I am not an organized person by nature. Over Christmas my sister teases me about my messy room growing up, I am constantly looking for the specific think I left in the the specific pile I created. If I happen to leave my phone outside of my various zones or paths of routine its gone. My object permanence isn’t great and generally if I don’t find it absolutely stunning amazing interesting not only do I not care about it but it just ceases to exists in my minds eye.
The trope and archetype of artist as chaos freak has made me feel like the concept for organization is antithetical to my creative process. But, I have to be chaos demon, I am an artist! I’ve learned in my own systemized strategized way of creation that organization is not a binary. Clean vs Dirty. Tidy vs Messy. For me to create I must create the conditions of artist, writer, idea person. A forecast of conditions to create (noise cancelling headphones, at least an hour and a half of uninterrupted time, morning pages completed a walk and at least three beverages, naturally). A creative process is something that can be recreated again and again, a dance to get to a certain destination.
Ideas are placed in the various locations (notes apps, sticky notes etc) to be gathered sorted simmered and brewed. Systems created. Strategies emerge. All metaverses of ideas and concepts explored moment to moment.
A container for each idea.
I don’t write because I am a writer. I write because the idea came to me as a poem, as an essay, a substack post. Ideas came to because I waited by the water long enough, I walked and ran and talked and lived and experimented and kept walking along the trail. But its what we do with the ideas that matters. The collection, curation and sorting.
Each idea seed placed into its own container, nurtured based on its own needs and conditions. An opportunity to nuruture and generously ask each idea what it needs to thrive.
The tidy vs messy binary gets muddy the more multi-hyphenate we add on. I ask myself constantly how many containers is too many containers. Of instagram, substack, poem, essay, literary journal, painting, book, media company, client project, newsletter. What goes where how and when? The skill of practise and learning and listening really close to what an idea whats to be.
Some days I ask for consistency. To know and trust that all ideas are poems, to be a poet in the singular. How romantic? A lifetime of being told I am “too much” rings in my ears each time I open another container to place my ideas into the soil. Its become an act of trusting my own inner knowing and conduit to creativity that knows each idea seed grows roots along side its neighbour. The connected root tissues beneath the forrest floor growing and communicating with each other. And while a system and strategy helps me nurture the seed of an idea into a thing, I know they have much more in common with eachother than I think.
The only constant in my life is inconsistency. The sporadic nature of idea gardener tending to their plants, hands in soil. Trusting. Trees cannot grow in the forest alone, they must share resources across the forest floor. Netowrks and root systems of knowledge, wanrings, water supplies and nutirents. We cannot create in isolation, but we can grow, together
How generous of us to plant the idea seed. How beautiful it is to nurture. How kind to have a container for our ideas.
FINDINGS
I found the
Pod this week, binged 99% of it and OH MY GOD ITS SO NICE TO INDULGE IN MY AUTISM AS SPECIAL INTEREST WITHOUT FEELING PATHOLOGIZED. IYKYK. If you love someone with autism I recommend learning about us 🥰We had sweet
on the pod last week (episode still TBA) but I love this internet joke of Bonnie and I being cousins so everyone go check out my cousins latest poem 💖 a family of writers!I am teaching inside the Do You Ever academy next month! HOW TO MAKE MEDIA A day to develop, design, produce, and promote your next [INSERT BIG IDEA*]
RESCHEDULED BECAUSE Y'ALL GIRL IS A SPOOINE 🥄 This Sunday! inside the Creators Dispatch Open Studio! HOW TO BE A MULTI HYPHENATE! (obvi!! 💁🏻♀️)We’re bringing all parts of ourselves to the table and laying them all out on the floor and getting good at talking about all parts of us. We’ll be practising sorting our idea into containters and finding the common link and intersections (mycilluim if you will!) between them
Workshops are for paid subscribers of the Creators Dispatch! Monthly subscribers get access to locked essays, and monthly community events. To join our community for $15 CAD/ month + get access to workshop recordings in podcast form, archive of paid essays + past episode of the Creators Dispatch podcast
I love you all, and your ideas! ✨
xx
Phoebe 💕
*typos are left to reflect the fury passion and 3D humaness of being a passionate freak in the world – and you know not a robot *beep boop* I am just a human girlie living on earth with a mortal brain 🤸♀️(and also like, don’t be an ableist freak🥰)
Thanks for reading the Creators Dispatch. A weekly essay about the creative journey! Here I write about being an artist, human, angry woman on the internet and living in the dumpster fire of a world that says not to make your art. If what I say here inspires you (or pisses you off 🥰) share my work with the group chat, or your best friends neighbour. Word of mouth is the most special and radical way of sharing – plus it helps put the Zuck 🏄♂️ out of business 👼