Why I’m recording a daily podcast instead of hunting wooly mammoths

I’ve been enjoying reading Hugh MacLeod’s book, Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity, this week.

A no-nonsense approach to creating

Hugh has a no-nonsense approach to creativity. He basically just gets on with the business of creating in his own time in his own way and tells us all to do the same. He’s someone worth listening to as he clearly “walks the talk” with a huge level of success.

One essay from the book struck a particular cord with me. In it Hugh talks about how primal human dissatisfaction is, how it is basically a survival mechanism. Because we are dissatisfied we a more likely to get up and go and hunt wooly mammoths. Because we hunt wooly mammoths we get to eat. Dissatisfaction fills our stomachs.

Still hunting mammoths

That same primal dissatisfaction pushed mankind on beyond mammoth hunting. We are never happy so we constantly look for ways to make things better by striving, inventing and creating. When we are moved to grab a sketchbook and pen, because something doesn’t feel right if we don’t we are still basically hunting wooly mammoths.

Of course, mammoth hunting took a lot of energy. Today, metaphorical mammoth hunting still can demand a lot of us and that can be a problem, especially if we’re limited in terms of energy. That primal urge to fight dissatisfaction is with us all, but sometimes we just can’t run after the mammoth (or pick up our sketchbook and pen), that can leave us feeling both dissatisfied and impotent. Not a great combination. A perfect recipe for depression in fact.

Only having the energy to watch the hunt

That’s where I’m at a lot of the time at the moment. I want to be out hunting wooly mammoths (or at least writing and drawing!) but I only have the energy much of time to sit and watch the hunt. That’s frustrating, but there is little I can do about it.

It helps (a little!) to think that my feelings of dissatisfaction are somehow gene-deep, that no matter how much I sit with them, tell myself that I’ve plenty to be grateful for, they probably won’t go away. I can stop wasting energy on trying to feel better about the urge to create when I haven’t got the energy to create and just accept it’s a fact of life.

Finding one small manageable thing to focus on

Instead I can look around for one small thing to focus on that I can manage. If I can’t hunt wooly mammoths, I can perhaps find the artistic equivalent of hunting something smaller. Often that is making small drawings, but sometimes that is still too much.

At the moment, when all else feels too much like chasing after a wooly mammoth, I am managing to record a very short daily podcast. They are part of my new membership package here on Sustainably Creative, but this week they are available for everyone to listen to. I hope you’ll tune in.