Call it contemplations on the multitude of distractions I indulge my wary mind in on any given day.

What am I talking about? Why ‘wary mind’?

The Backstory
The main ingredient in my creative process is the need to communicate something. While this need is very strong it is also somewhat lazy. Like lightning, it seeks the path of least resistance.

This “laziness” doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It has a root cause and, put simply, I believe that cause to be fear and hesitation. It’s nothing you haven’t heard before: fear of judgment, fear of not making anything very good and all that stuff that turns a blank page into a mirror aimed at all your inadequacies and past failures. Hence, the wary mind.

I’m No Psychologist, But…
These fears cause me to seek easier alternatives: the distractions I mentioned earlier. Pacification. Things like email, video games, message boards, etc. When I busy myself with these things, I don’t have to deal directly with the creative compulsion and all the ensuing angst over whether it’s even worth attending to. It’s avoidance.

Saving It
Today I started a little experiment. Slowly but steadily, I have begun to withdraw these distractions from the scenery. It’s really weird, too, because I’ve already begun to see that I’ve actually become a little dependent on this stuff. Like, instead of rolling up my sleeves and setting to one task I sort of flit around and scatter little bits of creativity here and there throughout the day: a blog comment, a message board post, maybe some emails to friends with a few attempts at cleverness. Not that any of that stuff is bad, but when projects I actually really want to do are left half finished I have to wonder if I’m sort of pissing away my resources.

So, the experiment begins. My hypothesis is that once the distractions are reduced or eliminated, I might start to remember what it was like to spend a few hours with a handful of pens and a sketchpad, or writing, or playing an instrument and so on. I might make some serious strides with regard to productive creativity. We’ll see how it goes.

My question to you is do you have any experience with this and what has it been?