What do you mean creativity?

Have you ever created something and when you looked at it later, you were struck by an odd feeling of dissociation?

I don't mean you painted something and then when you looked at it, you hated every fibre and stroke.

I mean, you looked at something you created and honestly didn't feel like it was yours? Like it had been done by someone else? You remember creating it, you definitely didn't have any help. But for some reason, there is no connection. When you think about it, you still think it's a great piece of whatever, but it doesn't feel like your baby.

That may sound weird to some people. Most writers, artists, or other creators (even my coder friends!) will tell you that when they create something there is a piece of them that goes into making it. They feel that as the process is happening, then can almost feel the blood pouring from them to the piece like a transfusion of life. It doesn't always happen in huge amounts, but whenever they look back, they still feel like the work is tied to them. They feel the connection with the piece of them that was left behind with the finished fill-in-the-blank.

For some reason, I occasionally can't associate with my work after I'm finished. I can't go back and look at past content or achievement and feel something from it. If anything, it almost always feels oddly disconnected. Worse, the better the project is by objective standards, the harder it is to think of it as "mine". I recently wrote some new material and it got some really positive feedback, which is always great. But when I went back to reread, edit, etc. all I could think was "I didn't write this. It's good. It's funny and well-written but it wasn't 'me'. Maybe I'm possessed or something."

Jokes aside, I'm just curious if anyone else feels like this. Do you paint something and look back thinking, "It's too good I don't know what happened by that can't be my work" even when it is? Do you write a song and hear it a few months down the road and for a few bars you can't recognize that it's your song? Let me know in the comments.

February 1st 2016

I would love to say I'm back with a fresh perspective and a new attitude, ready to tackle the new year and post tons of great content and really interact with my readers.

I would. Really. Love to say that. But I kinda can't.

I have been struggling with blog ideas lately. After taking some time off to do holiday things and get a bit of a break, I really thought it would just kind of naturally come back to being fun and exciting and worth reading. But I don't know if it will.

When I first started this blog, I wanted to really share my views on Nonsteading and why technology is our friend. In the past 6 months or so, I've written over 100 posts and the most popular ones were a breaking news story and a Top 10 list of British TV shows. Occasionally I would post something that really connected with someone, and that was great. But am I really writing enough stellar material to justify publishing something every day?

I used to get so frustrated looking over my Twitter feed, seeing authors and creative types resharing the same blog post for a week. It really seemed like you should post your stuff, share it around on the social sites the day it came out and maybe for one additional day, but then leave it alone. I never felt right trying to force people to read my words, and I guess I still don't. I also hate feeling like I'm "selling" someone on my point of view. If you want to see what I've written, well, there's links to stuff, enjoy. I always felt like people would get sick of seeing me link the same blog post 300 times in one week, because I had not posted any new content.

I guess what I'm really wondering is, am I alone in this? Does anyone else feel like you should only market fresh work? Does anyone else mute/unfollow people who post the same link over and over every few hours? Should you publish something everyday, just to have new material or should you wait until there's some real gem and only publish once or twice a month? Should you only blog about big events like releases and preorder dates?

Until my holiday break I was getting about two thousand unique views a month here, and I felt like that was great. What I'm wondering now is, what made you visit? Was it an interesting tag line? Was it the title of the blog post? Was it the repetition of the link? Was it that you actually enjoyed reading what I wrote? What exactly should I be aiming for?

Now, yes, that may seem lazy, asking readers to tell me what they want to read, but I am honestly curious as to the draw. If everyone told me that Caturday was my biggest pull, that doesn't mean I'm going to just turn the blog into one giant Caturday machine. I'm more curious in honest feedback about what I've done so far, and what people would like to see more of. Most of the time I don't get any comments on these posts (maybe a few +1's on G+) so hopefully someone will take pity and leave their thoughts.

Hope