Tag: art

More on the 5am thing

Matt

I’ve been doing this “get up at 5am and do stuff” thing for about a month now. Despite the relative quiet on my blog, I’ve been really productive. My goal was to start getting to the gym regularly and to spend more time drawing. I think it’s going well.

I’m still figuring out what kind of gym schedule I prefer. This week, I am trying Mon-Wed-Fri for the gym and using the extra time on Tuesday and Thursday to do whatever I feel like. Today, it’s writing this blog post. Sometimes I clean my office and sometimes I just sit and snuggle my cat. I always spend at least an hour working on art.

What’s great is that doing the creative work in the morning relieves the pressure of trying to cram it in after my day job, when my brain is fried and I just want to relax. I’ve been watching TV and playing video games with my wife, and even getting some reading in before I go to sleep most nights. We even go out to get coffee and write sometimes.

So, I’m still making adjustments and figuring things out, but overall I think this has been a good change for me.

5am Status Report

Matt

The 5am thing went well last week. I woke up and got out of bed at 5am Monday through Friday. The only morning I didn’t go to the gym was Friday because I hemmed and hawed about how cold it was. Friday was also the day I felt least energized, which I attribute to the lack of exercise.

I didn’t do a great job going to bed. I’ve found that I function best on 7-8 hours of sleep, which means being asleep at 9 or 10pm. That still sounds early to me, so I was shooting for 11 or 12pm most nights. The morning exercise was keeping me functional, but I slept in pretty late Saturday and today because I was so exhausted.

This isn’t about times, though — the point of getting up and exercising was to give myself structure and focus to work on stuff before my day job used up all my brain power. This has been awesome — during the work week, I worked on art projects every morning, and worked in a little bit of writing most of those days. After the day job wrapped up, I didn’t feel guilty if all my brain could handle was watching TV or playing video games before bed. Even then, I was watching TV with a sketchbook handy, and went on a writing date with my wife late in the week.

Tentatively, I want to keep this up. I got a lot done this week, and I finally reached a point where I don’t think everything I draw sucks. The early morning discomfort is worth the sense of accomplishment that comes with it.

Artististic Self-Doubt

Matt

I had a thought about why artists tend to suffer crippling self-doubt — Every creative person’s training begins with the proclamation that there is someone, or multiple someones, whose skill they will never surpass. If asked, “Who is the greatest writer of all time?” we* are expected to say “William Shakespeare.” What about the greatest composer? Mozart. Greatest rock band? The Beatles.

It doesn’t stop at “greatest.” I’ve read interviews where skilled artists preface their influences with some variation of “I’m nowhere near as good as they are!”

I’ve mentioned that I’m working on my drawing skills. It’s not false humility when I say I have a long way to go, and that I am not currently in the same league as my heroes. And, since art isn’t my job, I’m okay if I don’t reach the level of, say, Emma Ríos — but it’s not arrogant to say that if I worked my ass off, then I could be that good. The idea of reaching that level is what motivates me to practice when I could be binge-watching teevee shows on Netflix.

We’ve internalized the myth that some people are born with innate abilities that set them on a higher level than the rest of us, that despite our best efforts we will never be able to advance past a certain tier. I hate that myth. It makes us roll our eyes at young people who say they want to write like Bob Dylan. It makes people who don’t sing feel self-conscious doing karaoke with their friends. I want to emphasize that last sentence: People feel bad when they can’t do things they’ve never worked at.

Creative skills are like any other skill — if you have the time, the opportunity, and the necessary functional body parts**, you can do any of them. You can improve.

I want to live in a world where kids can aspire to surpass their heroes without being shamed, and where adults who never practiced drawing don’t feel the need to apologize for sketching stick figures to communicate ideas.

* By “we” I really mean white people who speak English — we’re the kind of people who assume our opinions are and must be universal.

** Not everyone has all of these things, and it’s worth noting that many of the most famous and successful creators have tons of money that reduces the amount of time they have to spend doing things other than honing their craft. They aren’t superhuman, they just have more time to work.