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It’s been an interesting time of decline and I’m honestly enjoying it. I’m not talking about society, culture, or my business, but my artistic ambitions and connection with others. It all started when I read this phrase in a book by Eric Barker: “the right amount of weirdness.” I’m a weird person, I’ll admit it, but I’ve learned to hide it, so I could be accepted by as many people as possible. I’ve even shoved my weirdness aside when it demanded to be shared with others. What did I get for my conformity? Burnout and boredom with my creative pursuits. Fortunately, the way forward is clear to me: embrace the void so in obscurity my weirdness can thrive once again.
Six ways how you can use the void for your creative growth:
- Become a curator of your content, interests, and connections.
- Start with what matters to you.
- Own the right amount of weirdness for you.
- Worry less about what others want.
- Build relationships with people who dig your weird and you like their’s too.
- Take the pressure of monetary success off your creative dreams and let the void feed your long-term growth.
Quote from Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong by Eric Barker:
“Dean Keith Simonton says that when creative geniuses take personality tests, ‘their scores on the pathology scales fall in a middle range. Creators exhibit more psychopathology than average persons, but less than true psychotics. They seem to possess just the right amount of weirdness.’ Too often we label things ‘good’ or ‘bad’ when the right designation might merely be ‘different'” (p. 20).
Show Links
- Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
- SCREAM INTO THE VOID
- Wreck-It Ralph (2012)
- The Radiant Badass with Elizabeth Holmes
- Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong by Eric Barker
- Little Shop of Horrors (1986)
- Photo by Michael Constantin P. on Unsplash
