Turning 30 And Trying To Stay Curious
I don’t have an editor for this personal blog. Please send corrections and complaints to chris.gates@techcrunch.com. Thanks! - A
Against my will I turned 30 earlier this week. Celebrations were rapturous.
I got up roughly on time that morning, fed the dogs, and made it to the coffee spot before Liza got home from a night shift. She went to bed for the day and I went to work. That afternoon we got to hang for an hour before she went back to work, but before I was done. So she went to the hospital and I went back to the desk.
It was a fitting day’s activities; this is the person I’ve happily molted into during my later 20s. My personal life is clear, leaving lots of good time to focus on work. Especially when Liza is on nights. (It’s the last month of them, thank everything.)
But somewhere in the middle of working lots I realized that I haven’t been very creative lately. I write as part of my job, and I did start this little blog for fun. But aside from reading and writing, my creative output has stalled to an effective zero. (And reading doesn’t count as output; it is fuel.)
Back before my startup failed and I wound up a writer, I was a musician. That was my core identity until college. But it’s been hard to try to pick trumpet back up (brass is a time consuming hobby, as you have to keep muscles in shape), meaning that I’ve done nothing on the music front for 9 months.
So I’ve given myself a challenge of sorts. I’m going to paint five paintings, and write five songs over the next few weeks. The rules are as follows:
Each painting must be unique and employ physical paints.
Each piece of music can be digitally created, but must be completely distinct.
Each painting and each song may be fucking awful.
I read a riff once about how if you ask a child if they can draw a certain something, or sing a particular song, the answer is always yes. But by the time we become adults, we’ll balk instead, saying that we aren’t good artists or good singers.
Well, I can’t paint for shit and I’ve written very little music. But I decided to force myself into it. As accountability, I’ll share pictures of the paintings here later (you can get emails of the % of these posts I send out in that way here), and will also post the music. I haven’t started the latter category, but have completed two paintings.
Holy hell, painting is hard.
Anyway, I know having an early-life crisis is well and cliche and good, but now that I’m Officially Old and married I think it’s the wrong time to get even more boring and hermetic.
Now, instead, I’m old, married, and a terrible painter. That has a good ring to it.