Guilty admissions
In a Lenswork podcast, The Power of Deadlines, Brooks Jensen admits that though he knows that deadlines are helpful, he hasn’t figured out how to apply them to his creative work. Inspired by this, I thought it’d be an interesting exercise to make a list of all those little guilty admissions that affect my creative work.
- I need deadlines to get work done.
- I am better at doing work for other people than for myself.
- External deadlines are better than internal deadlines.
- I am interested in far too many fields to ever master in one lifetime. Maybe even 10 lifetimes.
- I am learning to merely appreciate art that moves me without feeling the need to emulate it.
- There is more non-creative work than I could ever possibly finish. I will never “catch up”.
- In music, I’m equally interested in the technical / gear aspects of making music as I am in music.
- In photography, film, and writing, I’m more interested in the content than the gear.
- I am a nerd and love gear. Especially if it has lights that blink. Especially blue ones.
- I can spend days writing scripts, building machines, designing technical things because it’s easy for me.
- Computers bore me after a while.
- Copyright issues, foreign policy, and domestic issues really get under my skin.
- I want to make the world a better place - really.
- I love people but am also afraid to trust them.
- I get overstressed more easily than I used to.
- I love story craft passionately.
- I love animation and have always wanted to make animated movies.
- I never learned to draw.
- I am really, really good at organizing people, but I hate doing it.
- I’m better at understanding other people than understanding myself.
- I find it easier to riff on someone else’s idea than to create an original one.
- I love coming up with original ideas.
- I prefer to work by myself.
- I am most creative when I am bouncing ideas off another person.
- I’m really good at seeing patterns in things.
- I love finding patterns in things, especially if they’re hidden, or abstract.
- I photograph people because I love vicariously feeling people’s emotions, feeling connected to them.
- I love solving problems.
- I love making things.
- I am a supremely talented procrastinator.
- I am immensely satisfied when something I do moves someone emotionally.
- I want an audience but not a spotlight.
- I’d rather whisper in the audience’s ear than be on the stage.
- I like editing work in any medium.
- I’m very goal oriented.
- I like figuring something out more than building it.
- I’m a little bit lazy.
- Ok, maybe more than a little bit.
