One example of this is my entire writing career. In the beginning when I first started writing, I sucked. I also didn’t know what to write about. I made a commitment to write something every single day, just to sit in front of a word doc and type something, just to say I wrote something that day. This lead to a number of other opportunities in my life that wouldn’t have been there otherwise. Among which are my podcast, my involvement with evolver, my fiancé, my daughter, and I’m sure some other things I’m forgetting.

A while back I started taking pictures of random things in my day to day life. I took pictures of the sky, of brick walls, cacti, sidewalks, trash cans, graffiti, and a number of other things. These pictures have since been used as inspiration at times, mental escapes at others. I’ve also used them in some of my designs. One out of every two designs I’ve done since I’ve become a designer has a picture I took in it.

When I first purchased my iPad I made a commitment to draw everyday. For the first month that I had my iPad I did just that, I drew at least one thing everyday. This had a couple of effects on me. First, the most obvious, I continued to get better at drawing everyday. Second I was happy each day, drawing and creating makes me happy. Third people started to like my art. And finally, it lead to my art show. Half of the pieces I showed at my art show were drawings that came out of my drawing everyday phase on my iPad. I’ve also since found a local art shop to start carrying my iPad art.

In each of these cases my commitment to creating everyday lead to unexpected production of value and new opportunities. These experiences are not isolated for only me to experience. Creativity doesn’t hit walls, it hits rivers, with lots of forks. Anything you do whether it’s photography, sewing, drawing, writing, sculpting, dancing, filming, or whatever else, will turn into unforeseen opportunity. You will also get better at it each day, quicker at it, and you will enjoy it more with time, not less, I promise. Creating for the sake of creating is the best kind. There is no aspiration tied to it, so no room for let down. There is the good feeling that always comes from making something from nothing. And there is the surprise opportunities that come with it. Everyone loves a good surprise. So tomorrow, take ten pictures, or draw one drawing, write one page, just do something and continue to do it for the rest of the month. Create it just for creations sake and wait to see what kind of opportunity the universe gives you.

First, since a very young age I had decided that I wanted to be an “artist” when I grew up. I liked to draw a lot, and I was better than average at it since age five. As I started to get older I continued to draw, but I was never dedicated to it. At one point my mom, when I was age fifteen, set up a apprenticeship for me with her friend that was a working artist. I spent one day with him, taping off and painting signs. I hated it, it was a lot of work, and he was broke all of the time. This was when a stereotype hit home, the whole starving artist stereotype. Writers and artists are supposed to be broke, they are doing these things because they love them, not for the money, and they have to suffer for the things they love.

Another thing that is commonly accepted as truth in our society today, and my whole life growing up, is that not everyone is creative. Whenever I would draw something my friends would say things like “I wish I could draw like that” or “I’m not creative at all”. First off I still don’t think I draw that amazingly, I just take the time to actually draw, and second everyone is creative. Humans have survived as long as we have because we are creative beings.

All creativity is taking thoughts and producing something in the material world from them. It can be very basic things such as needing to store some clothes, but you don’t have a dresser. There are a number of solutions to this problem. Some less creative than others such as boxes, or trash bags. Then you can take a step up from there and go on freecycle, or craigslist, and get yourself a dresser probably for free. Or you can donate the clothes, pick up a dresser from the same thrift store you donate to, paint it, maybe change the design a bit and then sell it on etsy. These are all examples of creativity, and nothing is stopping any of us from doing any of these things. It just takes some action to produce something from our thoughts, and don’t try telling me you don’t think.

Often times the only thing holding someone back from creative output is their own unwillingness to take some action. We all have fantasies about things we could do. Remember when you were a kid and you played make believe? Creativity is trying out your make believe ideas, making it happen with action. If you read this I want you to produce the next thing you think about. If it’s just some thoughts on a movie, write a review, if it’s wondering what something looks like draw it, if it’s thinking about traveling somewhere write a short story about traveling there, then draw a picture of the place, or if it’s storing some clothes, get on craigslist and find yourself a dresser to paint. I don’t care about how good the review, drawing, or dresser look afterwards, just try to do something you like, and you know what you like, so it’s easy.

Let’s get back to this idea of being an artist, but being broke. Its nonsense. If you’re reading this then you have access to the Internet. Since you have access to the Internet you have access to eBay, craigslist, etsy, deviant art, 99designs, helium, crowdstring, kickstarter, and hundreds of other websites that create opportunities to be financially rewarded for your creative output. You also have access to your own website, and software like wordpress’s, which allows you to make a site super easy, anyone could do it. You could make a podcast on podomatic, and have advertisements, or set it up for donations. On top of all of this you have access to Facebook, twitter, myspace, yahoo, aol, and hundreds of other social networking sites to promote your other places where you sell your creative output, or give it away with sponsors on the site, or podcast. You can set up google alerts, so that everyday you receive an email with the top search results on google for the topic of your choice, such as make money online. Everything I just listed is free research, free advertisement, free product space, and all it takes is some action. You can be paid to be a writer, sell your prints, get paid to be a graphic designer, or get paid to have advertisements on your podcast. I know all of these things can work, because I’ve done them.

Start a blog talking about whatever you’re interested in, then start a companion podcast, design your own logo for it all. All three of those things take action, that’s it. We are all interested in something, whether it’s cooking, cars, sports, or sex. And you know what, there are plenty of other people out there interested in it also, who are willing and able to take in what we produce.

On top of everything I’m talking about here, creating something from nothing is one of the most fun, rewarding things you can possibly do. Like I mentioned earlier human beings are creators, we put things around us together, to manifest ideas into realities. You are creative, and you don’t have to be a starving artist. These ideas need to be dispelled, they do nothing but hold people back. Can you imagine a world where everyone goes through their daily lives being supported by their creativity? I can and I’m taking some action to help create it. Why don’t you take some action and help create it with me?

