Aug 12 - The Importance Of Constant Creation
By Stefano Blanca Sciacaluga
It's Sunday evening, seven pm, and I have the Sunday blues. I just don't feel like I am rested after the weekends, it's realistically speaking the only time of the week I have to re-gain hours of sleep, relax and switch off, but for some reason I never manage to completely switch off. Even when I think I have, my phone reminders will go off with something or other and I am back in the game. I wouldn't say I'm a workaholic because I don't really think I am but I do find that I spend more hours working or thinking about work than I do relaxing, I constantly have something brewing in the back of my mind.
I clearly remember a time, not so long ago, where it was the other way round: the smallest portion of my time was dedicated to work and the rest the time was just mucking about on the Internet or just plain wasted; and the little time dedicated to work I had as much energy as a sloth. But all that changed, I'm not entirely sure when or why but now a number of years down the line I find myself constantly busy from first thing in the morning to just before getting into bed. When it's not my actual work, my 9-to-5, it's my photos, or some design work, or personal projects, or writing. I go to bed tired and wake up even more tired after a usual five or six hour sleep.
I know, too little, I really should be sleeping more but I find that with everything that I have to do I just don't have enough hours in the day, sometimes an extra three or four hours of work would be perfect but imagine having to go to the office on two hours of sleep. The best thing of all is that although I might complain I really love it, I cannot get enough of being constantly creative, always having new ideas for things and noting them down on my phone, even if (like many reminders and notes on there) they never develop further. But it's good, it means I end up with a backlog of ideas that I can come back to at any time, in a different frame of mind and work on. Just now I'm firing up Photoshop to develop an idea I made note of more than a month and a half ago and have put the reminder forward every week since; and a couple of months ago I sat through a whole flight jotting down and sketching ideas for projects that I realistically don't have time for right now.
Really the only downside to this attitude I've developed, as a mildly anti-social person, is the fact that everybody wants to ask me about something I've done, or ask for advice, or for favours or just wants to chat, which is fine in certain situations but doesn't work very well when I'm trying to navigate the masses of tourists during my lunch break during the week, or when I'm just trying to switch off on a Friday night but somebody insists on tell me about their obsolete idea for a project, product or a business. It's not that I don't appreciate people approaching me, because I love it, it's just figuring out the right time, so I can dedicate the necessary attention and time that is needed.
Having said that, the downsides are really outweighed by the positives to be taken from an attitude of constant creation. Do you know how great it is to be constantly active creatively? It's extremely great to be constantly creative; it's given me the chance to work with great people, form friendships, prosper in my job, get invited to take part in events, learn new skills, master old ones and after everything have what I think is a decent portfolio to show for it. There's nothing I won't try, I've done design for events, websites, clothes, taken photos for all sorts of things and of all sorts of things, played music with a lot of different people and in a lot of different places and styles and I keep getting things thrown at me that I just don't have the time to do. It's crazy, and weird, and tiring, and inspiring and when I get into bed at the end of the day I let out a little grunt of satisfaction.
Of course, the best thing to take from it all is not having a chance to be bored. If you keep it up, if you constantly create, it's extremely rare that you'll have time to get bored, and nobody likes to be bored. Like on weekends, if I feel like going outside I know I can go for a walk and take notes of things I see that I can work with, or take photos; and if I feel like staying indoors I can spend my much-deserved downtime to soak up anything I see online or in books and magazines.
I would love to be able to do everything I do and need to do, and still have four or five hours a day to do nothing and browse YouTube, and get eight solid hours or more at night, and watch a whole hour-long episode of a show without struggling to stay awake halfway through, or even more than one episode because there are so many TV shows to watch, or read a book; but there just aren't enough hours in a day. If you've ever thought twenty four hours is a long time you really don't have a clue. And given the option of living like this, like I do now, or having all the free time I could have but spending eight hours at work, probably still in my previous job, and then the rest of the time at home scrolling through Facebook waiting for new content to pop up, completely uninspired and with nothing interesting to show for all my free time, I think I'd rather not have the time. I'll keep my tight schedule, my sleepless nights, and backache just to honour the importance of constant creation.
Stefano Blanca is a writer, artist, photographer and musician living and working in Gibraltar
Email me at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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