photography as a side hustle. Then I bought a mid-range Nikon DSLR, then a semi-pro Nikon. Weddings and engagements, senior portraits, and family photos kept my wife and me busy for a few years.

Before I could drive, I started interning at a small radio station that I got to tour on a field trip. I ended up working there for years! It was my first real job and further kindled my love for music. (They still call me Intern Boy).

That led to me ditching my plan of getting a degree in graphic design. Instead, I moved to Florida to attend Full Sail University for Audio Engineering. (I never got great at playing any instruments, but I was really good at making musicians and singers sound their best). That led to interning at a recording studio in Nashville right after I graduated, and a lot of mixing for live bands over the years.

I've worked a lot of non-creative day jobs over the years, but always kept some kind of creative hustle on the side. Sometimes for money, sometimes for enjoyment.

After moving to Memphis in 2014, I ended up working in the Creative Department for a large church. I did everything from communications, design, social media, planning services, mixing sound, editing video, to leading the whole team as the Creative Director. After many years, that was my first full-time creative job. While I was there, I wrote video scripts, devotions, book content, social posts, and more and it rekindled a love for the written word. (I'd also been working on a few story ideas, blogs, etc. over the years).

Jump from working for the church to working in marketing as a content marketer. Now I do a lot of writing.

And I'm still hustling on the side. From writing a book to writing this newsletter. From graphic design to creating images with AI in Midjourney. Sometimes I get too many irons in the fire and have to press pause on one or two projects, but it's hard to pick just one thing!

And once I've set something down for awhile, I get the itch to pick it back up. Don't tell my wife, but I might have been researching the latest mirrorless digital cameras...

The point is, creativity is a journey.

Maybe it's a straight path for some of you. You have a great talent, a passion and drive for it, and it is your singular focus. You go from point A to point B. A simple journey.

For others, maybe you're like me, and you've been all over the place, dabbling in different creative fields. You go from point A to point B to point E, back to point D, jump to point M, and who knows where else.

I say, keep dabbling. Get your hands dirty. Try something new. Push yourself to learn, to grow.

Make the journey interesting.

Because here's the amazing thing that happens when you combine the various creative disciplines you've played with:

They start to influence and build off each other.

My interest in music influences my writing and drawing. My drawing and love for illustration influences my design style. Photography influences illustration and design and vice versa.

If nothing else, when you find something that's hard to master, it gives you an appreciation for those who have devoted their time and effort to mastering it.

We are all given creative gifts. Things that come easier to us than others. We get a head start on the road to mastery, but it still takes practice (lots of practice) to get really good. But I firmly believe that we all have the potential to get good at something, and often times more than one thing.

If you've tried something "creative" and declared that you are, in fact, not a creative... try again. Try something else. Give it some time. All that really matters is whether or not you enjoy it.

There are enough different creative pursuits to fill a lifetime and then some. The ones you don't enjoy? Marie Kondo those suckers and try something else.

What's your creative journey look like?

• Stuck with one thing

• Tried it all and I'm back for more

• I'm not creative (you need to start something today)

Reply and let me know what your creative interests are, or why you gave up on them.

Until next Saturday...

Stay rebellious,

Travis

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The world is not in your books and maps. It's out there.

The Creative Rebellion • Dispatch #008 • 5 min read

When's the last time you went outside for no other reason than to be outside?

No phone, no book, no planned activity. Just you, taking in nature, studying the twisting, reaching branches of trees, feeling the wind against your face, listening to the birds twitter and sing, watching the squirrels leap about, closing your eyes and lifting your head to the sun the feel its warmth...

If you can't remember the last time you did that, do it now. Quit reading this and go.

You have my permission.

I'll wait.

...

If you read ​last week's dispatch​, you know the special place The Lord of the Rings holds in my heart. There's a line from the movie, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, that isn't in any of the books. (If you've spent any time on TikTok or Instagram Reels, you've probably heard it).

Gandalf says to Bilbo:

The world is not in your books and maps. It's out there.

