I was up early this morning to take my son to nursery. After I'd cleaned our teeth and got us dressed and he had (almost) finished playing with a pair of plastic plates from his toy kitchen, we stepped outside to be greeted by a beautiful deep red glow hitting the underside of the clouds from the sun laying just below the horizon to the South-East. To the North-West, the almost full moon, now waning, glowed against the rich blue-grey sky. I pointed it out to him, and he returned a smile. I made the two-mile drive to his nursery in silence, looking at the leafless winter trees poking out from the frozen fields along the way. After returning home alone listening to the Battle Hymn of the Republic, I sat on the concrete ledge that runs along our driveway and watched the sun rise in a blaze of glory over the hill ridge, maybe a kilometre away. The stone was cold, but I didn't mind. I had a thick parka on, and I couldn't have felt any colder than the band of horses that were sl...
What if creativity isn't really a thing? What if it's just a term we use to describe "non-standard" thinking? So people who fall outside the central bell curve distribution of typical thinking are considered creative? There's every chance that, when engaged in "creative" acts, these people are being as logical as the most linear "non-creative" thinkers—it's just that they operate on a different style of logic. Maybe to them, someone saying something as basic and rational as 2+2=4 seems creative, whereas producing a piece of music, or writing, or a painting is the equivalent of making a spreadsheet. I suspect many so-called "creatives" don't consider themselves creative by their own standard—they are simply doing what makes sense to them. — The reason writing pays well but drawing (a similarly creative discipline) doesn't is that there is greater demand for writing. And, crucially, a bigger gap between the number of peo...
I've never been a gamer. Even as a kid, it felt like too much effort for little reward. Clicking all those buttons, making all those decisions, reacting quickly (never my strong suit) again and again. But I've always kinda enjoyed watching other people play them. Immersing yourself in a world and a story and letting it wash over you is relaxing. And letting it happen without all the aforementioned effort makes watching games unfold far more relaxing than actually playing them (and isn't the ultimate purpose of a computer game to relax and have fun, after all?). So, in my youth, I'd watch my friends play their PlayStation games. And I'd reluctantly join in briefly now and again before quickly getting frustrated or overwhelmed and handing the controller back to its rightful owner. And, in later years (my thirties, I guess), I'd sometimes zone out to a Twitch stream late at night until I was ready to sleep. But, on a whim, I recently bought a handheld retro gami...