I can give you an example of a simple to do exercise that will show the value of commitment and repetition. Make up an imaginary business that you want to start. Whether it’s a website, store, telemarketing, whatever it is, now make up a name. Start with your first idea and write it down, then brainstorm other ideas, write those down also. I’m not asking you to labor over this either, just do what comes to mind, get yourself in that thinking space. Now keep writing names down. I’m guessing that your first name won’t be the best one. Now think of symbols in life that represent things you want this imaginary business to represent. A light bulb for ideas, barbell for strength, brain for intelligence, circuit board for technology. Now sketch an idea for your businesses logo, then sketch another and another, keep sketching until you reach at least ten ideas, using the previously thought out symbols as inspiration. Now I don’t expect you to come up with a brilliant logo or business name from this exercise, but I am willing to bet that your first ideas in any of these cases will not be the best. If you were to do this exercise once a week, your first week would also not produce your best ideas.

This process is the same for anything you try to do. You get better at it with time. The other key element of this equation is effort. Chances are if you do the logo exercise mentioned above and then do it a year later your skills will not improve much. But if you do the same exercise a week later you will probably see some improvement. Or if you do it each day by the end of the week you will see a vast improvement.

Creativity is like any other thought we have in the way that our brains intake vast amounts of information, identify a pattern, and then produce a cognitive thought from the pattern. Where creativity varies a bit is the information is a bit slower on the uptake. Where most of our information intake for creativity comes from is personal experience. If we’ve tried playing a guitar then we have that reference for how sounds are made on it. Once we gain more and more experience with playing the guitar we have more and more information to put into our brain, to construct patterns and produce richer thoughts, which lead to our creative output.

The foundation of life is commitments. A person that works five days a week and is not in a relationship plus does not have any hobbies probably identifies largely with their job. Others might say about that person that their job is their life. Also in that persons mind the thing that is most presently on it is their job, because that is their only commitment. When you look at a person who is married and has three kids a large amount of their commitments are to their families, they would be called a “family man”. A good amount of what this person thinks about is probably providing for their families, this might also lead to them thinking quite a bit about their job as the source of this production. In order for us to break these habits and start to create value out of our hobbies and creativity we need to make a commitment to them, so we begin to identify with them.

Once we have made a commitment to something it starts to become a more important part of our life. If I’m thinking about my commitment to write at least three things a week I will spend more of my intellectual energy thinking about things to write, which inevitably leads to more writing produced. My writing has also evolved incredibly from the rudimentary state of which it started two years ago. Here is a link to something I wrote two years ago if you’re interested in seeing how much I’ve grown as a writer:

http://www.evolver.net/user/chainsaw_mccloud/blog/paid_dues_inner_universe

I also identify myself as a writer now, which allows for more people I know to identify me as writer, which adds to the overall value of my writing. People are more likely to read something a “writer” wrote than something that a “non writer” wrote. The only thing that identifies me as a writer more than anyone else is the commitment I’ve made to it. This applies to everything as well. I made some business cards saying I was a graphic designer and made a commitment to it, since then I’ve gotten some graphic design work. I drew everyday for two months and had an art show, made a commitment to being an artist, and the art show was more successful than I had ever imagined. Now I could have done those thirty some odd drawings over the course of a year, drawing only when I felt so inspired, but I don’t think that the level of creativity from the first to the thirtieth would have changed as drastically as it did in the thirty days, nor would I have had that art show and identified myself as an artist.

Something I have yet to mention here is that you could have never drawn or written something in your life, but then make a commitment to it and become a writer or an artist. Four months before that link to my old writing above was when I wrote the first thing I pretty much ever wrote, I’m including school here, I quit doing anything in school at the ripe age of nine. I never touched an adobe program or practiced anything resembling graphic design until last September, now I’m generating income through it and being told I’m one of the best students in my design classes. I can write now because I made a commitment to it, and use adobe software and create graphic designs because I made a commitment.

Another thing to consider here is that I go to school full time, I work full time, and I have a three month old baby girl with my fiance, plus I’m a step father to a four year old. If I can find the time to make a commitment to writing, a commitment to drawing, commitment to podcasting, and graphic design, anyone can find the time to make these commitments. My creativity didn’t come naturally, it came from lots of information and experience, with a healthy dose of commitment. You can be whatever it is you want to be, but first comes the commitment to it.

Get creative,
Chris

First we have an interview by Jonathan Talat Phillips with Jonas Elrod. Jonas has been in the film industry for a number of years working with many big names. He had an experience where he “woke up” to how amazing and unknown the universe, and life really is. He recently released a film titled “Wake Up”. You can learn more about it at his website: http://wakeupthefilm.com/.

Then I interviewed Virginia Paris, from Evolver Asheville. Virginia has her own radio show called Systemic Effect, you can find it streaming on www.mainfm.org. She also runs an intuitive reading website www.trickstergoddess.com. You can learn more about Evolver Asheville events by going on Evolver.net and joining the group.

Last we had Virginia Jester interviewing Starhawk. Starhawk has recently released a film called “Permaculture: the Growing Edge”. Starhawk also has a Evolver intensive coming up on her last book “The Fifth Sacred Thing”. You can learn more about the Evolver intensive at www.realitysandwich.com and www.evolver.net. Virginia Jester also hosts her own podcast called “The Empress Project”, her most recent interview is with Jonathan Talat Phillips talking about a lot of his work including Evolver and outside of Evolver. You can also learn more about Starhawk and her film at http://www.starhawk.org/

Also be sure to check out my new project “Designing Chris” you can find lots more about is at www.designingchris.com.

Contact me anytime about anything you feel like talking about, feedback, or questions.

chris_by_design@yahoo.com

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001841755668

twitter: @designingchris

Thank you guys for tuning in once again,

Its Our World to Change,

Chris

I saw an interview once with Ira Glass from This American Life and he talked about how we all have good taste. He was talking about how we can identify music we think is good, or art, video, design, many different things we think are good we can identify, but it can get frustrating when we can’t reproduce it. He also talked about how long it takes to do things that you think are as good as the stuff you think is good. Now he was a successful radio personality at a very young age, but he felt like he was bad at it for the first eight years he was doing it. I think that what he was talking about is why people like my friend don’t think they are creative. Of course we aren’t going to be as good as our favorite artists when we start, probably not even for years.

