The Art of the Personal Project, Part II

You can’t use up creativity.

The following is a bonus post for Art + Math’s benefactors, the paying subscribers who keep the lights on and the coffee brewing. (This week it’s one of my favorites: Goshen Coffee’s Black Dog Espresso.) It’s the second installment in a series about personal projects and why they matter. If you haven’t already, you can join this exclusive club and become a patron of the arts. Fear not! Regular Art + Math posts will remain “dedicated to art and free to all.”

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The More You Use the More You Have

Until last year, I experienced a years-long drought in my personal work. Ideas would occasionally flicker, glowing faintly, briefly, in the darkest corners of my noggin. But nothing ever caught fire and convinced me to get to work. I was slogging along, without enough hours in the day to handle the basics of living, much less finding time to make art. And it started taking a toll. I was uncomfortable in my skin. I didn’t know it at the time, but that bad feeling was caused by not creating. 

An image from the personal project discussed below.

I eventually discovered, in hindsight, that breaking out of my creative stagnation—my photographer’s block—required a boost from an unexpected source: this thing you are reading right now. My newsletter, Art + Math, is the personal project that kickstarted my creative drive. I’m finding it incredibly gratifying at the moment, and so I’m trying not to rock the boat. Meaning that’s enough—personal fulfillment in lieu of riches—at least for now.¹

I know this newsletter is not the same as making art, but it’s in the neighborhood. And it’s giving me that fix my fellow creatives know so well. I think we sometimes don’t realize how important it is to feel creative. You don’t notice it until it’s not there. And in my case, I needed a personal project in order to want to work on a personal project. A tricky situation. 

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” - Maya Angelou

Why does being creative feel so good? Is it just the gratification that comes from making something? Is it a sense of accomplishment? Or is there more going on? Apparently it’s got a lot to do with dopamine. 

Starting up this newsletter set my creative spark alight. Writing every week has translated to my feeling more creative in everything I do, from commercial assignments to other personal projects I’m beginning to pursue. I’m finally at a place where I have some good² ideas, and so I’m just putting one foot in front of the other and taking baby steps to get the ball rolling. I’m not waiting until everything is just right, until I’ve got it all figured out. To borrow a term from the developer world, I’m trying to be “agile” with my approach to personal projects. I’ll do what I can today, just to get moving, even though I don’t know exactly where I’m going to end up. 

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The Quarantine Photo Diary

On Friday, March 6, 2020, I was on location photographing at a bank. That was the day we started avoiding handshakes, opting instead for awkward elbow bumps. The following Wednesday my family decided to cancel our spring break getaway and I sat on hold for two hours that night waiting my turn among the hundreds of other customers canceling their vacations too. Five days later I shot what would be my last commercial assignment for the next three months, and then I went home. 

Assuming the quarantine would last a couple of weeks,³ I brought my camera home in hopes of making pictures of my family on our staycation. Between sanitizing groceries and removing cereal bags from dirty boxes, I snapped photos of my wife and kids around the house. I never thought of it as a capital P project so much as a perfectly natural thing to do. Which I now understand to be a tremendous method for stumbling your way into a meaningful personal project.