Creative Chaos
Just read I’ve stopped managing my email, and it reminded me that I have a lot of strange habits around computers. I never seem to find other people doing it the same way. Next to not managing my email, I also love tabs in my browser. And there is seldom a time when I have less than ten tabs open.
But this thought goes a lot further; I have creative chaos in my working spaces. Which is a strange insight for me. I think of myself as a structured and orderly person. But in reality, when you look at the spots where I spend most of my waking hours, it does not look like it.
I always see these images of the desk without any speck of dust on it. And empty white with only a computer screen and a keyboard on them. I would love to keep my desk looking like that. But it is hard – ignoring that my desk is not white, to begin with :-D. But that is just not me. I need a certain amount of chaos around me to be creative. Or, turning this thought around, I’m not bothered by the disorder.
And don’t get me wrong, the chaos is so big that I eventually clean it up. And I love the moment after having cleaned up everything. Being back at a clean slate, ready for a new adventure. But it never lasts long. And these habits also follow me into my digital world. My browser is a mess of tabs that I opened weeks ago while researching a topic. The desktop is littered with temporary files. My text editor has 20 unsaved notes open with temporary JSON objects and curls I needed to debug a bug at work.
What I find noteworthy is that I still find my stuff in all this chaos. My brain can keep a spatial map of where I have put what. At least most of the time. And I usually find my stuff again when I need it. My brain is a big index of where I store the actual information. Don’t make me learn something by heart. Give me the tools to understand the rules.
And I’m fully aware that this method of creative chaos is at odds with having a highly structured note system in Obsidian. Which once again shows how humans are not binary. We are not robots. And the world has greys in it. Which makes it a lot harder to navigate. But now that I’m feeling better from a mental health perspective, this thought is no longer as fearsome as it used to be.
Comments
@jabel thanks for reminding me. I've lost track of him. When I was writing I was thinking that Austin Kleon certainly has written about it as well – but was to lazy to search. Was more in writing mode today.
by V_ on
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@V_ I work in much the same way. Adam Savage has some good thoughts about chaos in the creative process.
by jabel on