Creativity

Photo montage includes a photo by Cliff Johnson on Unsplash

Here's the thing disco kids, you aren't what you think you are and, more importantly, you may be what you think you aren't. I was convinced for a good three weeks once that I was a cicada but turned out I was a philosopher having a dream I was a cricket, so not even delusional in the correct frickin' language.

In other, more relevant news, I've written novels, although I'm not actually a novelist and blogged although I am not a blogger. I am, however, a "creative", and because I spend a lot of time in front of the keyboard I got the impression I was some kind of writer.

I did go to acting college and I learned to act but realised that I liked the idea of regular Monday to Friday 9 to 5 work, so I didn't pursue it further. I still hear interviews with actors talking about the jewellery they keep close to remind them of the family that their career is deemed more important than and don't regret the call I made.

Then, for a while, I hit my stride with a podcast I put together with some long-time co-conspirators. Check it out, although I can't tell you where in our archive to begin because I haven't yet put my finger on where the quality bar hit "peak" so you'll just have to peruse for yourselves.

The really important thing is that nowhere, in any of this, did I particularly consider myself a Discordian. If you're creative then unacknowledged Discordianism is only holding you back. As recorded elsewhere I had cause to reconsider my relationship with all things Erisian round about the end of summer.

Once you start to engage with your own spiritual engine things go a bit nutty. Since September I have published an epic tome about alchemy, Vodun and Celtic bugaboos, and re-invigorated my love of audio recording projects. This ongoing process has generally instigated a new lease of creative life.

Of course, that could have happened without a newfound respect for ultimate chaos, but... you know... that's kind of the point of ultimate chaos. I could bore you with a rundown of weird little quirks of coinkydink that prompted this repointing and repurposing but these are my omens, not yours, all can be rationally explained away easily enough. They have meaning because they meant something to me. So they aren't really for sharing.

If you are creative and think you are not Discordian I would submit that you are probably wrong about that. Ultimate chaos is the wellspring of magical creativity. It's probably the wellspring of a lot else, but I am creative so that is how it works for me.

Don't fall into the trap of thinking that chaos gives a gift intended to make you wealthy. Chaos understands that wealth is a system that is anti-chaos and will only be issued to those who will burn it on a remote Scottish island in tribute to chaos itself. The gift is the gift and I would far rather be fecund than loaded, loaded would be nice but to be barren of fresh ideas is beneath dead to me.

Chaos does for me. It did for me when I didn't embrace it consciously but it performs better, in my opinion, now that I do. I don't know what will happen next with any great certainty but I do know that I have read the stars in the sky from the deck of my sloop and set a heading for peculiar waters. Whatever happens amongst those isles unseen may throw up a lot of experiences, but the experience of being bored won't be one of them.

Sri Syadasti,

The Monkey

Unpicking the Evil Genius

It's been one week since I threw back the curtain, ripped off the rubber mask, threw the switch on my creation and identified myself as an Evil Genius. Let me tell you it's not as awesome as it sounds. Last time we discussed the Evil Genius as being the opposite side of the coin to the Impostor. An idea I still think has much weight. It's a polarity, at one end you feel like people are expecting too much of you because of past successes, at the other you feel people expect way too little of you because you haven't really enjoyed much success.

Logically there's going to be a sweet spot in between the two, enough success to feel validated, not so much to feel pressured. Honestly, though, who cares about those guys: sickening perfectly happy weirdos, I bet their home life sucks.

Oh, yes, extremely important while we're on recap. This genius/impostor scale relates to work, or work-type activity. It's not about whether you have loved well, or whether you have succeeded in almost any other way. This is about anything that gets you money with which to buy things.

Last time we looked at "impostors", successful people who cannot shrug a nagging doubt that all of their success is based on some kind of cosmic clerical error. At any moment, they feel, the mistake will be spotted and they will be ushered back down the hall to sit with all the other ordinaries.

Well, screw those guys too. At least they can cry over their stuffed bank accounts. Plus their neurosis is flavour of the month in pop-psychology, so there's tons written about them.

Not so for we, the evil geniuses. It doesn't help, definitely, that the name for our syndrome includes the word "evil" in it. I'm sure that doesn't test well. But hell the other one is literally the word "impostor" which is kind of evil. At least in this corner we have the word "genius" pulling us back up.

We also have a branding issue when it comes to the fact that there is a well known video game called Evil Genius. That makes for domination of the first couple of pages of Google results. In the end all I could dig up for this week is this article about creative people finding it easier to rationalise deceptions.

Which is not what we're about at all.

Hey, just because we're evil geniuses doesn't mean that we're evil, right? Or geniuses for that matter.

All we are is people who feel that life has dealt us a consistently poor hand and presented us with relatively few opportunities to realise our full potential.

Now, as it happens although I'm making with all this "we" and "our" stuff I am really, at this stage, just talking about me. The reason being that I haven't exactly been deluged by people identifying with this Evil Genius idea. Maybe I haven't reached the right people, I refuse to believe that there aren't more Geniuses out there struggling to put their finger on what's wrong.

I'll tell you all what's wrong (this week) we don't have no frickin' list*. If you recall last time I stepped through a list designed to help identify those Impostor people, I recall item 9, I mean item goddamn nine, was "you are really successful in your field". Had they lead with that the test would be a lot shorter because, you know what, most people really aren't.