The two most important, relevant to what I’m talking about, things in that story are 1 the fact that good taste is important and it will let you know where your headed, and 2 he was successful before he thought he was good.

Often times when I start to do something new, new art, making music, websites, or anything else I’ve done, I realize that it is no where near what I want it to be, but I still receive positive feedback from other people. Most of the time the inspiration in doing something for me, or for most people, comes from seeing someone else do something like it and really liking it. I know that when I do something new that I will not be half as good as I want it to be, but I also think usually that I can find some people that will like it. I also know that if I continue to do it I will get better at it. Not only are we our own harshest critics, we are essentially the least important when it comes to creating value. Other people decided the value of the things we create, not us.

I know that I can be a better writer, I know I can be a better artist, graphic designer, typographer, web designer, podcaster, social networker, I can be better at all of these things. I have however been able to reach a fairly decent sized audience with my writing, and inspired a lot of them. At my first art show ever I sold ten pieces. I’ve designed 4 logos, three business cards, and a couple posters, in just a couple months. I have been referred to as the next typographic genius, which I’m not buying just yet. I have two websites, the second of which is much better than the first. I have a fifty thousand person per month audience on my podcast. And finally I’ve been able to connect with thousands of people through social networking sites. I’ve had some success with all of these things, and I would rate my ability in them at just the seedling stage, I have lots of room to grow.

Each one of the things that I do now, that I attempt to produce value with in my daily life are things that I like. They are also things I pay attention to. There is some design I like, and some design I don’t. There are some podcasts I like, some I don’t. With each thing I do I’ve consumed enough of it to be somewhat of a critic. Everyone has things they like, even my uncreative friend. Now all of us could try to do something in the field we like, it might not be even close to as good as we want it to be, but it will probably be good to less frequent consumers than us of the thing we like. We will also get better at that thing with time, and as we continue to get better, it will continue to appeal to more and more people.

If you regularly follow television shows you could start a blog about them, or a podcast about them. With the accessibility of the Internet and technology in this day and age anyone can do these two things. Once you have these things of value you can start to promote them. One out of every two people in America has a facebook account, and one out of every twelve in the world. Twitter is also blowing up. You get a twitter and Facebook account to then promote your blog and your website. Usually people know people that they talk to about their interests. This is where you start to build your audience. The first people that read my blogs are people that like talking to me. Then they tell people about my website, and if those people like it they tell people. This is obviously a process, you won’t be successful over night. Once you have established these things of value it’s then your job to continue to increase their value. In the example of a TV blog this involves more television shows, and more critiquing. As you continue you to develop your taste in shows you continue to realize why you like them more and more. Your blog and podcast will get better. Maybe with enough time passed you write a youtube show. Maybe the writing of your show inspires you to learn animation software and produce it yourself. Maybe you now have a huge audience and they love the show, then the show becomes a viral hit. That opens up a lot of opportunities. Obviously this is hypothetical, but things like this happen all of the time on the Internet.

What I’m essentially talking about here is the roots of my process. You take something that you like, something you’re interested in, and then learn how to create value out of that interest. Another part of that hypothetical scenario is running with it. Part of the designing life process is fully immersing yourself into that interest. Every interest has thousands of ways that it can be approached, and thanks to technology and the availability of information these days anyone can easily research the thousands of ways that their interests are being taken to a level of value.

There is not one thing I’m doing today that I would be doing had I not followed a process to get here, and had the initiative and commitment to do it. All of my talents today, and the things of value I have created came from initiative and interest. One thing that it helps to realize is that when you start in with initiative and interest you can never guess where you will end up.

Please comment below and share your stories of fostered creativity.

Get creative,

Chris

On October 25th 2008 I had a life changing experience, along with this experience came an unbelievable thirst for knowledge. At the time I had a desktop at home, I used it for a little Internet surfing, for a little bit of research and to follow a couple websites. The websites being evolver.net, disinfo.com, and realitysandwich.com, plus my social networking sites. In April of 09 I purchased the laptop with only the intentions of writing more, and having the freedom to write not just at home. I had a job that allowed me the freedom to do whatever I want all day long as long as I’m there, I still have this job, I’m a piercer. In the beginning I wrote once a day for at leas the first two months I had it. I forced myself to write no matter what. I wrote some good, well thought out ideas, and then some crap, such as a short story about a chair. My writing however improved dramatically. This was the first period in my life that I had ever really tried to write anything. So while my ideas and content were good, my grammar vocabulary and spelling were awful. I kept writing and writing and actually got some feedback, people were enjoying it. Some people were even getting inspired by it. All it took was that I got a cheap laptop and made a commitment.

Next I started to get more involved and interested in both evolver.net and disinfo.com. I became friends with a disinfo podcaster, Raymond Wiley, and I wrote mostly on Evolver. Evolver launched a person to person aspect of their site, meetings once a month called spores. I attended a spore in San Francisco and loved it, I came back to Sacramento to start up a spore of my own. This is where another aspect of my laptop came in handy, I was intaking an incredible amount of new information everyday. This gave me the ability to host these meetings and be able to have two hours worth of presentation on any topic. Becoming a Sporganizer, as we call ourselves now also plugged me in with a network of other incredible people.

In November of 2009 just six months after buying my laptop I met Virginia Jester on evolver.net. Something instantly connected me to her. We spent all of our free time over the next three weeks talking to each other all day online, and we both had an incredible amount of free time. We talked on skype for hours and hours. She had her own podcast “the Empress Project” and she still has it. I was a guest on her podcast three times and then she moved up to Sacramento from the bay area.

At the same time Evolver was in a bit of a crisis, it was on the verge of going under. I connected with Daniel Pinchbeck through Evolver and offered to help more. He asked how I could help and I tossed out a handful of ideas, from social networking, setting up podcast interviews for Daniel, someone doing a podcast, and a few other things. He asked me to act on them, so I did, and I had a good amount of success right off the bat. All of this working from my laptop. I talked to Daniel a week later and he then told me to do the podcast. So I started doing the podcast, I now have fifty thousand hits a month on the podcast.

