Ep 5: Boxing in Creativity

Swedish cheese, Chinese fiction, and letting go dance a pretty mean tango in this episode. Yes, most tangos are done with only two people but this two-person tango idea you just had is exactly the kind of boxing in that we are addressing in this conversation. A flashback to the book “Shanghai Baby” starts off our rant about the tolerance people have of boxing in creativity and creative people.

On the positive side of this box, Summer got a wave of letting go of a project relief after seeing her Swedish cheese article in print. Conversely, Steph is still grieving over the death of the original project that was the basis for her Virtual Expats podcast nearly a year after that segment was discontinued. How do we know when to let go of a project? Does stopping before reaching whatever we originally thought was the project goal make any of these efforts a complete loss? Why don’t we have a word like “sunk cost” for a creative project's changing and often temperamental lifespan?        

Rabbit Holes:

-Blogging Breakthroughs with Faith Mariah (Podcast): 

https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/blogging-breakthroughs-with-faith-mariah-oZ_h49SlgJG/

-Kolache (food): https://toriavey.com/toris-kitchen/kolache/

Creative terminology/ideas to emerge from this episode: 

-podhole: a podcast listening rabbit hole

-creative self pressure

-creatively constipated: not able to get the creativity out  

Links

-Shanghai Baby by Zhou Weihui (book)

-Summer’s cheese article in Culture Magazine, “Discovering Cheese and Tradition in the Swedish North”

-Stockholm Cheese Festival; https://eatsomethinggosomewhere.com/blog/swedish-cheese-festival

- Sunk cost; https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sunkcost.asp

QUOTES:

“When we start something we don’t necessarily know where it’s going or how long it’s going to take to get there.” -Summer

“Creating goals is not the bad thing, making ourselves stick to all of them is probably where the downfall is.” -Stephanie

“It’s hard to avoid feeling like its a failure to walk away from it even if you accomplish something great out of it.” -Summer

“...cause I remember the pain of wanting it to be what I set it out to be what I set it out to be when I first started.” -Steph

CONTACT US: 

Creatively Complicated (in Internetland):

Email: [email protected]

Summer (in Germany):  

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/summeroutside/ 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/summeroutside

Blog: https://eatsomethinggosomewhere.com/

Stephanie: (in China): 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stephfuccio/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/stephfuccio

Website (3 other podcasts cause I am a crazy person!): https://stephfuccio.weebly.com/