How I Spend My Free Time Cultivating Creativity

In our free time, we have so many distractions.

Here’s how I increase my productivity and creativity.

I am constantly creating new work, whether it is subjectively good or bad.

Disclaimer: I am a known workaholic and my idea of fun is getting to sit down and write blog posts, articles, and poems for shits and giggles. Literally my job is my idea of fun. Have I gotten tired of it yet? No, not really, but that’s because I have a little secret of nailing my routine down to a T.

I stopped writing for a year after high school. I went to an arts high school where I majored in literary arts. When I had to crank out a short story every other week, or record a two hour podcast within a month, I got burned out so, so quickly. That’s why I don’t really recommend people major in something creative, because when you make it work and it becomes a chore, that’s how you lose your passion for it.

Stephen King Says to Write 2,000 Words a Day.

I actually disagree with this notion very much; if you’re feeling uninspired, don’t write 2,000 words. Some days I write 5,000 words when I’m really feeling inspired, but I’m also partially insane (re: workaholic & some other reasons I will not disclose, at least not now). I think that as a society we’ve been forced to commodify our art to the point where if we allow ourselves to rest, we just feel guilty. Really, don’t feel guilty about that. Write whenever you want.

But, on the flip end, be disciplined about your writing. At least make sure you write and create art, because if you let yourself fall into a slow decline, it’s going to be harder to build a routine of fostering creativity. At the very least, write down your thoughts and images your brain randomly just keeps coming back to.

Eventbrite. Eventbrite is Your Friend.

For my people with a lot of interests, Eventbrite, especially during the pandemic era, can quickly become your best friends. Narrow your interests down to key words and look them up. Some key words I use are “history,” “anthropology,” “fashion history,” “art history,” and “[random country]”. I’ve attended so many random academic talks by PhDs—one of the most fascinating is one I attended about Black art in the early 1900s French scene, and how the French very much had an Asian fetish during that era.

But, actually, I find history and going to these talks so inspiring for me my work. As primarily a poet-person, I tend to skewer towards narrative poetry, and embed myself deep in cultural artifacts in order to tell a story. Fashion, art, cinema—they’re all just vehicles to enhance the story I’m trying to tell, but they also allow themselves to tell another story. That’s why I find these talks so useful for my creative process, because I am capable of expanding my knowledge of what went on in the world historically to build my own narratives around.

Social Media is Also Your Friend.

I absolutely hate using social media for my own purposes. Around last summer I really started falling into the pitfalls of it and would be constantly scrolling, but my mental health was also bad at that point because I was just flat out depressed.

Something that helped me is to make an alternate account, one where I use to just scroll through artists I like and find new influences to follow. I don’t use it as a comparison app, nor do I use that account for personal reasons. I just follow the photographers and writers I stumble upon, like their work, and that makes me feel more creative.

I also use social media for scouting out new websites to stalk (see my next section), as well as how to curate my own work to fit publication standards. I also follow a lot of book reviewers on these accounts, specifically for literature from the Asian continent, so I can keep into the loop for what’s being translated soon.

Twitter is also a good resource for this. I find a lot of obscure niche topics in Twitter, like the food critics I enjoy, the film journalists, or the random freelancers who do a little bit of everything.

Personally, I write a lot of ekphrastic poems and create based on other people’s art (I always cite them as an inspiration because they deserve the loving devotion I will too receive one day), and so this method really took the pressure of social media off of me as a personal user by letting me just browse on what is essentially incognito.

Website Stalking.

Twitter and Instagram led me to having an entire stockpile of websites and people to stalk, and yes, I’ve bookmarked my favorite website design. Digital media is absolutely fascinating to me, which is why I’m playing around with the aesthetics of my own website all the time. I’m a finicky person who constantly changes my profile pictures too, if that explains anything.

But something else that stalking websites taught me is that there truly is a place for all kinds of topics. I saw someone had articles about The Legend of Zelda and how they grew up with it in the 90s in a regular magazine, and that got me super hopeful about writing about video games in the future for my own purposes. I also realized the sheer amount of career paths one can take as a writer, from making connections in the food industry and being a food critic, to focusing on wellness, or being a culture journalist. The world really is your oyster, and just by finding all of these cool writers online made me realize that.

And so it inspired me to experiment more. Right now I’m on a submission ban, but I’ve started writing a lot more prose and journalistic pieces lately in art, which I’ve always wanted to do and now have the chance to do so while being unafraid.

Limiting Digital Media

You’re staring at this and probably thinking, “what? You just talked about stalking people on social media.” But hear me out!

Once I started limiting my scrolling time, I had more time to pursue the other things that I always wanted to do. Instead of being on my phone for eight hours, now I can devote that time to finding new inspirations or actually sitting down to write about video games. Social media is useful, but you need to use it smartly. You can’t get the time that you’re spending on it back, so might as well do it with something that might be more useful for you and your personal-development.

Some tricks I had were to set my phone to greyscale and I only allow myself YouTube on Sundays. The videos go onto a playlist called “To-Watch Later” and I binge watch them on my off day.

Keep a Journal

Literally, this was a game changer. When reading books or watching shows, if a certain word stood out to me, I would write it down. This is very specific to me, but I write poems when I’m fixated around a singular word or image. And so by doing this and keeping a journal, it really helped me try to narrow down what I’m trying to say and convey it in the clearest manner possible.

Enjoy the Process

Life is short. Really, don’t worry about the financial side of being a creative. If you’re determined, you’ll find a way, whether it’s having a desk job in the day and being an amazing artist at night, or working multiple jobs to get by. The world sucks, especially in a capitalist society, and so you just need to enjoy it.

So go! Create!