Paralleling my Evolver involvement and success I was getting more heavily involved in the most amazing relationship of my life. Before we moved in together we were somehow managing to see each other three weeks out of every month from one hundred miles apart. Shortly after being together Virginia got pregnant. We both were surprisingly amazingly excited. Virginia had one daughter that was almost four and never wanted another kid, I have never wanted kids, yet here we were both super excited. Virginia moved up here and we continued to get closer and closer.

Just eight months after living together we had been through enough to span ten years together. We had our beautiful baby girl Sage Munroe Hopkins, we have become closer than we’ve ever been to anyone else in our lives, and I had developed and amazing relationship with my step daughter Emma. Through my work with Evolver I had met and talked with some of my heroes and been on stage for a panel discussion with three best selling authors in front of two hundred people fielding questions. Also on top of all of this I had started going back to school to study graphic design, of which I did all of my homework on my laptop. So how could my iPad possibly pay off more than my laptop?

Going to school full time, working full-time, having one baby girl and a almost five year old step daughter, plus a fiance to have a fulfilling relationship with, makes me an incredibly busy man. Needless to say my most valuable thing is time. I also don’t own a car and ride my bike everywhere by choice, which means anything I bring with me has to be carried on my back. It seems impossible that under these circumstances that my creative output would even be able to stay at the same level right? Well since I’ve owned my iPad my creative output has sky rocketed.

I went into this purchase much like my laptop purchase. I wanted the laptop for only a couple reasons and I got a whole lot more. I wanted the iPad to be able to draw digitally with a stylus for my design work, and I wanted to have something to manage my schedule and four email accounts.

One of the first things that was in my mind after I had gotten the iPad was how to monetize my new skills as a designer. One of the first things I did with my iPad was set up a Etsy store and a deviant art profile. I had the time to manage both of these things now because I have an iPad, it was a bit more effort on the laptop. Much like I did with writing when I got my laptop i started drawing everyday on my iPad. Through my new found motivation to produce art I decided I wanted to have an art show. I was able to set one up shortly. I did half of the art at my show on my iPad. The reason this is so important to me is that my childhood dream was to be an artist, to sell my art, and because of my iPad this has been realized.

I also wanted to use it as a portfolio to help me get more design work. One night I ran into an old friend a burger stand. We had the usual small talk of what’s been up. I pulled out my iPad and showed him all of the art I had been doing and my graphic design portfolio. I even gave him a card, which has my etsy store on it, so may not have happened minus the iPad. He emailed me later that night about doing a logo for the new art gallery he was opening, I was able to respond immediately. We met three days later. While I was waiting for him at a coffee shop I drew some ideas for the logo on my iPad. I showed them to him he tossed out some of his ideas, I redrew it, I got the job.

I started a website in July 2010, but I haven’t done anything to it for months. I also haven’t written much in months. I’ve been too busy with school and work to spend the time it takes to manage a site on my laptop, and to sit next to an outlet and write. In my spare time with my iPad I started researching more ways to make money doing things I love, writing being one of them. I also spend some free time checking out apps for the iPad occasionally. I found an awesome site www.stevepavilina.com, where he talks about building systems that generate income after putting lots of up front work, and then little back end work. His main income source was his blog based website. Through the wordpress app on my iPad I could manage a website wirelessly from anywhere, I just had to start writing again. I stewed on the idea for a few days thinking of a site I wanted to start. It came to me. By following design processes in school I came up with visual images I couldn’t have possibly made without the process. What if I could adapt a design process for life? This is where Designing Chris came from. I started the site, www.designingchris.com, I started filling it with content from my iPad, wherever, and whenever I had the inspiration to write.

I’m writing again, I’m doing art again.

Some of my designing life steps would be hard to fit in my schedule without the incredible availability of the iPad. Research everyday is a big part of the process. Documenting everything is also a big part of the process.

I have set up google alerts everyday to receive as emails. This does a vast majority of my research for me. I see new graphic design, and read about new technologies and trends for design everyday. I learn about new ways to do typography and see new typography everyday. I learn new ways to make money online everyday. I see what parts of Evolver is getting out through SEO everyday, and also my podcast every day. New digital illustrations, and new art, everyday. Also I find out about awesome websites all of the time. In some of my free time I just research different topics I want to know more about in the palm of my hand. I also get inspired from a new TED talk everyday. All of this is streamlined and possible because of my iPad.

I keep an ongoing list of all of my current projects, skills, talents, and potentials of these with me at all times. I have a notepad, a sketchbook, a journal, blog and home budget with me at all times. I’ve never budgeted in my life, but now it is a streamlined natural part of my life. If I have an idea I write it down, draw it, or add it to my list. I have even streamlined the process of finding a new apartment. We ended up finding the perfect place for our family, it was a place I found and had a hunch about online, while at work. I’ve also recently started doing short podcasts whenever I get an idea for a five minute or less topic. I record lectures or interviews in the palm of my hand. I even started producing my podcast on the go with my iPad, which is a lot of work. I’ve only had it for a month and a half, I get the feeling that not only have I only scratched the surface of what I will be able to do with it, technology has only scratched the surface of what we all can do with it.

My laptop created an incredible amount of opportunity for me. Put me in places and situations that changed my life for the better. It helped me with information intake, and some information output. 4lbs less and 12 hours more battery life worth of my iPad has made information intake a natural part of my life, it has made opportunity fluent and natural, and most importantly to me it has made creative output a natural part of my life. It manages my practical life of scheduling and budgeting, endless emails, and nourishes my creative life, with anywhere on the go availability, and a fluent natural interface. With my laptop I was a slave to my charger and wifi networks, but in my life the iPad has represented the tipping point in which I’ve gone from working with my technology to it working for me.

Some people would refer to this as an identity crisis, but I have a slightly different opinion of it, I don’t think it is a crisis. In some ways I believe it is an opportunity. Ninety five percent of my thoughts and feelings never leave my mind, and become forgotten. I’m guessing that this is the case for the vast majority of the people on this planet. Could you always say what you are going to think before you think it? Do you always know how you are going to feel before you feel it? No, you don’t know what you will think or how you feel before you think and feel it, and neither do I. How can we possibly believe we know ourselves if this is the case? I know I’m surprised sometimes by the feelings I have, thoughts I have, or things I end up doing, and from being around my friends, family, acquaintances, coworkers, and just people in general, I know they surprise themselves as well. So where does this idea of finding ourselves come from? What does this idea of never being able to know ourselves imply for our lives?

