A talk about original thinkers that's actually interesting to original thinkers

I was taking a break from a writing project this morning, and wanted to listen to "something smart."  So I searched Ted Talks.  Plenty of  "smart" in TED talks, and a fair amount of dumb, too, in some cases.  This was the first one that popped up, the algorithm's pick from my recent searches.  Actually the first one that popped up was a TED Talk called, "Let's Talk About Porn."  I'm like, "I haven't looked up any porn recently, this algorithm must be female, she's bringing up shit from a while back."  But Porn didn't sound like a topic I wanted to hear a Ted Talk about right now.  So I looked at  the videos in the side bar, and this one was first. 

Initially, I wanted to skip it, thinking, "I'm already an original thinker."  I spent my childhood thinking up all kinds of amazing ideas, and then not acting on any of them.  Classic daydreamer with low self-esteem.  Then, I got into BMX freestyle at age 16, and a couple of years later, had this idea to start a zine.  It seemed an interesting enough idea, that I stuck with it, and actually published my first BMX freestyle zine.  It really sucked.  But I met a bunch of really good freestylers in the San Francisco Bay Area because of it.  They thought it was halfway decent.  So I made another one the next month.  And the next month.  M zines got better, I did 11 issues, got written up in FREESTYLIN' magazine, and then hired to work at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines.  The first zine, one of the first ideas I actually stuck with, changed the course of my life... for the better. 

I became a part of the BMX industry, and was suddenly surrounded by guys who had lots of cool ideas, and then acted on some of those ideas.  BMX, and especially BMX freestyle, was super entrepreneurial in those early days.  I met Bob Osborn, Scot Breithaupt, R.L. Osborn, Bob Morales, Bob Haro, Don Hoffman, Chris Moeller, Rick Moliterno, Spike Jonze, Brad McDonald, Steve Crandall, and many others.  Being around people like that, acting on my ideas became a natural thing after a while.

My point is, despite my lack of financial success, I've done a lot of cool shit over the years.  A TED Talk about "original thinkers," didn't seem all that interesting at first.  But I gave it a shot.  This is actually a really great talk, and this guy's really funny, and a good speaker, as well.  Check it out. 

Elizabeth Gilbert's epic TED Talk on creativity and genius

I've read Elizabeth's book, Eat, Pray, Love (not a paid link), and it was incredible.  Definitely her journey, both around the world in a physical sense, but even more so, as a human in the personal, the intellectual, the spiritual, and the emotional sense, was a period of her life struggled through, and captured brilliantly in her book.  As she said in the TED Talk, it would be a tough act to follow for any creative person. 

Yet, she tapped into what ever she tapped into while writing her book, her daemon, her genius, again, and wrote and gave this epic TED Talk.  I have lost count of how many times I've watched this, including just now, before writing these two or three paragraphs, to encourage you to watch it. 

I've spent the 47 years I remember, of my 53 on Earth (this time around), struggling with, and learning to work with, my own creative process.  My process, at times is something like the poet she speaks of.  When I wrote poems a lot, I thought over my basic ideas, and soon learned to go on with other things, and forget all about the poem.  Poems, in particular, come when they want to, or perhaps more accurately, when they are needed.  I, too, often felt a poem was coming shortly ahead of time.  My metaphor was much less pleasant, though.  Poems gurgled around inside me for a bit, and then, much like diarrhea, suddenly surged with the need to escape. 

If I didn't sit down and write them right then, I lost them.  If I put a poem off for ten minutes, it would come out much different than if I wrote it when the urge first came.  If I didn't write a poem down, the spark of the poem went on to wherever poems go, and left me behind.  I've not written quite a few poems.  But I've also captured hundreds, somewhere around 400 to 500, between 1987 and 2008.  And I lost almost all of them, moving to North Carolina, in 2008.  That's a story for another day. 

Since 1998, I've been carrying a simple, black, Bic, medium, ball point pen in my pocket, just to catch poems and other creative ideas.  I feel incomplete without that pen.  I usually have a folded up piece of paper as well, which I make my "Stufftado" list on every morning, as well.  I'll unfold that to write on, or find any other piece of paper around.  If there's no paper, I'll write on my hand.

Since losing all my poems, I've only written about 4 or 5 poems in 11 years.  But I get other ideas.  Just last night, sleeping at a large bus stop, as the homeless man I currently am, I woke up with an idea about a drawing I had in mind.  I sleep in my clothes, on a piece of cardboard, on top of concrete.  My pen is in my pocket all night.  I know my process well enough now, that I pulled my pen out of my pocket, unfolded that piece of paper, and wrote a few words that will likely be on my finished drawing.  I don't remember what those words are.  The spark comes, I write it down, and then I go back to sleep, in instances like that.  In the morning, I often forget the incident even happened, until I think about something related, and it jogs my memory.  That was the case today.  I forgot about writing that idea down, those few words, until I was halfway through this blog post.  That's a part of my creative process. We all have one, and it's a continual mystery, and we each must work to learn, adapt to, and work with , our own personal creative process, if we want to create anything. 

This is my wordy way of saying, "Watch this amazing talk by Elizabeth Gilbert, let it soak in, and watch it whenever it calls to you."  Keep working to learn, and work with, your own creative process.  There's a higher reason we are drawn to do certain projects, creative work, and to do it at certain times.  Follow your own sparks, and then do the work involved. 

Amanda Palmer- "The Art of Asking TED Talk"

I "discovered" Amanda Palmer back in late 2012, I think, when I saw her in CSPAN and she was asked to play her song "Ukulele Anthem."  I loved that weird song at that point, a dark time in my own life, and while I never became a huge fan of her music, I found her way or working in the world as a creative person fascinating.  At some point, I ran across this TED Talk, and it's become one of my favorites.  She later wrote a book called The Art of Asking, and she had a great "Authors at Google" talk about the book, which is a much longer and more in depth dive into these same ideas.  Great stuff.