Creativity as Muse
I’ve been very interested in the philosophy of creativity since about mid-2024, and I keep collecting books and resources and ideas, but have yet to really deeply study them.
I’ve also been thinking about time, how I spend my time, how I’d like to spend my time. I have a running to-do list in my notes app, and this week, I wrote a note to myself at the very top of the list about what I’d really like to focus on:
I think one of the most important things I’d like to devote time to right now is reading, writing, and reflecting on all the books and ideas that are coming through about creativity. I have so many of them, and I want to harness their power and see where delving deeply into them leads me.
I’d like to create a plan for actually reading the books
I’d like to create a system for documenting what I find interesting/helpful/inspiring in the books
I’d like to write about the former
Possibly this becomes a guild lecture, possibly it becomes a book project, possibly it becomes a way to further differentiate, define, delineate my class offerings
I have spoken.
That last line is a nerdy reference to a favorite character from season 1 of The Mandalorian :)
It’s been interesting to observe how even just having this chunk of text at the top of my to-do list has shifted my mentality and mindset- when I find that I have a few minutes to spare, I’ve been reading bits from books, gathering my resources together, and I claimed a blank spiral notebook that I was saving for a future bullet journal for my creativity studies…
I’m feeling a spark of excitement about this deeper exploration. It feels both new and familiar - I’ve always loved reading and research, and my most recent career path involved lots of reading, research, and writing.
It’s interesting to think about how this type of work feels different than writing my dissertation did - while the Ph.D. process is very independent, I always had checkpoints and goals and mentors guiding me, and a group of peers working on their own projects that I was in touch with daily. This type of process is entirely self-directed, and I’m curious to see if I will have the motivation to continue to dive deeper.