Human beings largely do not do well with uncertainty. It leaves a feeling of unease looming about. No one wants to think about the fact that they could lose their job at any moment, get hit by a car, lose a family member, or that they have no idea who they are. These things are uncertain and they are uneasy, but they don’t have to be uneasy. We need to learn to accept the fact that we don’t know ourselves, embrace it. If we can do this, let go of the person we think we are, embrace the uncertainty, we are free to pursue anything we want.

What this idea offers to our lives is freedom, not crisis. If there is no longer a personality that I’ve created and have to hold onto then I am free to act as I wish. If I want learn ballet I can, watch kids movies, adult movies, play the kazoo I can, without the internal conflict of it “going against who I am”. We limit ourselves entirely too much by creating ideas of who we are, or even the person we want to be.

Often times when we create an idea of the person that we want to be, we are setting ourselves up for failure. We are working towards something that not only is unpredictable, but it isn’t real. We also limit ourselves with ideas like “an executive would never behave this way”, but maybe our feelings want us to behave that way. Whenever we think of the person we want to be it means we aren’t happy with the person we currently are, which is also a facade. Each one of us has it in us to be anything we want on any given day, but we do not however have it in us to predict exactly how we will feel or how we will think. This is not a bad thing, it is an amazing opportunity.

When you realize this, when you embrace it many things become possible. You can no longer use “I’m just not that kind of person” as an excuse, you know longer limit yourself by thinking “this just isn’t me”, you realize that you are every kind of person and everything is in you. In my life I’ve been called a cowboy, football player, basketball player, Hanson, Marilyn Manson, trench coat mafia, teachers pet, roller blader, skater, rocker, freak, sexy, ugly, dirty, loser, genius, son, butter butt, flatlander, manager, projectionist, floor guy, door guy, sir, personal assistant, store clerk, hat shop guy, front bitch, party animal, alcoholic, womanizer, sweetie, drunk driver, stupid, lakers fan, niners fan, sports fan, faggot, ladies man, bitch, brave, crazy, acid head, apprentice, piercer, bad student, good student, artist, lover, hippy, graphic designer, web designer, conspiracy theorist, sporganizer, podcaster, social networker, evolutionary, revolutionary, inspiring, inspired, douche bag, asshole, father, and the list goes on and on. Am I any of this things? No, I’m not. Are they however inside of me? Yes, they are. They are inside all of us. You can be a personal assistant or a piercer, an asshole or a lover, a genius, or stupid, stable, or crazy, we all can be anything we want, but more importantly we already are each and everything that we ever think of. I have it in me to be the guy that gets the “worlds best dad mug” and I also have it in me to be a serial killer. These thoughts exist, these actions exist, and because they exist they are possible for all of us.

One of my all time favorite quotes is from Buckminster Fuller and it goes “We are nonsimultaneously apprehended.” if you reread and think about this statement then it will make total sense to you, but I’ll break it down anyways. Essentially we don’t know what will happen tomorrow, we don’t know what will happen in an hour, we don’t know where we will be in ten years, we also don’t remember everything that’s ever happened to us. Now if all of those things are true, which they are, we can’t ever apprehend everything about our lives all at once. There are an infinite amount of possibilities to what we are, what we will become, and who we have been. Have you ever been with a friend and had something happen to you guys, then a week later told the story to another friend together? Often times you both have different versions of the story remember things differently. I’ve even had arguments with friends about who remembered it right. I’ve had this exact scenario play out a number of times, was my memory dead on every time? I doubt it. So if I can’t clearly remember things, or I remember them wrong, just as everyone else does how can I possibly have any kind of certain insight into who I am, or what I have experienced? I can’t. Neither can anyone else. We are nonsimultanaously apprehended a.k.a. Infinite by nature, also unknowable.

Now where these ideas apply to my process of designing life is when you know are exploring possible projects and processes for you to pursue. You need to explore every avenue and give it a real chance. If you can keep an open mind, separate yourself from this idea of the person you should be, and become the infinite unknowable person we all are, you can now do anything. I have an extensive list of projects on my list, some of which are graphic designer, piercer, gardener, Internet marketer, conspiracy writer, blogger, personal growth writer, I Ching Oracle, tarot card creator, community meeting facilitator, custom bicycle builder, personal councilor, magician, copywriter, freelance writer, artist, guest speaker, and a number of other things. But more importantly I add new things to this list almost everyday, new projects, opportunities, possible sources of income, or happiness, and I believe I can do anything I put my mind to, because we all can do anything we put our minds too.

I’ve gone to lengths to point out in this article that we cant possibly know who we are, but this doesn’t change the fact that many people think that they do know who they are. If people think they know who they are, they generally thinking that by getting to know someone that they can figure out who they are. So this idea of identity, which I already explained is an opportunity, now becomes a powerful tool. If you are a piercer and you can embrace that identity then you have more of a chance at getting customers, convincing people to trust you as a piercer. Then at the same time if you can detach yourself from the identity of “piercer” and convince someone that you are a “graphic designer” you will be a more successful graphic designer.

Despite everything I’ve pointed out in this blog to show that we can’t identify ourselves let alone other people, people still identify us so that they have a way of relating to us. If we can give someone a business card with our names on it, they trust us more, they can identify us as what that business cards says we are. If we are married we appear to be more stable and trustworthy. If we have kids we have to be more responsible. These identifications about other people are based on their feelings about people. Why then do so many of us identify others based on our feelings about them, but identify ourselves based on our perceived value? Many times we start to identify ourselves with these identities that other peoples feelings have given to us. What would happen if we could start identifying with our own feelings? Would our lives be more fulfilling?

