The Vulnerability in life and art podcast has begun spawning many little minnows. Arriving pretty much in tandem were this blog and the journal project (you can check out vulnerabilitylifeart.com/journal for details).
And now there's another little one wriggling to the surface, and I wanted to get down some thoughts on what it might entail. The idea is to document the process of launching a creative project. Well, not the process but a process - the ways and means by which a particular individual starts something new and carries it forward, whether it's a graphic novel, a series of photographs, a puppet show, whatever.
So, I thought it might be useful if I tried this on myself first. How would I document the process of launching the journal project? More specifically:
How did I come up with the idea?
How did I actually get working on it (rather than letting it founder and die, as I have with many other ideas)?
What counts as the start, and how will I know I'm at the end?
How do I figure out each next step?
Where have I really struggled?
How is it evolving along the way?
What has been most meaningful to me so far?
I'm sure there are many other questions I can ask myself (I'm taking suggestions), but let's suppose I take these as a starting point. Just that first question stumps me. Maybe it's not that important, but it's a question I'd be interested in asking someone else, so I figured I should see how it felt to answer it myself.
No matter how hard I try, I don't know why the idea of the journal project emerged the way it has. I had read 1000 Journals Project by someguy (aka Brian Singer) about 10 or 12 years ago. I loved the book and somehow the kernel of his concept nestled somewhere in me, but why it began squirming around now, in the overall context of this exploration of vulnerability and self-expression, is a mystery.
Is it a lack of self-awareness on my part? I have to think about that. I'm curious if other people can answer the question for their own creative projects. Or even if we do come up with a response, is it just the left brain making up some kind of story to account for something it doesn't understand, something the right brain conjured up through an ineffable process that can't be expressed in words?
Obviously this project needs more thought. And a name. I feel like a name would help.
