There's so much here I resonate with. The difficulty in trying to define and outline the minutiae and idiosyncrasies of "the process". The immense need to maintain rhythm. The struggle of finding your way back to it after a disruption. When you lose your way or get out of sync. I spent a week out of state on a work trip. Getting back to the cadence I had before I left is something I'm thinking about and striving with. Something I'm also writing a little about for this Sunday's newsletter
I used to fight it and try to force things even when nothing seemed to work. As I’ve gotten older I’ve found it’s a lot easier to swim with the current than against it. The results seem to be better too.
On my best days, I know to breathe slow and work slower. But sometimes, or most of them, my obsessive stubborness disguises itself as persistance, as a good work ethic, and the process starts to resemble something unhealthy. Sometimes it's hard to let it go. to let it be what it is. But that, I suppose, is why it's called practice. Thanks for reminding me. I appreciate it.
You don't sound like a crazy person at all, this is what it's like! I don't have a system for my ideas, except for too many notebooks that I never look at because they're such a wild mess. Would love to know more about your spirit box. And yes, keeping a sketchbook is very much like running. Except you can't win at sketching :)
The spirit box is precisely for solving the "too many notebooks that I never look at" problem.
It's a modified zettelkasten that I've been working on for about five months now. The process is laborious but not really that complicated. Every couple weeks I go through my notebook and make a notecard for anything worth saving - drawings, ideas, quotes - doesn't matter. On the note I write down the journal id and page number of where the idea came from, and some additional thoughts. Then I place the note in the box next to other related notes. This way when I look into the box for something, I'll stumble on other related thoughts I would otherwise have long forgotten about. Each note has a pointer to it's location in a journal, which provides additional context on the surrounding pages. It's not uncommon for one note to relate to several other notes across a few months time, across multiple notebooks. The ability to reenter that headspace from 3 months ago when I wrote that "thing" has been a huge boon to my creative practice. Add to this notes I take from physical books, substacks, articles etc and the context from which I can draw ideas grows exponentially. It really has been a game changer for me - and not at all what I expected to be doing when I started this substack thing.
Thanks for showing up every day! I always enjoy seeing what you've come up with.
Thanks for sharing, Mark. Love your process!
This is exactly what I needed right now. Thank you!
There's so much here I resonate with. The difficulty in trying to define and outline the minutiae and idiosyncrasies of "the process". The immense need to maintain rhythm. The struggle of finding your way back to it after a disruption. When you lose your way or get out of sync. I spent a week out of state on a work trip. Getting back to the cadence I had before I left is something I'm thinking about and striving with. Something I'm also writing a little about for this Sunday's newsletter
I used to fight it and try to force things even when nothing seemed to work. As I’ve gotten older I’ve found it’s a lot easier to swim with the current than against it. The results seem to be better too.
Looking forward to your Sunday edition.
On my best days, I know to breathe slow and work slower. But sometimes, or most of them, my obsessive stubborness disguises itself as persistance, as a good work ethic, and the process starts to resemble something unhealthy. Sometimes it's hard to let it go. to let it be what it is. But that, I suppose, is why it's called practice. Thanks for reminding me. I appreciate it.
You don't sound like a crazy person at all, this is what it's like! I don't have a system for my ideas, except for too many notebooks that I never look at because they're such a wild mess. Would love to know more about your spirit box. And yes, keeping a sketchbook is very much like running. Except you can't win at sketching :)
The spirit box is precisely for solving the "too many notebooks that I never look at" problem.
It's a modified zettelkasten that I've been working on for about five months now. The process is laborious but not really that complicated. Every couple weeks I go through my notebook and make a notecard for anything worth saving - drawings, ideas, quotes - doesn't matter. On the note I write down the journal id and page number of where the idea came from, and some additional thoughts. Then I place the note in the box next to other related notes. This way when I look into the box for something, I'll stumble on other related thoughts I would otherwise have long forgotten about. Each note has a pointer to it's location in a journal, which provides additional context on the surrounding pages. It's not uncommon for one note to relate to several other notes across a few months time, across multiple notebooks. The ability to reenter that headspace from 3 months ago when I wrote that "thing" has been a huge boon to my creative practice. Add to this notes I take from physical books, substacks, articles etc and the context from which I can draw ideas grows exponentially. It really has been a game changer for me - and not at all what I expected to be doing when I started this substack thing.
Hope that made some semblance of sense.