We would dance when we wanted to, paint when we wanted, go bicycling, synchronized swimming, play ping pong, soccer, write, crochet, origami, teach workshops, protest, travel, all of these things our feelings sometimes tell us to do, we would do. We would identify with our feelings and not the perceptions of us created by others feelings.

What this Designing Chris process is all about is learning how to unidentify myself from the perceptions of who I’m supposed to be, acting on my feelings, and becoming self sustaining by doing so. There are plenty of ways to earn a living and provide for my family doing the things that I love to do, all of them. At this moment in my life I am only doing things that I love, and I am surviving. What made me decide to do this project is surviving isn’t enough, I want to flourish by following nothing but my feelings, my intuition and talents. I know that I can do it, I’m getting more talented everyday, especially since I began this process of actively fostering my talents. Every single person on this planet has talents, and I guarantee that someone, somewhere is getting paid for those very same talents. The two most important things to this process as far as I can tell is one creativity, we need to not limit our thinking to standard linear thought, and two unidentifying ourselves from perceptions. We are creative, beautiful beings capable of anything. I do not consciously have the answers to how I’m getting from point a to point b, but with my process, the eight rules, I know I’m going to get there unconsciously. As I finished that last sentence a song popped into my head, and it seems fitting to end the post with it’s lyrics, so thank you all for reading, detach and get creative.

You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
You may find yourself in another part of the world
You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
You may find yourself in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife
You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?

In this idea of unconscious creation of life by following a design process, we need to open up to whatever we find. We need to try lots of new things, and we need to be open to failure. One of the main reasons that we don’t stray from the things that we have “specialized” is because we are afraid of trying something new and failing. Change comes with failing. A good place to look for this is with an actual graphic design process. When we first start working on a design we start with brainstorming and then we draw. While we are drawing we draw a number of different ideas. The reason that we draw, and draw, and draw is because very rarely is our first idea our best. Now in this situation it is called brainstorming. How come when it applies to life changes, new life directions, when the first one doesn’t work do we then say we failed? We did not fail, we were brainstorming. For most of us the first thing that we try to do isn’t going to be the thing that makes us successful, that sustains us for life, we will need to try a number of different things to get us there. Research will help us greatly with our brainstorming process, but we will most likely still have to try out a number of different paths.

There is one place in our society where we look up to people who have many interests, when we think about the most interesting people. Why is it that so many spend so much time of their lives working in a particular field, being predictable, and not taking chances, but then admire the people that are doing many different things in their lives? I think too many people have the misconception that they can’t do more than a couple things, or don’t have the time to branch out. Part of the problem is the incredible inefficiency with which we do things. We give ourselves the time to do things inefficiently because we devote all of our time to only a couple things. If we would spend more time up front figuring out the best way to do something we could spend less time down the road keeping up that income, or hobby, or whatever it is, and free ourselves up to do more with our lives. We need to stop living nice contained, simple, quiet lives, add some variety, creativity, and excitement.

Another thing I can point out is that every major extinction that’s ever happened was brought about by over-specialization. Species become over dependent on certain things and then something happens to take that thing away, end of species. There has never been a species on this planet more equipped to adapt to any circumstances that human beings. Why then do we exhaust a great deal of our time and energy into such a small amount of things? Oil, military, finance, and water are the four biggest industries on the planet. Oil has lots of alternatives, militaries do not create peace, they disrupt it, our financial system is a joke, and should not be a huge money making industry it should be a service, and water should be free, not an industry. How does this relate to individual over-specialization? What is the American dream? Our idea of success? Nice house (finance), nice cars (oil and finance), security (facade of military) and plenty of food and water (American water is largely privatized). By working our corporate job that we commute to and from, and then going home to watch our TV’s and drink our designer bottled waters, we are simplifying our lives to an unstable degree, we are depending on unstable abused resources. These are really social issues and not the point of this blog, but they are relevant examples of how over-specialization can be a problem.

I love to do lots of things that I love to do, and make enough money. I hate to do one thing I hate to do and make a lot of money. I’ve experienced both realities and love is much more rewarding than hate. As we speak I’m generating a little income from writing, from art shows, from graphic design work, from doing a podcast, from piercing, from going to school to learn, and from helping people do random things like moving. I love doing all of those things. Where the ability to specialize in many fields comes in handy is not one of these things by themselves feeds my family, but they all collectively do. They are also all designed to build upon themselves, and generate more and more value. They also are directly related to my talent levels, which get better with time and experience. So I’m currently generating income from six different sources and they all will only get better, not worse. They all also become less work with time, not more, which means I can add other talents I foster to create even more value. Multi-specialization is a synergetic way of life, and you’ve never experienced a life more rewarding.

The first thing that I am definitely interested in incorporating into my life is what I call “Spatially Detached”. What this means is my routines in life, my sources of income, my ways of paying bills, my things that I care about, the things that are meaningful in my life are not attached to places. This doesn’t mean that I would like to be homeless, obviously I need to put a roof over my family’s head, it means that the things I do in my life are not dependent on me being in any place. I don’t want to work from a specific place, I don’t want to write at a specific place, do my art at just a studio, I want to be able to work from anywhere, I want to do art anywhere, write anywhere, communicate anywhere.

There are things that need to happen to help me become Spatially Detached. One major thing that needs to happen I’ve already done. I need a tool to facilitate this unattached wireless life. For me that tool is the iPad. I do all of my budgeting from my iPad, I do a lot of my art on it, my writing and managing this website on it. I manage my emails, network, and the list is growing everyday. Something else that needs to happen is I need to start generating more income from unattached places. Currently my two main sources of income are from piercing, which I have to do at a tattoo shop, and from financial aid, which I only get from going to school. With school at least two of my classes I can watch online, so I’m not attached to going there for every class. I need to learn how to develop systems that generate income that I can manage from my iPad and then put them into practice. I have no idea what this Spatially detached life will look like, or where I will be generating income from yet, but I know it’s something I would like. I will have to depend on my process to get me there, wherever the process may lead me.

