Daytalking (left, from Completely in the Dark), Nightwalking (courtesy of ShinyRobot), and Stargazing (again, CITD).

Member-only story

Creativity Is Not an Act — It’s an Accumulation

Michael Maupin
4 min readOct 7, 2018

Accumulation. Aggregation.

What are these things?

A collector knows them well. A collector thinks: “What do I have? What am I missing? What would complete my collection?”

I gravitate toward montage artists, collectors, discriminating selectors.

Hoarders, wastrels, bone rag bucket dippers — buh bye. I have no time for that.

So lately I’ve gone full-on protection mode. Head down, waiting for the bark of creativity. I can’t act on it even if the alarm went off, so I have to stay attentive and ready. I rested — A LOT. It felt good to feel rested. I’m fine with that.

But there’s a point when resting becomes lethargy. And that’s not good.

So I reached out to people who might know something about being in the world and it turns out they’re all dead. Figures.

The first is Randy Pausch, who wrote The Last Lecture before he died in 2008. (Funny because that’s the year that nearly everyone I knew I my life died, too.)

The third was Epictetus, who wrote some Discourses and said this: “When anyone makes you angry, know that it is your own thought that has angered you.”

--

--

Michael Maupin
Michael Maupin

Written by Michael Maupin

Writer, editor, and media maker. Blogs at Completely in the Dark (www.completelydark.com) and lives in Minneapolis, MN. Currently on Substack at StoryShed.

Responses (1)