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I came prepared. Okay, I have my notes.
Alright! Let's do this.
Hey, YouTube world. It's me, Evelyn.
A couple videos ago an internet cousin asked how I stay creative when I'm feeling existential, or
even though I might be feeling existential.
Shout-out to you Madelyn. Great question.
And I answered it in the comments with something to the effect of, "I mean I enjoy paying bills."
But, I figured I should actually go into some Real Deal Holyfield things I do
to try and stay creative in these trying times.
Now, the definition of existential is important to note.
Existential. English!
Existential crisis, also known as existential dread, are moments when individuals question whether their lives
have meaning, purpose, or value, and are negatively impacted by this contemplation.
It's this feeling of, everyone including yourself, including our choices being
utterly inconsequential. That can kind of send you spiraling into ... I mean, nothing short of ...
you know [laughs]. You know that TikTok? Where he's like, "What if I just?"
And when you feel those feels, it can be very difficult to do much of anything, let alone the mental
gymnastics that is being creative.
In addition to this video, you should watch a video I did, well it was a Zoom,
a virtual panel that I did with my friend, Nate.
He turned everyone's portion of the panel into a mini-podcast and mini-video. I'll link that in the
atmosphere and in the video description box. Watch that for more. The only thing I will super-repeat
is this idea that creativity is not the same as artistic ability.
I think those two things have been conflated. Vocab word?
They get used interchangeably and that's not necessarily the case.
Artistic people are creative, but not all creative people
use art as their form of creativity. Do you get what I'm saying? 'Cause math is creative,
you know what I mean? It's people out there creating math. What does that mean?
Number one: I try to use new materials, or do something that is very much the opposite
of the "creative" which for me a lot of times means artistic, from the artistic endeavor
that I am either known for, or the artistic endeavor that is my job.
Drawing, doodling, painting.
I was using watercolors a while back, just dibbling and dabbling. I don't know what I'm doing. It's from Walmart.
Okay. You know what I'm saying? The supplies be from Michaels and Walmart.
Recently, I've also been playing around with air dry clay. Again, Crayola.
I might toss them. Okay, there's no point to them. No one asked for it, but doing something that's very much the opposite of what I have to do on deadline
helps me foster a sense of creativity because I'm playing. I'm using a part of my brain that I don't use all the time.
For me, that ends up meaning
doing something tactile in the real world with my hands.
Because what I do here is virtual. It's real in that I'm really sitting here,
but it's conceptual. You know what I mean? Like, what is a video?
Where did it go? That can kind of mess with your perception [laughs] of
reality. Just a little bit. Just a little bittle. That's why when I'm feeling kinda ehhh,
kinda ugghh about whatever I'm doing for work, I turn to my physical world.
I get off screens. I shut down Adobe. Everything.
And I cook something. I chop something. Trying to braid my hair [laughs], tryna twist my hair.
Swatching eyeliners on my eye. You know what I mean?
These are all things that help me foster my personal sense of creativity because they're new and they're fresh.
And you have to exercise the part of your brain that requires novelty.
Number two, and this is important, I've found:
is not relying on reference material.
Part of the existential dread is this feeling of everything's been done before, in time.
Nothing is new under the sun. Nas said it. Before that, Lauryn Hill said it. Okay.
Before that, the Bible said it [laughs].
And that can really eff you up in your mind because that's worrying about other people.
As our good sis said, worry bout yourself.
What would you do if you didn't know how anyone else did something?
Because, feel me: we're in the Information Age. Everything is a click away.
If I wanna know how to fix my dishwasher, I hop on YouTube.
And it's Jared over at Dishwashers Plus in Dayton, Ohio, telling me step-by-step what I need to do.
Creativity, I talk about this in the podcast video I referenced: creativity is nothing but problem solving.
If you feel like you've lost some of your creativity,
try to problem solve with no help, or with no expectation of knowing whether it's possible,
whether someone else did it first or did it better, or did it faster, or did in younger,
did it with less money, did it with more money. Less time, more time. That again,
just kind of. With a sense of resourcefulness. With a sense of actually engaging your mind.