The next thing on my list of future goals is minimizing the hustle of life as much as possible to free up more time for creativity. There is a lot of hustle in life. Commuting, cleaning, networking, working, moving, lots of other things, I could do without it. I know that there will always be some element of hustle in my life, there will be in everyones life, but I would like to minimize it as much as possible. The more free time I have the more creative I get. My mind just wanders at a fast pace 24 seven. Fortunately my mind wandering like this affords me time to think about daily hustle and creative thoughts. However the more I can chop down the daily hustle thoughts, the more room I have left for creative thoughts. This idea is not limited to my mind. In order to be creative our minds have to be in an unhinged free enough space for us to get in touch with our creativity, or more scientifically our right brain. The best ideas come from empty places in our mind. Currently the best way I can thing of to free up time is with a lot of up front time to build systems that sustain themselves and produce value consistently after creation with little upkeep. Part of my personal process is trying to learn how to develop these systems.

Next up, I want to travel. This goal seems to go pretty much hand and hand with the first two goals. If I’m spatially detached then being out of town no longer means I’m away from my daily life. I hopefully will be able to maintain my daily obligations from my iPad. Then comes the reduction of hustle. If I have lots of free time to foster creativity, then I have lots of free time to travel. Another part of me achieving this goal is searching alternatives to standard travel. Standard travel being pick a destination, buy plane tickets, book hotel, go. Travel I’m thinking of is traveling for travelings sake. Look for dirt cheap plane tickets to go anywhere, just to go somewhere. Taking the sit in seminar all day so they can try to sell me something and get to spend the next two in a hotel. Explore craigslist ride shares, this option is unfortunately a bit tougher with a baby. I’m also sure that there are lots of other creative ways to travel for less, or travel for a service, who knows what opportunities are out there, that’s why rule three is research. What I want to do is free my life up, find the opportunities to travel, and take them.

The other thing that I know I want to be part of my future, and this is a bit off of the train of the previous things on here in some ways, but completely related in others, is I want to grow at least a little bit of my own food. Food is a very important element to our freedom, which is a bit neglected. I’m not going to get into it in this particular post, but I don’t feel that governments actually do a whole lot to promote freedom. Our government controls our money, our housing, lots of other things, and our food supply. I have heard the point brought up that how can so many “activists” and “revolutionaries” try to rebel against the government, but not grow their own food? We are dependent upon the government for everything, but we have power to depend on ourselves for some of these things. This is where ideas like small houses come in, solar panels, grey water systems, or what I’m talking about here, growing our own food, permaculture. This seems a bit counter intuitive to being spatially detached at first glance, or eliminating hustle for life, but that isn’t the case. Grey water systems can be built, self watering containers can be built, and all the require is a weekend project. Just like systems can be built for sustainable income, and you can streamline responsibilities of life, you can build systems for sustainable growing of food, systems to streamline the process. What doing that does is allows you more freedom, in the way that you aren’t depending on others for your food, and also saves you trips to the grocery store. I haven’t even mentioned the taste or health benefits either. More details on this will be hashed out in another post.

So I’m starting to paint a picture of my future life, but as you can see there is a whole lot room left for creativity. I can think of circumstances I would like in my life, and some situations, but can’t quite imagine the systems that will get me there as of yet. Sure I have some ideas of how I will achieve these things, but none are yet fully formed or blossomed, just seeded. I will be spatially detached, I will be mostly free from the hustle of life, I will travel regularly, and I will be providing most of my needs, including food, without depending on other people. These circumstances will be part of my future, I’m just not sure how I’m getting there yet. I invite all of you to keep on following along, I encourage all of you to create your own future plan and your own processes to get there, but most importantly I ask you all to get creative.

Chris, being designed

So where does this process begin? For me it begins with some rules. The rules will probably be a little different for everyone, but I do think that everyone would need some rules to pull it off. The rules need to be designed in a way that they will take you places you couldn’t have gone without the process of following the rules. In my case I have a family so the rules also had to account for keeping real world needs in order. There also needs to be rules to make sure that any progress is accounted for. Rules need to be strict and not made for breaking, but structured to inspire if they are followed. Probably the most important step of all is forgetting routines of your current life so you have to room to start implementing these new ones. I also made a list of future goals, loose places and goals I’d like to attain at some time. I made absolutely no time line for these future goals either, which I think is important. The reason I left the goals loose and without timeline is so there is plenty of room to go where the rules and process might take me. So without further rambling let’s get into some specifics here.

Rule number one: record absolutely everything. First and foremost budget budget budget. If you are going to change things, head a different direction you need to be smart with your resources. You need to know where everything is going, where it is coming in, where it is going out, what you are getting out of it. Don’t spend anything that isn’t directly related to a bill, food, or furthering along a process. If you spend it there better be a reason. Money isn’t the goal here, but it is most definitely a tool to help you on your path to a new and creative life. Another record you need to keep is a list of every project, talent, skill, potential project/talent/skill, or source of value you can possibly think of. Every skill you have could be a potential project to build a system to create value out of in the future. Building planter boxes, writing blogs, knitting hats, writing clever short cartoons, playing a musical instrument, being good at a sport, or good at a game, reading tarot cards, or I Ching coins, building skate boarding ramps, designing t-shirts, whatever it may be, there are an infinite number of things that could be your key to a free happy life. So I stress, make an exhaustingly extensive list of everything you could possibly do, or even learn to do, to create value and utilize that value. The third thing that you need to record is any progress in regards to anything that is on your list. This could be a new short story that you just wrote, someones website you just found that generates value by doing tarot card readings, a local shop that wants you to start making t-shirts for them. Anything that further moves along anything on your skills list record it. In fact you should have separate journals, or at least sections of journals for each item on the list.

Rule number two was already discussed in the first rule. Spend money only on things that you need. I have kids, kids have to have food, and we all need enough space to not drive each other crazy. To have this space and enough food it takes a significant amount of our current financial resources. So resources need to be used wisely. Another thing that has to be nipped in the butt is both me and my fiance, Virginia have a tendency to spend money when we get for whatever reason. We have addressed this, tried to point out reasons, but it has come to the point however that we just need to not spend money randomly. The other thing that is okay for us to spend money on is resources to help us along with current projects or processes. For instance Virginia needs yarn to crochet, I need to print my art for art shows, buy apps to budget everything in the family, these are acceptable uses of money, nothing outside of these needs is an acceptable use of money anymore, or at least until further notice.

