Today is the ventilation day. I do feel like my room got a little stuffy. I decided to not think too much about what I will be dong today. Just try to embrace the arbitrariness of my choices and follow what ever comes up. I have time and space to do so, so why not. I even decided to carry on with it tomorrow as well. I am curious about what will happen and in how far I will be able to stick with it. And what it even means to allow arbitrariness to play along in as my day passes. Arbitrariness is defined as the quality of being determined by chance, whim, or impulse, and not by necessity, reason, or principle. Alright so I know what to listen to. Going to follow my impulse and try noticing it. The main goal of this exercise is to create air circulation and bring in new stream of thoughts. It is an experiment. Hypotheses is as following: tuning into mundane arbitrariness will introduce new perspectives, bring lightness and relaxation into creative process. Why do I think this way? Outsourcing choice-making often brings in loosening and opening, under condition when done with consent. My impulses and whims have my consent for a few days.
I was expecting something special to happen, like don’t know do something silly or unexpected. It didn’t really happen that way. What was interesting is that I could notice how in the middle of an activity an idea pops up an I shelf the direction of whatever I was doing. For example I was standing on my head while doing yoga this morning, and I had an urge to try writing letters with my feet. That gave me lots of fun and definitely left me with a blissful relaxed and fulfilled feeling. It felt good to just do what ever comes up. I had a few other moments like that during the day, catching tails of a spontaneous impulses. Every time following the inner drive felt really good.
There are two notion which can help us to understand creativity, deliberate and spontaneous. There are two different modes of processing and generating insights not only differ by the quality of an insight but also are happening in different areas of out brain. Here is a good read on this topic, which is a bit technical but might worth checking out if you like ti dive deeper into neurocognitive matter. In my opinion import take away that these two modes of creativity, tap from different compartments of our memory. Deliberate, goal-oriented, thinking is creating new insights from working memory and spontaneous taps into storing memory and mostly works with information which is not directly accessible to out consciousness. Spontaneous creativity is only available to us in rest state, when there is no stress what so ever to perform under pressure. Which allows for the insights which are completely unexpected, risky and exciting. Tapping into spontaneous creativity is not only import for the content of a particular insight but also it helps us to stretch the territory of deliberate creativity as it literally expands the amount of routs for us to take. The amount of connections our brain is making can be increased and in that sense can be trained flexibility.
I do find it difficult sometimes to allow this spontaneity determine how the day will go, that is why, if I do so, I sandbox a special playtime for impulses to show me the way. Assigning designated time and space for play, keeps the worries away as I know that this is what I am going to do now. I don't have to feel bad or worried that I am doing something unproductive or useful. Generally speaking, I rarely find it difficult to allow for spontaneous creativity, but I did notice that when under pressure I need to give misled permission to play. And it works. Sandboxing, creating a space for something to unfold, is in general a great strategy to practice behaviours which potentially be unsettling. Perhaps I will unfold it tomorrow in more detail.