How to be Creative

This goes in combination with my last post about focusing. It also functions as me trying to be positive despite many my many woes and frustrations currently involved with my project.

In my documentary class the other day we were learning about Dopamine (not sure if I spelled that right). It is the chemical in your brain that causes you to crave new information. In a way it can be very useful because it helps you to want to learn new things. But in other ways it is not so useful, because not all information is important or worthwhile. For example, dopamine could very well be blamed for an hour of youtube watching, when you only meant to watch one video in the first place. This is something I know I've been a victim to because of all the additional videos listed down the right side of every youtube page. This is all information, though most of the time, not very useful.



Dopamine in this way, can actually be quite addictive because it will take hold of your attention and keep it during every second that you allow it. The trouble with this addiction is that your brain is not allowed any down time. Not down-time as in relaxing and watching a movie (because that's still consuming information), but down-time as in not doing anything. It is only when you stop consuming information and allow your mind to process and think for itself that you can begin to create.

This is something I struggle with because I feel that I must be doing something, or getting something done at all hours of the day. I have been making the effort for some time now to break this habit, and I have Julia to thank for a lot of it because she is always good at getting me to calm down and take a break from time to time. Especially this weekend through taking time to simply think or draw or play, I have noticed how much more creative my thoughts are, and how I am coming up with and developing stories in my head, much as I used to, but haven't done nearly this entire semester.

Now to tie this into my project. My project is a creative project. Therefore it requires creativity. Sadly, I do not think much creativity has gone into it so far. A lot of the preparation process has been overwhelmed by technical details and paperwork, not to blame our class, because these things are important too, but I realize that I also need to be committing more time to the creative side of my project. Maybe I won't have time for this until I get into the field... but I really hope I can make time before then to visualize in my mind what it is I want to create with this project. Even if it's just thinking about it for five minutes at a time while riding my bike to or from school, it could do my project a lot of good.