I’ve been thinking and talking and hearing a lot about creative spaces recently and I find it really interesting. I know that really, you can be creative anywhere, you don’t need a place for it; but sometimes having a place helps get the creative juices flowing. I’ve been somewhat actively looking for a creative place this semester and I’ve found a few cool places but not really anything that gives me an urge to make cool stuff. I find inspiration everywhere and collect experiences to use later like raw materials for an art project. But I can’t seem to find a place that makes me creatively productive, I don’t even know that there is one. The way I see things right now, where I create things doesn’t have much influence on what I’m making or how good it turns out. These posts, for example. I’ve done most in my dorm room, some in study rooms in my dorm, a few in the library, one or two in coffee shops, etc etc. None of those places felt particularly creative. For me, it’s more about finding creative space than finding a creative place. I have to have a certain mindset and attitude or else it feels (and looks) forced. Going back to those ideas I forced at a time when I’m feeling more creative can help improve them, similar to adding spices to bland food when you reheat it, but I’d rather have a good idea the first time. I guess my process involves getting myself to that creative mentality. I’m still kind of fuzzy on how I do it, but doing things like always having a notebook to jot things down when inspiration hits definitely helps me later if I’m not feeling creative. I’m also sort of looking for triggers but I almost think that’s a waste of time since there might not actually be anything that just flips my ‘creativity switch’ on. I think it might be more like an old fashioned water pump than a faucet. Creativity won’t always just happen, I have to put some actual elbow grease into it. There are some things I do though, to help myself work. I don’t listen to music I really like so I’m not tempted to sing along. I do put my phone on silent so it isn’t a distraction. I use coffitivity.com (highly recommended) when I’m working in my too-quiet dorm room.
I find that once I get in ‘the zone’ I have no problem working for three or more hours on a single task no matter where I am; my problem is setting aside that time so I don’t have to stop mid-productivity and go do other things (which is actually what I ended up doing for this post). I’ve felt sort of meh about the last couple of posts I’ve done and maybe ‘the feels’ are just dragging me down, but I just want to get back to the “fun” aspect of everyday motoring pleasure.
So that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
Sometimes you have to be creative the way you want to be in order to be creative the way you need to be. (That may have been the most insightful thing I’ve said all week.)
So let’s play.
The pool game “Marco Polo” is pretty fun and if you don’t know it, the basic concept is one person is ‘blind’ and has to find and tag the other people in the pool who can see and are trying to avoid getting tagged. The ‘blind’ person finds people by saying “Marco” and eliciting the immediate response “Polo”, thus using a funny sort of echolocation to locate others. Now that I’ve explained the game, I want to put a spin on it using modern technology (Snapchat!). So instead of using the typical verbal “Marco” and “Polo”, I’m going to use picture messages. So here’s the play by play. A girl and a guy are texting or whatever and the guy sends a text, “Marco?” which triggers a chain reaction of fun escapades on the girl’s part as she replies to each subsequent “Marco” in a new location, making it much like the original game where the guy has to find her by following the “Polo”s. I don’t know all the locations yet, but I’d be fun if at least one was a selfie with a mascot (Hello, Rodney the Ram are you available for a quick photoshoot?). Other locations could be a notably colored door, a landmark like the compass, a picture of a cup of coffee at a food truck like Alchemy, a commonly known piece of street art (the girl in the jar of strawberries?), a corner street sign, the folding sign in front of a local cafe, etc. basically the guy would be chasing the girl around campus and the last picture would be the back of his head so when he turns around she lets him find her. But where is VW in this quest of minorly epic proportions? Well it is the guy’s noble steed! He uses it to drive to the different known locations (Cabell, The Village, etc.) using his phone-car connection to navigate until he finally gets out at the last location (Paradise park?) and she snaps a picture of him by his car that allows him to ‘find’ her.
I don’t have a boy to play along but I took some of the “Polo” snapchats.
Copy Write Paste 
I remembered a comment you left on the post I did that inspired this one and I went through trying to find it. First off, thank you! I am honored to have inspired a fellow classmate, second, this is a good post! It’s got a lot of different angles to it and you went really in depth with the thoughts that inspired this idea and a creative process, but most of all it’s fun and I think that’s the most important part.
I looked around at some of your other stuff and I’m impressed! You have a lot of cool, fun ideas going on here. Since I can’t really tell how far along you are with the project since the posts seem to be out of order, I don’t know how far you are… But if you’re almost there then you’ve got this, because you’re almost there! If you’re not almost there, you still got this, and if you’re done then you have this either way, keep up the great work.