Via Unsplash
Hey and welcome back to The State of Things! If you’re new here, The State of Things (TSOT) is a regular blog post where I check in on my “input goals”. Since its my first time talking about input goals in a TSOT, let me elaborate.
Input goals are goals that are within your control as opposed to “output goals”. Yes I want to be a hot rich baddie who makes $20K a month… but so does everybody else. Since just setting high goals isn’t enough to achieve them, how can I strive to get to where I want to be? Answer: by doing what’s in my control, also known as my “input goals”.
After years and years of beating myself up over my content not performing well online, here’s the conclusion I’ve reached: I will make content that I’m proud of and do my best to share it online shamelessly. I’m not going to stress about numbers. I will have patience and I will have faith that if I do things right, results will come.
Here’s an example of what I mean by an input goal. Say I want my YouTube video to be a hit. It isn’t within my control whether I get 10,000 views but I do have control over the video’s quality, the title, thumbnail, description; and whether I share it on other platforms. I only hold myself to a standard of what’s in my control, and I build systems to support myself to make my work the best it can be. Does that make sense?
So! Its checkpoint number 7 and here’s what you can find in this edition of The State of Things…
In this article
Taking on The Artist’s Way
There’s too much I want to achieve for the hours in a day… and what I’m doing about it
Changes in my blog and TSOT
What I’ve achieved since last time
What’s Been on My Mind
Concept 1: The Artist’s Way
I’ve struggled quite a bit with my creative identity in the past (see: I’ve decided to stop calling art my passion and My complicated relationship with art: a lifelong journey). I started following along a book called The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity to help me figure out what the hell I’m doing with my creative energy and heal it a little.
Call me influenced. I decided to give The Artist’s Way a real chance after watching 2 celebrity interviews - one with Bella Hadid and one with Olivia Rodrigo where they both talk about doing their “morning pages”. I’d heard of morning pages before, and with a little Google search, I found out that they were a part of a program/book called The Artist’s Way.
What is The Artist’s Way? The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron is a 1992 self-help book to help people with artistic creative recovery. The book teaches techniques and exercises to assist people in gaining self-confidence in harnessing their creative talents and skills to live a fulfilling creative life or career. Sounds exactly like what I need.
Key concepts of The Artist’s Way:
Morning pages. These are three, hand-written pages done every morning. There are no topics, no rules. Just write. Supposedly, this practice can clear whatever is causing us to feel stuck. The act of freely putting anything onto the page helps to clear our conscious and unconsious minds before we start each day. Here’s what the author, Julia Cameron has to say about them:
“Once we get those muddy, maddening, confusing thoughts [nebulous worries, jitters, and preoccupations] on the page, we face our day with clearer eyes.”
Artist’s dates. An artist date is a block of time, around one to two hours weekly, set aside to nurture your creative consciousness. The goal is to do something a little different and to jolt yourself out of your normal routines and thought patterns.
Here are a few future artist dates I plan on pursuing:
Making stickers
Watching movies in the theatre
Going thrifting
Relaxing by the pool
Painting the walls or cabinets in my house
Weekly reading and assignments. As a part of the road to recovery, The Artist's Way has weekly readings and assignments set out for its participants. Each of its 12 chapters deals with a different aspect of the artist’s recovery. For example, week 1 is called “Recovering a sense of safety” and week 11 is “Recovering a sense of autonomy”.
Concept 2: The Writer Illustrator.
There’s Too Much I Want to Achieve. I am CONSTANTLY going back and forth and back and forth on what kind of content I want to make. I push myself too hard to make new things, then I regret it. I suck the fun out of creative acts for myself because I set ultimately unrealistic goals (even though by my own standards they’re small - like 15 sketched panels a week, no lineart). The conscious part of me is really driven to do well and put out a lot of good work, but my inner child artist is still so, so scared or tired or something of working on art. So, I don’t really know what to do.
For now, I’ll be taking off a couple of creative input goals from my “Since the Last State of Things” section. I’m taking a break from forcing myself to make comic panels, illustrations, or creative fiction. I’m going to let The Artist’s Way try and work its magic on my sad little creative psyche. I’ll check in with you next TSOT to see if it actually worked.
Concept 3: How my blog content will be changing
I want to focus more on content that I genuinely find interesting.
New series: media roundup. Books, games, TV shows, movies, comics, webcomics, streamers, and music that I’ve consumed recently and what I thought of them. Its going to be a monthly or bimonthly round up to catalogue what I’ve been consuming.
New series: answering shower thoughts. I’ve got a lot of questions and miscellaneous thoughts that I think of throughout the day that I want to answer in a blog post. Instead of dedicating a blog post to each one, I’ll (also) be rounding them up into one blog.
Since the last The State-of-Things
March 26, 2024 → June 3, 2024 (6 weeks)
My values
Making good art and story
Interior design, good physical living environment
Money as a means to buy freedom
Community, uplifting others.
Tasks
Here’s what I hope to achieve between now and the next time I check in.
I’ll be streaming video games once a week with my brother on Wednesdays.
I’ll be aiming to post 2 shitty, low quality reels on my YouTube channel or my Instagram account per week.
Past The State of Things
All: The State of Things
The State of Things #6 | How mini comics help me process my thoughts and feelings
The State of Things #5 | How I'm planning on getting my content seen
The State of Things #4 | When to ignore your parent's advice
The State of Things #2 | House Hunting & Building Connections
The State of Things #1 | Starting My Art Journey to Financial Independence