Be Boring

Yes, be boring. One would think that people of the art world would be anything but boring due to constantly needing to be creative, but that is the first piece of advice Kleon gives in chapter 9 of "Steal Like An Artist". His reasoning is that it takes a lot of energy to truly be creative, and it's just not possible to mentally be on that level 24/7 without going insane. Therefore, it's necessary to have "down time" and just do things that are boring (but you don't hate) and have a routine. My current routine consists of quite a few things, but it's more or less the same thing every week, which is nice because I don't have to think about what is going to happen because I already know. In fact, when something is different, I find myself constantly thinking about it to make sure I don't forget it. That energy and time I could have used to do something more constructive or perhaps even come up with something more creative at my internship.

The next thing Kleon suggests is to stay out of debt, which is good advice for anyone. Save money where you can, like brewing coffee at home instead of going to a coffee shop every morning, bring your own lunch, and not buying the latest technology when the old one works fine. Not only will this save you money, but you are also saying no to the consumer culture.

Keep your day job. Yes, it sounds....boring, and not exactly one would consider a life achievement, but sometimes you just have to do what you have to do to get the bills paid, until you can support yourself doing what you truly love. There is a benefit to keeping a day job, and that is human interaction and just learning new things. You can also get inspiration where you work just because it's a different environment.

Kleon also suggests keeping a calendar and a log book. The closest thing I have to keeping a calendar is my planner for school. Multiple times throughout my life, I have attempted to keep track of my life with a calendar, but most of the time my life is a routine (as stated before). If there is any change, I will mark it in my planner, but I don't find it worth it to make a note of it in google calendars because of the time it takes to open up the webpage, type in the event, and mark the times, when I can just scrawl it down on a piece of paper. I'll try doing the log book. That might be interesting to see what I did the past week or the past two weeks and remember any fun or strange events that I would have otherwise forgotten. I will start with today since today was a fun day (not sure if you can read my handwriting).