Mike's Creativity Blog

 When I think about what I want to develop in myself, I consider the person I want to be in the future. I want to be someone that has a strong level of discipline -- someone who is able to follow through and make promises with one's self. Not only this, I want to be someone who is always willing to help others, and someone that is an incredible listener. Right now, I'm so far off of this person, but I'm hoping that I will be able to achieve this future version of myself. 

Honestly, I am surprised I stuck with my final project. I really was tempted to just learn a piano song and call it a day. I think talking with the professor helped me stick with my original idea, despite the nature of what I wanted to create.  Sharing the project was a process for me. I usually get really nervous when I share something, but when I was sharing, I was more concerned about the content of my project. I felt very somber when I was creating the project and presentation, and the presentation in class felt.. grim. I started to question whether I should have made this project and shared it in the first place. It's probably due to my mental health and my unhealthy beliefs that I feel this way. 

Context: I have always struggled with social media -- mainly overusing it. Because of this, I usually have one or two apps on my phone, but they are constantly being deleted for a couple weeks or months at a time. At some point in this semester, I was so bored that I went on my art instagram from my desktop, and I found myself extremely inspired from the content I was consuming. I realized that I had not been consuming media and seeing things that inspire me. I was at a point where I was not creating anything, or even thinking about creating something, because I was so disconnected from other people's inspiring creations! This is probably a unique experience to me, but I was wondering if anyone else has experienced a situation like this? What was it like for you? Does consuming other people's art and content inspire you? 

 I know that there are probably countless studies on this subject, but I just wanted to have a short discussion about it as well as pose a question. I know that for me, it is easier to work when I don't have clutter all around my desk. Sometimes, however, I am so focused that the clutter builds from my current project, and it doesn't have much of an effect at all.  Do you guys find working in a cleaner environment helpful for your creativity? Or does it not matter much at all? Does anyone prefer to work in a cluttered yet organized system?

 One thing I constantly struggle with is the fear of failure. In my particular case, failure would be graduating and not being able to get a job. In the same way, if I dropped out to focus on my particular interest, I could still fail to get a job and be left off in a tricky situation. I find that these thoughts of the future are very limiting to me, and while they are important to think about, I focus on them too much. It's hard to remind myself to focus on the present, and cross bridges as I get to them. One thing that stood out to me in this class was the discussion surrounding the topic of failure. What would I do if I couldn't fail? This idea really inspired me, and made me realize that failure is not constrained to my limited perspective of it. In many ways, "failing" can be considered a success. 

The purpose of this post is to ask if people connect music to creativity? Do people have to have music playing in order to feel creative? Is music an important part of the creative process? If one is drawing an illustration and designing a character, should that person listen to what that character would listen to? Reply with any answers or questions like these!

 Hey guys, In my previous post, I have mentioned Porter Robinson a lot; and I figured I should just share the paper I wrote on him for my Inspirational Person paper. Hopefully, those who care to read it are inspired as well! I can't find a way to insert my pdf, so I am just going to copy and paste it here:    Porter Robinson: Love Letters to Reality        Music is an incredible blessing we are able to enjoy in this world today. It has the power to connect one to the world, to connect one with people, and to connect one to themselves. As time goes on, music continues to grow into more styles and genres; from the Beatles to contemporary rap music, there’s a preference for everyone, filled with unlimited nuances and flavors. Electronic music emerged during the 1970s and became popular during the 1980s. This idea of using technology to produce music was fascinating to certain creators and opened a new world and genre of music. After falling off a bit in mainstream culture, EDM, or ele