Even though copying and modeling after someone can help you build your skills, or build your taste,
or give you kind of a rolodex of aesthetics, it can also hinder you. Sometimes you gotta lean on
your own understanding. I like to call it "natural wisdom," "natural intelligence."
It's that thing
that you kind of just figure it out because that's what all animals do. They figure it out.
Number three: do things and never tell anyone.
A lot of the times, if you really watch yourself,
you might catch yourself doing something excited to post it on Instagram stories.
Like I was saying before, what would you do if you didn't know how anyone did anything, what would
you do if you couldn't tell anyone?
Experience what it's like to do something with no audience.
I feel like everyone thinks that influencers or people who post videos online are the only ones who have audiences.
That's so false. Everyone talkin' bout "The Social Dilemma" that documentary on Netflix.
All these social media documentaries, they're about y'all. They're not just about us.
It's about society, how we use social media to project
an image out into the world. We are all image builders.
We are all Sims, you know what I mean?
The next creative thing you want to do, here's a challenge:
don't post it.
What does that feel like?
Think about it!
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Number four, some of y'all are not gon like this one:
reduce your multi-tasking stimuli.
There's this phenomenon, and I have experienced it,
where I'll get a text message, one text message from a friend, and I get overwhelmed
by a text.
And then I just don't answer it. What is that?
'Cause that don't make sense. It don't make no sense.
From the time you wake up, you are receiving messages from other things. You are scrolling on Instagram in bed before you get up,
you are on the toilet. Raise your hand if you poop without your phone. I would
like to congratulate you. Listen to music in the shower, you listen to music while you're cooking,
while you're cleaning, you have to have a podcast on while you drive, you scroll through Netflix
forever trying to find something to watch. And then by the time that one
text message comes in, you have already ingested thousands of pieces of media.
When someone just wants to ask you, "Whatchu want for dinner?"
You can't handle it. It's too much. I have phone anxiety.
Am I wrong? 'Cause here's the thing, I bet you only have four friends. We take in so much
information. So, if you want to kinda get back reset, before you even do these dramatic
social media detoxes, or whatever, I would say try not multi-tasking your senses.
Try to eat dinner without watching TV.
For a lot of us, I know there's gonna be a couple people, that are like, "Ion't ever do that," and that's cute, but a lot of us,
and I've done it too cannot start eating. Like, we have the burrito right here,
but until we find something to press play we can't start eating. That is ridiculous.
That is ridiculous. 'Cause our brains neurologically. Neurologically? Neurobiogically?
Periodically?
Our brains literally are not meant to know as many people as we know
because of social media. Your brain is not meant to be able to handle knowing
what that many people you follow on Twitter think about the presidential debate. It's not
built for that. It's too much. It's too much. And then when my mom call me talkin' bout,
"What's up?" I'm like, "I don't know what's up! Everywhere in the Iraq. Everywhere."
You've already scrolled through 100 TikToks and that's not an exaggerating number.
Number five, this is my fifth and final tip: understand that everything is perception.
There is a ... you might perceive someone to be creative. This question perceived
that I am creative, still. There are times where none of these tips mean anything.
We're staying in bed. Sometimes there's no tips. Sometimes you just be existential.
There's this, I think it's Zora Neale Hurston quote, that said,
"There are years that ask questions, and years that answer."
And for me, that means everything is cyclical.
With seasons. It's a season of creative wooo.
And it can be a season of dryness. Absolute dryness. It's okay.
Those are my tips. I hope that helps. In the comments below, tell me two things. Both. Pick one. It's up to you.
What gets the creative juices flowing for you
and/or tell me what flavor of existential dread do you have? Remember when we were kids,
we would put every flavor of soda in the same cup. Chaos. That's what my existential dread is.
But it's also giving you a little bit of when you take a bite out of a cookie
thinking it's chocolate chip but it's oatmeal raisin. Okay. There is a betrayal there.
Let me know what flavor y'all got and I will see you on the internet somewhere. Bye!