11.02.25 - ‘Priorities’

I love looking at the clouds, and many songs have had their start by this cloud-gazing. So that’s where this project is starting!

The creative process is one that needs to be stewarded well, continually refined, and exercised daily. I’ve given myself a month-long challenge of accomplishing the same creative task every day. My goal was three-fold: write something, record something, share something.

Each day, I’ll take a picture of the clouds that day. Visually, I think this will be a rewarding outcome in the end!

I’ll also write something. I’m keeping the bar achievable, so it doesn’t need to be an entire song. It doesn’t even need to be a great start. But it must be something.

And then I’ll combine the visual with the auditory and have a creative piece to post. My calendar will be populated by these ‘cloud comps.’ Some song might come from it, it might be nothing more than getting all the bad ideas out. But the end result will be the continual honing of the creative discipline. And a cool calendar with clouds to look at!

THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY:

The parable of the talents has been on my mind since listening to an interview of a Christian artist. This challenge came from reflecting on that. It’s really easy to be overwhelmed by all the things to do, but I don’t want that to paralyze my efforts.

I don’t expect anyone to see these or follow along. In fact, I’m sure no one will, and I’m letting that free me from the pressure of performance. Social media brings enough of that. This is a personal exercise of goal-setting. I’ve already realized that having the pressure of performance will stilt many creative endeavors.

I also want to lower the pressure of excellence. Excellence is SO important and it’s one of my foundational standards. But that pursuit can get in the way of refinement. So I’m lowering the threshold there so I can achieve thresholds elsewhere, one of them being creating sheer quantity through repetition.

Time-wise, this shouldn’t require a heavy investment, just a little something everyday. Really, that’s what most investing is. By the end of this, I hope to feel more confident in the eventual payoff of the small investments instead of feeling the pressure to reach for the big ones.

And the clouds were pretty to look at today!