I guess this bird wasn’t happy at all with me.
“Dude, it’s sunday and you are spoiling my afternoon siesta on a tree!”
Yes, I forgot. It’s sunday and here we are, again. Chasing lights, nature and what have this hill has. Including, a cave entrance last seen 12 years ago.
Sunday, bloody sunday!
A friend asked me this question. I never considered myself a person who generates so many (creative ) ideas so this came up as a surprise to me. I answered it anyway, thinking it might be my time to let others “steal” my idea of generating new ideas.
Early on in my life, I’ve accepted I wasn’t someone whose mind burst with light bulb of ideas. I don’t have a knack or gift of inventing something unique every time I snap my fingers into it. What I’m good at, is connecting experiences and ideas of others, to build new ones.
I’m fascinated with listening and studying others to answers the many questions I have in my mind. I can, for example easily connect person A’s idea with person B’s experiences, to find solutions to my own problem. To generate a new body of idea or solutions, I have to connect the dots of my experiences sometimes, and more often that of others.
Every artist gets asked the question,
Where do you get your ideas?’
The honest artist answers, ‘I steal them.'”- Austin Kleon, author
“I steal them” as what most creative genius biographies would tell us, mine is partly like that. I read and read about other peoples idea to solve a problem. I collect solutions, pick the more plausible ones I can work with, and improve on it. Most of the time, solutions I collect won’t work for me, so I innovate or tweak. I don’t think my ideas or solutions are novel or will work something great. I’m just happy it works or it is something new for me.
Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something.- Steve Jobs
Sungha Jung, Lady Antebellum, John Legend and yes, on Spotify. These music stars pushed me to grab an acoustic guitar some twenty forgotten years after music quit on me.
I was born in a family of good musicians and singers. My mom was a terrific singer in a church choir. Together with her siblings, they are a mainstay on every musical event in their church. My cousins are also terrific at playing musical instruments- from guitars to piano to drums, and all self taught musicians.
So, I may have a musical endowment somewhere in my genes after all. It only need to be awaken and “fine” tuned.
I was barred by my mom from playing a guitar before because she believe it would influence my studies negatively. That, plus the fact that I basically don’t have a dime to spend for learning music, made me abandon the liking for music and musical instruments altogether.
Enter this millenium of ipods, mp3 players, online streaming of music and videos. Now that I found time to rekindle music once again, I bought a guitar. I thought, I had a thing for music or playing guitars or drum. I probably have the worst vocals in my entire family of musicians, but technology nowadays, could almost help you learn everything!
So during a trip to Cebu, I sat down and interviewed a guitar maker/factory owner on the basics of buying a guitar. I was a kid asking an expert, and my interest, is overflowing. Once more, I’m starting to learn guitar and todays internet technology, just made it easier for me! I will share the beginners tips given to me on my next post!
I've been writing about continuous improvement, habits and productivity since 2007.
