{"id":821,"date":"2016-03-15T20:23:22","date_gmt":"2016-03-16T03:23:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/?p=821"},"modified":"2016-03-15T20:23:22","modified_gmt":"2016-03-16T03:23:22","slug":"the-long-con","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/2016\/03\/the-long-con\/","title":{"rendered":"The Long Con"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been thinking about seduction, falling in love, and the creative process. I keep thinking there are multiple strands I have to weave together, threads to embroider, knots to untangle, but it turns out there aren&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve written about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/2014\/08\/on-distractions\/\">distractions<\/a> before, so I&#8217;m not going to spend time on that. I&#8217;m just going to say it&#8217;s easy to get pulled away from the things I want to focus on &#8211; to a point. And that is what I want to talk about.<\/p>\n<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\"  href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/jillbertini\/24363900253\/in\/photolist-jhuVff-D7XmHK-ranNYi-qsn7Mo-oEFoEB-oWgE6a-o5ro7E-nEYQdm-nH2rc2-nevXj9-k6ESAV-hR9ZDU-gJXDnt-gwE8AG-fcyh78-f3fsz6-f3ehwP-d3fLdC-bF78Bg-9vCFSh-8GZmbD-8dVw19-8dSg14-8dSfRi-8dSfUx-5x1Z4Y-8dSfx4-7NgtDu-5ZCQWE-5ymoEZ\" title=\"Heart birds\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/farm2.staticflickr.com\/1567\/24363900253_7341c42892.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"374\" alt=\"Heart birds\"><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>For the last several months I&#8217;ve been tweeting a good night\/morning message. Last night it was: &#8220;good night existentialists. Good morning absurdists.&#8221; <strong>I do this because it amuses me. There&#8217;s no reward.<\/strong> Sometimes one or two people will respond. Mostly I feel like it just gets lobbed into cyberspace. It&#8217;s enough for me that a couple of people here and there seem to like it. I probably ignore a ton of stuff or don&#8217;t let the creator know necessarily that I liked something they did. I don&#8217;t take it personally that I don&#8217;t get much feedback. <\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s easy to get discouraged, to think no one cares, but it matters less and less to me as I let myself fall in love with the work. I feel the pull of the creative process and I&#8217;m <a href=\"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/submit\/\">resisting it less<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>This is to say that a slow, steady, persistent effort turns into something else. Recently I had a few friends tell me how much they like these tweets. Individually they don&#8217;t stand up to scrutiny, but together, they&#8217;ve turned into something else. A little ritual. It&#8217;s something I love doing. And even though it might seem like no one else is noticing the effort, it turns out when I raise my head up out of the sand, they are.<\/p>\n<p><strong>There is a second part to this immersion: valuing what you love.<\/strong> I think it&#8217;s easy to get distracted when I don&#8217;t think what I want to spend my time on is worthy. Over the course of a year there was construction going on across the street from the yoga studio where I practice. I went to a morning yoga class, three times a week. The construction noise was constant. At the beginning of class, I would notice all the banging and clanging, but by the end, I had become so absorbed in my effort that all the noise faded away. It didn&#8217;t even bother me in savasana.<\/p>\n<p>Having had this experience, I know I can create the same kind of focused effort in other areas, in areas that I care about. I just want to make a note that I&#8217;m not discussing the financial component of making art in this post. I will probably get there one day, but I&#8217;m not to that point right now. <\/p>\n<p>Part of my effort this year is enjoying the seduction, and not just in the passive &#8220;oh look you brought me flowers and chocolates and wine&#8221; way, but bringing myself as an active participant in the process. So I&#8217;m doing what I love, and not worrying if anyone else will love it or not. Because just like the tweets, the truth is, there probably are people out there who will.<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_pop\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/button100x23.png\" style=\"border:0px; width:100; height: 23; \" alt=\"Share Button\" \/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Reddit\",\"Print\");var hupso_icon_type = \"labels\";var hupso_background=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url=\"\";var hupso_title=\"The%20Long%20Con\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been thinking about seduction, falling in love, and the creative process. I keep thinking there are multiple strands I have to weave together, threads to embroider, knots to untangle, but it turns out there aren&#8217;t. I&#8217;ve written about distractions before, so I&#8217;m not going to spend time on that. I&#8217;m just going to say [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_pop\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/button100x23.png\" style=\"border:0px; width:100; height: 23; \" alt=\"Share Button\" \/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Reddit\",\"Print\");var hupso_icon_type = \"labels\";var hupso_background=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url=\"\";var hupso_title=\"The%20Long%20Con\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,12],"tags":[163,60,13],"class_list":["post-821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-slowbloom","category-writing","tag-creativity","tag-slowbloom-2","tag-writing-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=821"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":825,"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821\/revisions\/825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}