ALL IN THE BALANCE

Three and a half months into my internship and I feel like I’m really getting into the swing of a full-time creative role. My working week has become the norm, with a routine in place and, to be honest, I struggle to think what the hell I used to do with all that free time I once had. I’m loving working and truly feel a sense of purpose when I come home every evening that my day has been productive and I’ve taken that one tiny step further to where I really want to be.

Despite all these wonderful feelings, some thoughts have dawned on me this week about the lifestyle I lead. As creatives, our minds are constantly full of ideas, inspirations and little quirks that encourage us to push our practice further. These things come from an open mind, one that enjoys the ability to look all around and experience things in a different way to others. We are blessed with the ability to see beyond the surface and deduce what we see and interpret the idea into our own work. It is all very well when those inspirations come flooding out onto the page but we must remember our eyes need to catch a glimpse of them first before that can happen.

So my blog post this week surrounds balance, the balance of giving out and taking in.

My current 45-hour working week sees reams of creative output leave my desk and desktop, all of these being put out into the world in one form or another to entice our customers into the fabulous experiences the company offers. The level of productivity my team needs has made me realise how important it is as a creative to take in as much (if not more) as I give out. I fear a creatives equivalent of ‘the runner’s wall’ or ‘writer’s block’ would be inevitable if I don’t consume the level of visual material to inspire the work I do. So I guess in a way you could say that I am going to set myself some creative resolutions:

• at least once a week I want to visit a site in London of culture or creative influence/significance:

somewhere I can experience the work of others, take a different perspective on something, or simply forget about what’s going on and dive into the immersive visions of someone else.

• at least once a week I would like to read something that sparks an alternative viewpoint:

creative blogs, articles, journals; I want to spend some time investing in the thoughts of others and open my eyes to the wider world even beyond the creative field.

• give some love to my design Instagram account:

this is a place for myself to vent not only my own work but also that of others/places/thoughts that inspire my practice. I am creative and (outside of what I do at work) I want to be creative and demonstrate how my style has come to be. A target of a post a day is my aim (but we’ll see how that goes!)

It’s easy sometimes to fall into a loop, become almost dull with the way I go about “being a creative” but in these next 8 months of DPS I want to push that idea and take in and give out as much as possible. After all what I have now is time; time to explore what it means to be a creative.