Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

by Austin Kleon

A few years ago, I’d wake up every morning, check the headlines on my phone, and feel as if the world had gotten dumber and meaner overnight.

I can relate!!

Everything got better for me when I made peace with the fact that it might not ever get easier. The world is crazy. Creative work is hard. Life is short and art is long.

“What would you do if you were stuck in one place, and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?”

I'm currently feeling like this and I kind of giving up to the stagnant process and didn't do aything to change it

No matter how successful you get, no matter what level of achievement you reach, you will never really “arrive.” Other than death, there is no finish line or retirement for the creative person.

The truly prolific artists I know always have that question answered, because they have figured out a daily practice—a repeatable way of working that insulates them from success, failure, and the chaos of the outside world.

We have so little control over our lives. The only thing we can really control is what we spend our days on. What we work on and how hard we work on it. It might seem like a stretch, but I really think the best thing you can do if you want to make art is to pretend you’re starring in your own remake of Groundhog Day: Yesterday’s over, tomorrow may never come, there’s just today and what you can do with it.

“Any man can fight the battles of just one day,”

It is not the experience of today that drives men mad. It is remorse or bitterness for something which happened yesterday or the dread of what tomorrow may bring. Let us therefore do our best to live but one day at a time.”

THIS!!!!

When you have all the time in the world, a routine helps you make sure you don’t waste it.

a routine gives you freedom by protecting you from the ups and downs of life and helping you take advantage of your limited time, energy, and talent. A routine establishes good habits that can lead to your best work.

What your daily routine consists of is not that important. What’s important is that the routine exists.

I like to look back at the end of each year and see where I’ve been, so I’ll make a “Top 100” list of favorite trips, life events, books, records, movies, etc.

Interestingggg

Not every day is going to turn out the way we want it to.

The important thing is to make it to the end of the day, no matter what. No matter how bad it gets, see it through to the end so you can get to tomorrow.

Some days you just have to get rid of as best as you can.

When you reach for your phone or your laptop upon waking, you’re immediately inviting anxiety and chaos into your life.

Saying “no” to the world can be really hard, but sometimes it’s the only way to say “yes” to your art and your sanity.

“You have to have done something before you can be said to have done something. The title of artist or architect or musician needs to somehow be earned.” —Dave Hickey

Lots of people want to be the noun without doing the verb. They want the job title without the work.

Let go of the thing that you’re trying to be (the noun), and focus on the actual work you n...

The great artists are able to retain this sense of playfulness throughout their careers. Art and the artist both suffer most when the artist gets too heavy, too focused on results.

Nothing makes play more fun than some new toys. Seek out unfamiliar tools and materials. Find something new to fiddle with.

We’re now trained to heap praise on our loved ones by using market terminology.

We used to have hobbies; now we have “side hustles.”

the free-time activities that used to soothe us and take our minds off work and add meaning to our lives are now presented to us as potential income streams, or ways out of having a traditional job.

One of the easiest ways to hate something you love is to turn it into your job: taking the thing that keeps you alive spiritually and turning it into the thing that keeps you alive literally.

But why would I bother working at something I don't love?

You must be mindful of what potential impact monetizing your passions could have on your life.

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” —William Bruce Cameron

You do not need to have an extraordinary life to make extraordinary work. Everything you need to make extraordinary art can be found in your everyday life.

When you have a system for going back through your work, you can better see the bigger picture of what you’ve been up to, and what you should do next.

If you want to change your life, change what you pay attention to.

“Attention is the most basic form of love,” wrote John Tarrant. When you pay attention to your life, it not only provides you with the material for your art, it also helps you fall in love with your life.

I think this is the first step to learn to be grateful for things we have in our life. When we start acknowledging those things by paying attention to them, we can see their values in our life and be thankful for it.

Quite simply: Art is supposed to make our lives better.

Art is for life, not the other way around.

Uncertainty is the very thing that art thrives on.

Because by not knowing, artist are able to explore more things and create more art

But hope is not about knowing how things will turn out—it is moving forward in the face of uncertainty. It’s a way of dealing with uncertainty.

To have hope, you must acknowledge that you don’t know everything and you don’t know what’s going to happen. That’s the only way to keep going and the only way to keep making art: to be open to possibility and allow yourself to be changed.

I think this is why we have to keep the "not knowing" attitude. That there's bliss in not knowing. We don't have expectations

“Thinking is necessarily, thoroughly, and wonderfully social. Everything you think is a response to what someone else has thought and said.”

The trouble is that we’re increasingly becoming a culture that is clustering into like-minded communities and networks.

Interacting with people who don’t share our perspective forces us to rethink our ideas, strengthen our ideas, or trade our ideas for better ones. When you’re only interacting with like-minded people all the time, there’s less and less opportunity to be changed.

Mungkin karna ini aku sama titus cocok (?) because we are not very similar in terms of taste, even in our way of thinking

These are people who are “temperamentally disposed to openness and have habits of listening.” People who are generous, kind, caring, and thoughtful. People who, when you say something, “think about it, rather than just simply react.” People you feel good around.

Like-hearted people

If you’re having trouble finding people to think with, seek out the dead. They have a lot to say and they are excellent listeners.

It is an interesting point

If you want a quick way to escape the noise of contemporary life, break out of your like-minded bubble, and do some good thinking, just visit the past for a bit.

“I can never find what I want, but the benefit is that I always find something else.” —Irvine Welsh

The reason I tidy is not really to clean, but to come into contact with something I’ve forgotten which I can now use.

Hahaha I can relate to this

Things are already a mess out there. We’ve made enough of a mark on this planet. What we need are fewer vandals and more cleanup crews. We need art that tidies. Art that mends. Art that repairs.