Tapping into Your Creative Realm

Came across a great article about using your subconscious to spark creativity. When daily life moves at break-neck speed, sometimes creativity feels constricted and impossible to access.

So here are two activities to spark your subconscious.

The first begins with Thomas Edison’s advice: “never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious.” 

So, here’s how you do it:

1. Before settling into bed, close your eyes and take a minute to request your subconscious. Start small, for example: “please let me find creative ideas for new blog posts.”

2. Take two minutes to visualize yourself bossing your request.

You’re going for a walk and the world is sparkling with potential. You have a notepad and you’re scribbling away, endless titles pouring into your head. That evening, your titles are glowing in a pool of light from your desk-lamp, and you’re tapping away into the night. 

3. Now imagine the feeling of accomplishment. How do you feel once you’ve got pages of potential blog titles? Confident? Invigorated? 

Perfect! Let these positive feelings sink into your slumber, so your subconscious can work its magic. 

Like everything worth having, the results won’t be instantaneous. What I love about this exercise is how it encourages us to form good habits so we can build a foundation for a thriving life. 

So keep visualizing the motions, carry a notepad and pen everywhere, and let the emotional requests bloom into creative ideas.

*****

Josh Waitzkin, a former chess prodigy and tai chi world champ, inspired the second exercise. He harnesses the power of “thought-dumping”. 

To do this:

Grab a notepad as soon as you wake up (yes, before your phone!), and thought-dump everything that passes through your mind for the next few minutes. 

Waitzkin calls this “crystallized intelligence” as you gain clarity, creative ideas, and knowledge. You may find new insights but if not, you’ll have cleared some valuable mental space before starting your day.

Do you guys have any tricks to getting creative? Would love some inspo!

The Best Piece of Dating Advice

“Only sleep with a guy if he has at least three books on his shelf.”

A friend dropped this pearl of wisdom and I feel the world needs to hear it too.

Mourning the Double Space

After a year working as a content writer, I just got completely dicked on for still using the dreaded double space.  <- Yup, THAT ONE.

It hurls me back into the 90s when, once a week, our class had 30 minutes to type out what we did over the weekend, complete with double spaces (thanks for teaching us how to blog, Ms. Sackett!).

Ever since, I’ve jabbed billions of double spaces, so many you could cover the distance from here to the moon a hundred times over.

Until today.

Right. So why do people get so heated about this topic?

Well, it all boils down to this.

Typewriters used monospaced type which means every character (e.g. ‘i’ and ‘w’) occupied the same amount of white space on the page. As a result, the text looked jiggly and loose so it was harder to spot the spaces between sentences.

Enter: our beloved double space.

As soon as the double space was introduced to the typewriting world, a lot less people were confused and shit got read.

Fast-forward to the present and everyone hates “two-spacers” because monospaced fonts dissolved in the ‘70s. Thanks to computers, proportional fonts took their place (like those we type with!)

Though, interestingly, the typewriter-esque font, Courier New, is still considered to be monospaced.

But it’s cool, I’ve got the memo and I’ll cave (even though it physically hurts). It’s time to kill the double space. I’ll miss you, old friend.

Magic at the Supermarket

January is cut-throat competition, and the contestants fall into two groups.

Those determined to live out their New Year Resolutions and those who cave.

Be careful though because Sally’s going to one-up you and cook up a #Veganuary storm while Max is already feasting on books, twirling fancy words on his tongue like spaghetti.

And for the rest of us, it’s getting rid of things that don’t serve us. Sweets, alcohol, crisps – we’re talking about you.

But there is a trick so you don’t have to succumb to the sugary allure of technicolour sweets. And it’s fool-proof.

Here’s what you do:

Enter the supermarket and head towards your biggest craving. For this example, we’ll use a Portuguese rice cake (bolo de arroz).

They’re divine, soft and airy except for the top which is firm. The satisfaction you get from breaking it off and enjoying a bite with the crumblier part of the cake is like no other….

So now you’re carrying a four-pack of these golden cakes.

Carry them around regardless of how much food shopping needs to be done. Even if you have a trolley, hold on to your craving, and as you amble down every aisle, your mind will get louder.

Do I need these?  They’re terrible for me and I know I won’t be arsed to do the exercise to shake them off.

Also, there are four meaning I’ll scarf them down and want more tomorrow. Remember, sugar is government-approved crack so you can’t be weak and let them topple your New Year diet.

By the time you’re lining up at the counter, eyeing everyone’s’ trolleys stuffed with bottles of wine, fruit, and parcels of meat, you realize.

You don’t need them.

Nope.

By the time you have to pay for them, guilt and your interior monologue rip apart everything positive about these delicious, fluffy cakes.

They just feel wrong now.

So you dart back to the bakery section and return them, and a entirely new buzz kicks in, one way more fulfilling than the sugar coating those sweet, sweet cakes.

You’re proud because you SWERVED them. And if you can swerve your biggest craving, you can swerve anything.

You’ve got this guys. Wishing you all a little more discipline this year!

“Sucks to Be You”

I was in the standard waitress get-up, splotchy apron and unkempt plait, as tap water gushed into a customer’s glass.

“Aww,” a co-worker said towards a baby with a woollen hat enclosed around his ears.

“I want to be a baby,” I said to no-one in particular.

Back then, I was tired of sacrificing weekends to a red-faced boss. Like a doughy-faced baby, I ached to be doted on.

But now, looking around McDonald’s, all I see are straws searing plastic lids, yellow ‘M’s dwarfing a child’s excited face, eager for their mutant Mcnuggets, and the robotic bins dotted around the room, churning our leftovers.

In 2020, it’s the kids who have to save themselves.

Sixteen-year-olds have to mobilize if they hope for children themselves.  White haired men with dried up rivers creased in their skin are no longer needed.  It’ll be the young ones sweeping up our mess.

My childhood was during Hip Hop’s golden age, a yellow-tinged time, where afternoons were spent slapping mud onto a plastic table until something tangible was formed.  The afternoon ended with a bellyful of Monster Munch.

For the first time in human history, being a child is a curse.  And I’m so so sorry.

now

when do you realize you’ve found it?
is it when drops of water no longer cause
a ripple effect
or
perhaps
when you have proof that your talent is real
and not only fabricated.

when do you realize you’ve found it?
perhaps it’s on a Sunday
you’re laid-back with a
glass of bubbly,
awaiting stretches of white sand.

when
you realize you’ve found it
perhaps your face will be leather
and
you can trace the flow of rivers that meander on
your skin.

when you realize you’ve found it
is
in the final glimpse,
a shot of colour
before black
and
maybe that’s when you’ll realize
that you had it all along.

one

Voices build fortresses
from our fingertips, lips
and movements,
so please
don’t worry when you feel
lost and muffled,
beneath a swirl of heart-wrenching metaphors and one-of-a-kind ideas.

Remember!
It only takes one sperm to create Life
one to inspire others through his/her dreams,
one to propose a nuclear war,
for one can change everything.

When you’re alone and
at the darkest point of night –
slumped over a fresh page and some blue ink –
pour, flow and set your thoughts into curves,
shed your clothes and cover yourself in smears and smudges,
and when you feel the words are awk/ward
and stil-ted
write on
because no matter what you say,
your voice will always have a place,
nestled perfectly in the space
between the Greats.