An Idea Some Day

First day of freelancing. It feels like the natural way to be. Good to be in control of my time and the opportunities available to me.  Started the day with a run at Gedling Country Park. Misty morning views. Had a run-in with a dog walker whose dog was a little too interested in me for my liking.  Ignored it the first couple of times, but when I found his dog two feet behind me crouched in an attack position, I asked him to put his dog on a lead, which led to this funny interaction: “Do you want to put her on a lead?” “No, I’m fine, thanks.” “Ok, but I’m not sure your dog is.” “Has she bitten you yet?” “Is that what you’re going to wait for?” “I know my dog. She won’t bite you. Keep running.” Felt good to stand my ground without being combative. Most people apologise if their dogs start interfering with you. Not this guy.  Beautiful morning all the same, and nice to have client work ready to go on day one.

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

Yesterday was my last day at work. Strange day. Non-stop rain. Floods everywhere. Main Street closed, so I had to take alternate routes for the nursery run. The day at work felt different, but there was nothing emotional about it. Just a constant sense of “I won’t have to do this any more.” People have been asking me how I feel about leaving, and I’ve consistently given one answer: “Super-excited,” which seemed to surprise a few people.  But how could I feel any other way? I’ve been ready to leave for so long that I have no desire to look back, only forward. I’ve regularly found myself thinking and saying to myself, “I don’t care,” when people raised work matters with me over the last few months—a sure sign that I needed to leave.  And the main emotion I’ve experienced since arranging to leave three months ago has been a sense of lightness—a weight lifted. I guess it’s similar to how prisoners must feel when they know their sentence is coming to an end—a feeling of freedom and lightne

When we see a photograph, it is not only the photographer’s judgement we see projected on the image; it is also our own.  The photographer adds one layer of interpretation; then we add another—not just on the subject, but on the photographer and the photograph itself.  The same is true of writing and any other form of art or act of creation that captures and contextualises something from real life.  We may think a certain photographer (like, say, Bruce Gilden) is judging or exploiting his subjects... but we don’t necessarily fully understand their true intentions behind the work—maybe it’s our own judgement we’re projecting.  Maybe photographers such as Gilden are celebrating the people in their photos, and it is us, the viewer, who is judging them.  Just as the observer changes the state of a particle in the famous double-slit physics experiment, the viewer can change the meaning of a work of art through their act of observation.

The future is just the past waiting to happen... With the dawn of the internet, my generation has witnessed the most rapid and significant societal step change in the history of humanity.  Boomers use the Internet but don't really get it. Millennials and Gen Z live on it but lack context of what the pre-Internet world was like.  But Gen X straddles the two worlds—pre-Internet and now. We get the culture, and we get the context in a way nobody else does.  Still, in the same way that my grandparents couldn't have imagined the internet, I can't imagine a post-internet world. The Pandora's box is open... and while it will evolve, it isn't ever getting closed.

I showed Bob a picture of Gaby on the iPad today.  We were in the upstairs bathroom. I put the iPad on the floor so he could see it. He looked briefly and looked away twice, then the third time he looked, he looked for a long time and began purring loudly. Bittersweet moment right there.