Hollandazed: Thoughts, Ideas, and Miscellany — productive

FROM THE ARCHIVES: MIDNIGHT OIL (by Tom Russell)

Mary Russell

Tags creative, productive

FROM THE ARCHIVES: MIDNIGHT OIL (by Tom Russell)

When I was in my twenties, I used to stay up late - two o'clock, three o'clock, five o'clock in the morning - working on creative projects. I didn't need to go into work until eleven, and the place was about ten minutes away, so I could wake up at ten-thirty or even quarter-to and have time for a shower and a change of clothes before rushing out the door. The solitude, the quiet, the darkness outside gave me a kind of focus and clarity that I didn't get during the daylight. About six years ago, I got a new...


THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY (by Tom Russell)

Mary Russell

Comments 2 Tags creative, productive

THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY (by Tom Russell)

I go through cycles of being intensely productive and intensely lazy, periods where everything clicks and it's go, go, go, all excitement and energy and new games and new ideas, followed by periods where it feels like I'm stuck in mud, slow and struggling and feeling faintly like I'm sinking and will never come out of it.  Of course, I do manage to come out of it. It doesn't feel like I can when I'm in the middle of it. It feels interminably long, impossibly long, like one of Zeno's paradoxes, like every step is incremental but never actually gets...


MIDNIGHT OIL (by Tom Russell)

Mary Russell

Comments 3 Tags creative, productive

MIDNIGHT OIL (by Tom Russell)

When I was in my twenties, I used to stay up late - two o'clock, three o'clock, five o'clock in the morning - working on creative projects. I didn't need to go into work until eleven, and the place was about ten minutes away, so I could wake up at ten-thirty or even quarter-to and have time for a shower and a change of clothes before rushing out the door. The solitude, the quiet, the darkness outside gave me a kind of focus and clarity that I didn't get during the daylight. About six years ago, I got a new...