Let's flip the switch here because just writing the opposite of the other list isn't maybe enough to form a good basis for the feelings of evil genius-ness. Nevertheless item one has to be:

1. You don't feel you've been quite as successful in your career as, perhaps, you should have been.

Nodding your head, then it's time to read on:

2. You have come to realise, at least once, that your superiors at work are less suited for their job than you are.
3. You are often surprised when people are shocked by work-related news that you figured everyone just knew already.
4. You feel like you may have missed out on opportunities because you overrated the abilities of those surrounding you, only realising you should have stepped up way after it was too late to do anything.
5. You figure nobody likes a smart person so you try to keep your head down and integrate well as a team player, this often leads to you being thoroughly shafted.
6. You stop at your limits while others attempt foolish things way beyond theirs and appear, magically, to fail upwards.
7. You trust people too much and believe that they will do things that seem obvious to you, later you find they were ONLY obvious to you and disaster befalls.
8. You are pretty keyed in to both your failures and your achievements and see them as, at least, balancing out. You would identify with the statement "I've succeeded more often than I've failed, but occasionally I failed big."
9. You have big ideas all the time, you often label them as "pipe dreams", at least one of these ideas has made someone else very famous.
10. You have been known to be somewhat ego-centric, you didn't like it as a quality so you are fiercely on guard against egocentric traits.

This seems reasonable as a first draft. If some or all of it applies to you then feel free to drop me a line. It would be good to know that I am not all alone in this condition. Maybe if the Evil Geniuses of the world were to help each other out a bit then some good would come of it... which I guess might lead to:

11. You're not really a joiner and tend to be cynical of "success guru" material.

That last bonus point just means you have a brain, and, hell, how could that not be the case my evil comrade. Next Time: Evil laughter and mountain bases, the echoing mirth of loneliness.

* Well, we have this list but that's not what I really meant.

Apparently My Lance Is Free

Well, sort of.

It has to be said that I have not been busier than I have been in the last couple of weeks for a long while. The up side of this is that I am feeling really positive about the work that I am doing. The down side is that no one is, as yet, paying me for my work. But then it has only been about a week that I've engaged in such activity so early days yet.

I guess this does leave me with something of a quandary. I will need some income eventually, after all. The thing is I am finding that I have more energy and do more useful work when I'm not actually, you know, going to work.

I'm finding the removal of the salary safety net has had, paradoxically, the opposite effect than one would expect on my mood and outlook. I just hope that someone would like to retain my services before I have to return to the haven of being someone else's employee.

The other thing that's been really good is that I have met lots of other self-employed people who do a staggering number of different things and meeting these people is far more interesting than going into a work place and meeting people who are employed by the same employer as you. People, on the whole, are usually interesting for one reason or another, but people who are pulling their own weight and going their own way in life are just more interesting in and of themselves, or maybe it's just novelty.

Before I go I should draw your attention to the new link on the top right to my new freelance services page. I hope to expand this with case studies and examples shortly but it is there and available, that is the main thing.

(By the way, hope everyone is getting along with the new look. Let me know.)

Podcast Archive: Creativity and Patrick Swayze

Episode 60 - Creativity

The Irony meter's little red needle was twitching healthily this week. Bereft of a topic idea we duly broke the glass on the "Emergency Podcast Filler" and out topped 9 minutes of audio cut from Episode 44 along with a note from us in the past saying: "These spoken words have been cut for time and relevance from it's show of origin but that discussion was lively and if at any time in the future we should be at a lose end we should 'PLAY IT' and discuss."

Much to the Irony meter's excitement the offered subject gifted to us to cover our lack of ideas was 'Creativity'. Leo is a writer, we know this from his never ending ambition nay compulsion to perform this task over and over again and his drive to be better at it. Justin is an Artist, a real one who actually illustrates for a living and has done so for companies you've actual heard of. Also Ian who ... erm ... Well ... he can use a word document and doodles on the back of what he prints out.

Regardless we do in fact have a small pool of genuinely creative people who love talking about themselves. So come join us as me muse on being all creative and how it might, maybe, one day, if you're both good and lucky ... turn a small profit.
Incidental music by Kevin Macleod of incompetech.com



Direct Link: https://archive.org/download/060Creativity/060%20-%20Creativity.mp3

Episode 61 - The Ultimate Patrick Swayze Retrospective

In some ways it might seem like Patrick Swayze couldn't get a break. He was a versatile actor with a varied CV who never seemed to impinge upon the public consciousness beyond his turns in Dirty Dancing and Ghost. Although, when prompted many people also remember him for Red Dawn, Road House, Point Break and his seemingly idiosyncratic moment in Donnie Darko. But there was so much more to Mr. Swayze than this and the 80s kids are here to tell you all about those Swayze gems you may have missed.

As it happens they have missed many of them too. Justin, at one point, admits to having been puzzled that we should wish to take this extended look at the career of one of Hollywood's B-List actors. Well, much apart from the fact that "the Swayz" was an 80s icon, and we are the 80s Kids the career of the only man who could lend much in the way of credibility to a mullet is a far more textured and interesting thing than many of his contemporaries.

Maybe you weren't a member of the fan club before but by the end of this show we'll guarantee that you won't ever want to leave Patrick in the corner again.

Incidental music by Kevin Macleod of incompetech.com



Direct Link: https://archive.org/download/061TheUltimatePatrickSwayzeRetrospective/061-The-Ultimate-Patrick-Swayze-Retrospective.mp3