Rule number three: research. Everything you could ever want to do has been done before, and thanks to the Internet someone has shared about how they did it. I’m not expecting myself or anyone else to just know the right way to go about making money from a website, or starting a free lance graphic design business, or selling I Ching readings, or really anything you think about doing. We have the resources to research anything we could ever imagine, and more importantly the resources to discover things that we couldn’t imagine. Things you couldn’t think of on your own are the point of this step of research. Every day spend thirty minutes researching different things people have done to creatively solve their problems of money, food, housing, travel, whatever needs had to be met. Some of the things you find each day just might make it onto your list of possible or active projects. The next bit of research that we need to do everyday is research into our active projects and processes. Everyone hits a wall in their undertakings in life. This wall is similar to blank page syndrome. Artists know blank page syndrome, writers, graphic designers, bloggers, copy-writers, we all know blank page syndrome. When you don’t know what the next step is in one of your projects or processes this is the equivalent of blank page syndrome. Research can cure this. Read about what someone else did with their etsy store, or what affiliate program this person is using to make money with their website. You could even read about what someone did with their family when they lost their house. All this information and more is out there, we just have to look for it, and looking for it is research. So rule number three: research new ideas, research new perspectives on your ideas, research everything, everyday.

Rule number four: if you start something finish it. If you take on a project and you create a process for it, follow it through until it is either completely stagnant, or it will require entirely too much energy and not nearly enough value. Be true to your process once you take it on. Everything on your list of possible or current projects should at one point or another get your attention. When you give it your attention, sit down and start writing a process for how you get that project started. It will take research to figure this process out. Once you have this process that is where rule number four comes in, see it through. If you write down a series of steps do them! As you can see rules are starting to build on each other. Rule one keep the list, and record everything. Then rule number three research all of your projects and look for new ones. Rule number four take your list and your research and actually do it, see it through until the end.

Rule number five: spend your thoughts and focus on the current steps of your processes, on your research, on recording everything, and do not focus or think about end results. The idea behind this designing life process is most of us have a hard time thinking about our true potential, most of us have a hard time thinking about what we want. So instead of thinking about what we want, or our full potential, we follow a life designing process with set rules, and steps, to get us to a place we couldn’t have imagined, a place that will be a pleasant surprise. A good example of this is back in August I started going to school with the intentions of becoming a web designer. Before you can start with web design you take some graphic design classes, the intro classes. I needed four classes to be in school full time. I needed full time for the extra financial aid. So I took a class I didn’t even plan on and got into last second, Typography. By going to school everyday and doing all my homework I engaged in a process. Typography turned out being my favorite class. Now on a couple sites online I am selling typographic art, I’ve had one art show already, I’ve done a handful of graphic design projects such as business cards, logos, and posters. I also learned some valuable design processes and created things I would have never imagined. So by following this process of school I became and artist, a graphic designer, I got the idea for this blog and to create a process for living life that will get me to unexpected happy places, all when I was planning on being a web designer. Be true to your processes, follow them, don’t worry about end results, and I promise you will be pleasantly surprised.

Rule number six: (and this is a strongly suggested optional one) find someone to take on this life designing process with and discuss with them every night about their processes and your processes. Just as research and reading other stories of peoples projects/processes and success helps refresh your perspective, having a second brain working on it with you helps tremendously. I am lucky enough to have met my soulmate and she is interested in personal development as much as I am. We sat down the other night and I helped her make a list of her skills or potential skills, just as she helped me. I do research everyday, and she does research everyday, then we discuss our findings each day. This other person can be a friend, a parent, a brother, sister, cousin, maybe even a counselor or therapist, anyone that you can get honest dedicated participation out of. Like I said this rule is optional, and not entirely needed, but I do believe it will help tremendously.

Rule number seven: which was added by Virginia, allow yourself time everyday for spending time with your internal self. This process is about fully embracing the infinite person inside of all of us. It is about rejecting the limited created avatar that is your personality and expanding it outside of your box into something more, and a life fuller than you could have ever imagined on your own. It’s about branching out and using every bit of your magic as a human being to create the life that is better than you could have ever dreamed. In order to do this correctly, your inner self is going to have a lot to do with it. It will help guide you to places your conscious mind couldn’t have. So spend time everyday, either at night or in the morning, whenever, as long as it can be consistently the same time each day, discussing things and getting in touch with the inner you.

Rule number eight, the last rule: stay away from paths that do not promote creativity. Human beings are creators, we would not still be on this planet were we not creative. Every step along the way human survival and creation has always come from our power of creativity. If you have ever done anything creative, you know it feels good, if you have ever been rewarded for something creative you did it also rewards your soul. There are few things in this life that feel as good as being rewarded for your creative work, or when you’re able to make a living with your creativity. Following this process is about getting away from the hustle of life, the monotony of the typical work force. Its living a life to your full potential, to the absolute limit of happiness. We are all creators, millions of years of our evolution happened because we were creative enough to adapt. Today’s day and age is no different, we are creative enough to adapt to the way the world is today. We don’t need to do what we are told, we don’t need to work a job we don’t like, we don’t have to have the car, house, wardrobe, opinions that we are force fed. We are creative beings and fostering that power of creativity is the most rewarding important thing that we can do for ourselves, and for our lives. So once again rule number eight, stay away from things that don’t promote your creativity.

These eight rules are probably just the first eight rules to a process that could span the rest of my life. I’m excited to get started on this and see where I end up six months from now, a year from now, five years from now, I can’t even imagine where I’ll be, what I’ll be doing, and that’s the point. I’m going to share the whole thing with the world. I want to share a story of how far creativity can take you, I want to hear stories from readers of how far their creativity has taken them. The sky isn’t even the limit anymore, sometime soon we will be able to pay a bunch of money and take Virgin Galactic into space. Creativity got humanity beyond the sky, it can get you beyond a crappy job, and into a life that you love every part of. Like the title of this blog suggests these rules are just a place to start.

Get Creative,
Chris Hopkins