Consume Less, Create (Blog) More

This is a kind of resolution. Maybe a mid-year resolution since the ship has sailed on the good ol' New Year's resolution and I'm not going to wait around until 2016 to start this. This resolution is, however, related to my New Year's Resolution.

Consume Less
At the beginning of 2015 I made a resolution to consume less and create more. I pride myself in being a creator and it's very much what keeps me engaged as a member of society. I found myself getting "sucked" into television shows, video games, and general content much more for longer periods of time than the amount of time I spent creating new content. 

Although I obviously think consuming content has a lot of value-- I don't create exclusively for selfish reasons-- I do think creators often get stuck in a rut of consuming too much. I really appreciate a well driven story, fantastic performances, and edgy cinematography; so, I find myself watching content that has these things for hours and hours every day. It's easy to write it off as "studying your craft" as a creator, but after a certain point.... it's not! 

Let's be very clear. You NEED to study your craft in any way possible, but the proven way of doing that is to create. Very few successful creators consume considerable amounts of similar content as "research." Some very successful artists even suggest studying something other than your art to get better at it. Yes! Do that! One thing is for certain, I need to follow that advice more.

Create More
So this blog post, and the following posts will be the second step in that resolution. I have significantly cut back on how much content I consume-- with the occasional binge--relapse. So what's the next step? Create more.

This year hasn't been completely wasted; I have created a considerable amount. Most have been for other people's projects though. This is a valuable part of the puzzle, but I'm still not feeling creatively satisfied from it. Between my work on Blood On The Leaves, Tracing Outlines, and Music Videos I've been plenty busy without all those 10-season long TV shows and open world video games. My ability to sort though my thoughts and ideas has been limited though.

This blog is going to be exactly that. A combination of thoughts and ideas; if it happens to be informative, then good. I have a series of topics ready to go-- a tactic I highly suggest if you're thinking about blogging. These topics-- much like my creative work-- are loosely tied together and certainly won't fair well traffic-wise against bigger hyper-focused blogs. I'm not too worried about that though.

So here is the goal: A blog post every week for at least 6 months. Make the posts as engaging and informative as possible while staying personal. Have fun with it. If someone reading would like to take on a similar goal, I'd love to read your blog (let's keep each other accountable.)

Wish me luck!

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Expect a blog post from me every week for the next few months at the least. You can tune in via Twitter, Facebook, or Email if you want to follow these posts. If not, stop back at any time and find something interesting to read.