In search of a positive feedback loop

This morning in the shower I noticed that my arms are about five shades darker than my stomach. Then Phil showed me a picture of our dog at the beach and in the picture Phil’s purple shadow was about 30 feet long. It’s been a fantastic summer and it’s coming to an end.

It was a summer of collecting. I collected: sun on my skin by escaping this very foggy San Francisco neighborhood. Adventures and images as documentation and reference. Illnesses, all within the span of a month with some overlap: ear infection, strep throat, food poisoning, back injury. Kisses, piercings, friends, and community. Thoughts, frustrations, and resentments around work.

During summer I do not want to paint, so I do not paint. I think it has something to do with the light or the temperature or the speed of life. The paint dries too fast. But lately, as days get shorter and apartment hallway smells shift to soups and spices, all I want to do is paint. The time is right, I have a rich bank of inspiration to draw from.

I tried something new this summer, I allowed myself to rest and take a break from working for a whole month. This feels naughty to admit and there’s a temptation to immediately qualify a rich period of rest with a disclaimer of self-aware privilege. I won’t do that, because no one should have to defend rest. To deny rest as an important and necessary aspect of life and the creative process is to praise exhaustive work. I am a person who gets tired, as much as society would like for me to identify as a machine.

Great artists have built rest and recharging into their lifestyles. Cal Newport cites Georgia O Keefe’s seasonal productivity in this podcast episode:

I use Georgia O’Keeffe as an example of seasonality, that her productivity as an artist didn’t really pick up until she began saying, “You know what? In the summers, I’m going with Alfred Stieglitz, we’re going to Lake George and I’m going to sit there in a shanty,” she called it the shanty, it was an outbuilding near the lake, “I’m just going to paint and be inspired, and then I’ll come back after the summer and finish the artwork and show them and do all the other sorts of stuff, the most productive years of her life. By actually slowing down for a season every year, her productivity exploded. She became one of the most famous early modernists of that whole era of painting, right?

A couple of months ago in Rome I met one of my favorite artists, Manfredi Ciminale. We got bitter Italian espresso and enjoyed cigarettes together. Well he enjoyed the cigarettes and we enjoyed the secondhand smoke (that’s not sarcastic, what a great smell). He asked me and Phil what we like to do and we asked him what he likes to do. Not what do you do, what do you like to do. Like, for fun. How do you live? I always imagined that this creative hero of mine was an obsessive artist, shutting himself away in a little room and drawing for hours on end in isolation. Instead, he works in a bright, shared studio where he can socialize with other talented artists. I imagined that he would be attached at the hip to his sketchbook. He likes to be in nature. Caves, specifically. When he is in nature, he is fully focused on it. I think he even said he doesn’t bring his sketchbook, I’m not sure. I thought the key to his great work was an obsessive attachment to his identity as an artist. Rather, it was the ability to be fully present and inspired.

I saw a chiropractor this week, for the first time in about 8 years. That time, the chiropractor did and said absolutely nothing helpful and I resented the cost of “self care.” So it took me this long to work up the desperation to go back. I crack my neck constantly, I sit crooked in my chair, and things generally feel misaligned. This week’s chiropractor asked me why I think that is. My best guess? I sit at my desk eight or so hours a day because I think I’m supposed to, and about halfway through the day I begin to fully collapse and melt into my desk.

The doctor spent a lot of time discussing how lifestyle creates health, and health creates a positive flow of energy. He asked:

Do you need to be at your desk eight hours a day?
Probably not.
Does it benefit your work to be happy and healthy?
Yes.
What if instead of sitting at your desk for so many hours you exercised and sought inspiration and lived life and rested and then you came back to your desk the next day rested and focused and unblocked and created your best work in less time because you were healthy and happy and because you finished great work in less time you could repeat it all again.

A healthier and happier cycle of life and creation, a positive feedback loop. Putting it into practice requires some transcendence of societal norms and structures like the 9-5. Most of us don’t need to work eight hours a day, but how would we possibly find validation and purpose as productive members of society if we didn't. What would we do with ourselves when everyone else is at their desk eight hours a day? How would we pass the time and what would we have to show for it?

I’m determined to find out.