I heard about Austin Kleon’s curious elder in Ali Abdaal’s podcast, Not Overthinking, the episode entitled Austin Kleon on Writing, Creativity and the Importance of Idleness.
It’s one of Ali’s deep dives, where he talks to creative people he admires in industry. Interestingly, Ali touches upon what these deep dives are in response to Austin’s talking about what he finds to be the best thing about doing what he does: getting to hang with like-minded people from all over the world! I can relate, as indeed I will later on in this post.
Austin Kleon is the author of Show Your Work!, Steal Like an Artist and Keep Going, three books that have become very popular with artists and creative people of all types. I’ve read Show Your Work!, and just bought the other two this morning. I can’t wait to get into them!
As I listened to the conversation, I sat with Roam open on my desktop and made notes. There were so many takeaways and a lot of the conversation snippets inspired thoughts in me, so I’m going to explore that a bit here. Some of the quotes won’t be word-for-word, as I was paraphrasing in my notes, but as jumping off points, they’ll do just fine.
The Curious Elder
This is such a good turn of phrase. That guy should be a writer! Oh, wait…
I’m only 37 but I’m basically an old dad in Internet years. I’m going to have to flip the switch and be like a curious elder now.
Austin kleon
So if he’s an old dad at 37, I guess I’m a granddad, right?
I’m definitely a curious elder too, but do I really have to take my cues on what’s culturally relevant from the young whippersnappers who are crushing it in the knowledge space right now?
Well, yes and no. A LOT of what they come up with is actually really helpful, or really entertaining, or really inspiring, and is sometimes all of those things at the same time.
You do you!
Gary vaynerchuck
GaryVee has the right of it. I can take inspiration from the creators whose content I enjoy and spin it into my own thing. Austin talks about this a lot in the conversation, and he should know as he literally wrote the book on it!
So I will be doing just that: taking inspiration and filtering it through my own points of view and experience and ‘doing me’.
I’m the lucky position at having failed at a lot of things and having learned what I DON’T want to do.
I also now have the time and the support of my family to explore new ideas without being encumbered by working a job that I hate. I feel at the peak of happiness in a lot of ways, and now is the time for me to start exploring and experimenting.
That’s the kind of thing I get from listening to such conversations as Ali and Austin’s.
What else came to mind?
Guitar People
And that is the best thing. I’m in touch with all these people that care about the same stuff that I do.
Austin Kleon
Back in 2005 I flew to Atlanta for my first Little Brother Jam. I got to meet a whole load of guitar nerds that I’d only ever spoken to online and had the time of my life. I went annually for the next few years, and also started attending a similar thing in the UK.
In 2018 I flew to Krakow in Poland to meet the DDaily crew, a bunch of creators who were publishing content on the Steem blockchain and are now active on the Hive platforms.
These events have been some of the most rewarding trips of my life and they have enriched my life in ways that I couldn’t have imagined. I guess that’s what Austin is talking about too.
Writing
In writing every day, you find out what you have to say. Writing is not just a way of communicating with the world, it’s a way of communicating with yourself. You are creating space in the day to connect with what’s here and what’s going on and figure out what you really think and feel.
Austin Kleon
This ties in nicely with a fantastic blog post I read by Scott Adams:
Writing is a skill that requires practice. So the first part of my system involves practicing on a regular basis. I didn’t know what I was practicing for, exactly, and that’s what makes it a system and not a goal. I was moving from a place with low odds (being an out-of-practice writer) to a place of good odds (a well-practiced writer with higher visibility).
Scott Adams
Together, these two quotes tell me what I need to do: I need to write. So that is what I’m doing!
Life-long Learner
Take the attitude that you’re a life-long learner.
Austin kleon
I’ve always had this attitude, sometimes to the detriment of producing anything. For example I have a course on the go right now and am about to start another one, both with my eye on becoming the person I want to be and finally get beyond my own limitations.
This is something I will be exploring more in my writing and video making.
Multipotentialite
I think of myself as a writer who does other things – eg. drawing. ‘Writer’ is my identity, but you can have something that’s the core and have other skills on top that make you stand out. There just weren’t that many writers who knew Internet stuff when I started. Blogs in 2005 were still kind of new. You needed some expertise to do it then. I would draw famous writers as they were doing their readings and then send them to them. How do I keep all the things in my life that I’m interested in and get them to talk to each other? What kind of life can come out of this?
Austin Kleon
This was like music to my ears. Of late I’ve been pondering why I never became a more prolific writer, a photographer, a musician, a video maker. I’ve been doing all of those things most of my adult life. I remember actually making the decision to quit taking photos because it was diluting the time I had for my music. Austin had this to say:
Steven Tomlinson told a story that’s in Steal Like an Artist – he went to his adviser and said ‘I love God; I love theatre and I also love business and being an entrepreneur. Which one should I choose?’ His adviser said ‘if you love all these things, your work is to figure out a way to keep all these things in your life. You might not have a career, but you’ll have a life.’ There will always be a phantom limb kind of feeling if you cut something out that you’re really into.
He was right – there was a phantom limb feeling when I wasn’t taking photos and I soon picked up the camera again. Now I understand that my job is to figure out how to keep the things I love and put them all together in some way and see what comes out. I mean it seems pretty obvious now, but now that I feel like I have the permission, it’ll help me a bit with the whole mindset thing.
Cyclical Seasons
This was another bit of the conversation I really enjoyed, the idea that work and creativity are cyclical, or ‘circular’ rather than ‘linear’.
When I’m thinking too linearly about life, eg. where will I be in five years, I like to read more eastern philosophy or Thoreau. I’ve almost abandoned linear thinking. I operate more on cycles. Stories are artificial to a certain extent. Cycles are not artificial. The earth goes around the sun, the moon goes around the earth. There are natural metaphors for our lives. The structures that our culture has given us – we need a reprieve from that. Is thinking about five years from now really the right thing? Do you see a timeline or do you see loops?
This was new to me and it makes sense. A lot of the online gurus I’m studying with now or have in the past get you to start out by imagining where you’ll be in x years’ time. Austin has got me questioning that approach now. I feel like, having reached the age of 49 and had a very varied life, I can see how making five year plans will never really work out. You could ask V.I. Lenin for his thoughts on that if he were here!
Austin goes deeper still on the concept of goals and questions the metaphors that we live our lives by. This is a fascinating topic and I hope he writes more on this. But if he doesn’t, maybe I will! Why the hell not – I have enough life experience to have shown me how living according to cultural metaphors has worked out for me and my family.
He gives some examples of authors that I can look at and talks about how women work with different metaphors than men. With men it’s all about competition and war and zero-sum games, whereas women don’t think so much in those terms.
Shall I Write?
Well, yes. Listening to conversations like this one really inspires me to believe that I can actually do this. This time it feels different, like I’ve given myself the permission to do this. I know I’ve been through cycles like this before and that they have petered out, but now I know that that’s okay.
I’m also learning about systems thinking with August Bradley and that will go a long way to helping me figure out what to do between the cycles, or how to link different parts of the cycle with something new – I’ve just learned that that is called emergence, and I’m really excited to see what emerges!
Resources Mentioned
Austin Kleon’s Books