I love that line, but I also have a problem with it.

First, the reason I have a problem with it:

I believe worlds can be created within books. Within movies. Within songs. Within poetry. Art is a creative medium and its canvas is the human imagination. If we cannot imagine something that we've never seen, then where do new things come from?

Worlds can exist within books and maps.

Just look at Middle Earth itself! Tolkien created an entire world, full of history and language, myth and magic, mountains and Shire, hobbits and elves and dwarves and talking trees. In a way, the line seems to contradict the very thing Tolkien created. But before I get too worked up....

That brings us to why I also love the line:

I love it because I understand the need to get out into the real world.

You could say the line from the movie is an adaptation and/or conglomeration of several different passages from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. In fact, there is a passage in The Hobbit that could be summarized with that line of dialogue from Gandalf to Bilbo.

And it's hard to convey internal struggle in a movie, so I get why the writers, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, chose to dramatize this internal scene of Bilbo's as a dialogue:

As [the dwarves] sang the hobbit felt the love of beautiful things made by hands and by cunning and by magic moving through him, a fierce and a jealous love, the desire of the hearts of dwarves. Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick. He looked out of the window. The stars were out in a dark sky above the trees. He thought of the jewels of the dwarves shining in dark caverns. Suddenly in the wood beyond The Water a flame leapt up—probably somebody lighting a wood-fire—and he thought of plundering dragons settling on his quiet Hill and kindling it all to flames. He shuddered; and very quickly he was plain Mr. Baggins of Bag-End, Under-Hill, again.

Here's what I think Tolkien might have been aiming to convey:

Books and maps tell about the world. They can imagine the world beyond our door (or one that does not exist), yet they are still but a shadow of the real thing.

And I think we forget how much we need the real thing.

We have more than books and maps today. We have 4K HD TVs, WiFi, VR, and smartphones. We can travel to distant places, living vicariously through someone else's travel vlog, all from the air conditioned comfort of our own couch.

[Scroll]

Italy

[Scroll]

France

[Scroll]

New Zealand

[Scroll]

Dubai

We live in our houses, in our cars, in our offices, in our own heads. All the while, the world awaits us outside.

Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains,

Books and maps and Instagram Reels should awaken in us a desire to go out. To be discontent with the experiences of others. To put down our phones and take in the things that have existed far longer than any of us. Great mountains. Vast oceans. Giant trees. Fields and clouds and flowers and animals.

Because once we're out there, nature will awaken something within us.

Living inside, we've fallen asleep.

Yet we can't sleep, we can't create, we can't think.

We're stressed and anxious and depressed.

And the endless scroll of social media or infinite streaming options won't fix it.

I realize this is a newsletter about creativity, but we're whole people, and when one facet of the body is sick, the whole body is sick.

Are you creatively stuck?

It might have nothing to do with what you're doing creatively and more to do with your physical environment.

Maybe you need to...

hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves,

If I stay indoors too long my creativity gets stifled. Just going into the backyard inspires me.

When I get my hands in the dirt, I feel centered and grounded.

I’m not a gardener, but I get the sense that if all I had to do is care for plants and till soil, I could be content.

and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick.

The world awaits. Adventure is calling to you. But you have to go after it. You have to quit looking out the window, load your pack, grab your sword, and go out the door. It's your choice.

and he thought of plundering dragons settling on his quiet Hill and kindling it all to flames.

You can choose to stay inside. Look away from the window and pick your phone back up. Allow images of mountains to substitute for real mountains.

He shuddered; and very quickly he was plain Mr. Baggins of Bag-End, Under-Hill, again.

Will you choose comfort and stay in, or will you step out and find you've reawakened something inside?

Resistance would prefer you just keep scrolling.

Until next Saturday...

Stay rebellious,

Travis

P.S. If you found this helpful, please share it with a friend.

P.P.S. Subscribe to The Creative Rebellion to be sure you never miss a post! Dispatches will arrive in your inbox every Saturday morning.