Creativity, Planning and Goal Setting — Does it Work?
I've been sitting here thinking about whether or not I should start making some plans for 2024. Setting some goals and all that stuff.
Which makes me consider the broader question of whether "planning" for art is really something that you can do... given that the creative process kind of flows randomly,and typically does so at its own pace.
Of course there are many who insist that creativity is like pretty much anything else you undertake in life: practice makes perfect, and you have to treat these things as a practice, which means you get up and work on them every day whether you want to or not, just like you would if you were training for a marathon or something.
But whereas I take my art seriously enough to regularly make efforts to sell some, and I go to shows to put the work in front of people, at the same time I also want it to continue to be fun.
In the past I have often sat down and tried to schedule myself to do things related to social media, and to keep it up with this blog, even... and it hasn't been particularly successful because I don't like feeling the pressure of it. It suddenly seems tedious, rather than enjoyable.
As such, I have found that a better approach for me — when it comes to art — is to simply sit down and build a list of things that I would "like to see happen" in the year ahead. That's not exactly setting goals, it's more like a kind of very soft planning.
The point here, is that there definitely are things I would like to accomplish in the coming year and I do have a whole list of potential design experiments that I would like to find time to work with and I keep forgetting about them because I have previously avoided making some sort of plan to deal with them.
Of course, much of the time I end up letting stuff fall by the wayside because I get into a slow part of the year and get a little bit depressed and demoralized by the fact that things aren't going well and nothing is selling and I'm not feeling inspired and there are other things I could be doing that help with our costs of living where this does not.
Perhaps I would feel differently if I were "independently wealthy" and didn't have to worry about such things as paying bills... but I don't have a rich "patron" as was more prevalent in the Victorian era, and before.
So I deal with reality, as it exists now.
One thing I definitely do want to get going this year is to get my HiveList store up and running! It's something I've already purchased, gotten approved and have in place — I just need to populate it with products and really learn how the underlying system itself works.
More stuff to follow, as I think about it!
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2023.12.28 AS-TXT-188/156
Very interesting reflections here! I often wonder if spending time & energy planning is productive or just makes me anxious. I think making loose plans and setting goals is a good thing, writing out my dreams helps me clarify what exactly I want and how to get there. Still trying to figure out exactly how much to plan and what aspects to let come naturally.