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So I need to be sad, bored and happy to be creative

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Re: So I need to be sad, bored and happy to be creative

#72
post #33
post #30

I put the same think in an image: It's funny how all are at the same page. http://i.imgur.com/C866csJ.png

It looks like you are using some horribly outdated OS/Browser. If I had to guess, I'd say IE7/8 on Windows XP. For reals?

Nah, it's Firefox 30 on Windows 7. I just reduced the size to make the two links fit in the same view.

Re: So I need to be sad, bored and happy to be creative

#73
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually I used to work as a rafting guide. Didn't earn a lot of money, but I had a lot of free time (in nature), and met a lot of people. I notice that I had way more ideas then than I do now that I have settled into a 9-6 lifestyle. Sometimes that creativity starts coming back when I am on holiday for a while. I think a "normal" office job / lifestyle is very stifling to creativity.

I counter your anecdotal with this anecdotal: Einstein and Bukowski were plenty creative while working in an office.

Haha, okay, i'm gonna run with this.

Einstein's work was linked to the 'creative' ventures he had later on. From Wikipedia: "Much of his work at the patent office related to questions about transmission of electric signals and electrical-mechanical synchronization of time, two technical problems that show up conspicuously in the thought experiments that eventually led Einstein to his radical conclusions about the nature of light and the fundamental connection between space and time." So really his office job was promoting his creative thoughts.

Bukowski (holy cow, what a diametrically opposed example!) is not so much a creative person as a person with PTSD. What's more, he wasn't writing when he was working for the post office initially, (and incidentally he was a letter carrier, meaning being outside). He left after 3 years, but returned a decade later after a divorce (and her subsequent death). Once he was back on the job, an old flame's death prompted more writing, and over the next decade he continued to write, though one has to wonder if it was because of his office gig or in spite of it. At the end of the decade he quit so he could write full-time, which to me says that he both disliked his job and also couldn't be completely creative while working there.

So while Einstein was directly inspired by the subject matter he reviewed at his job, Bukowski was driven by more personal motivations, along with perhaps a disgust with authority and human nature in general. Hard to say those are good anecdotals to defend the idea of general creative work being at all easy while working in a typical office job.

Re: So I need to be sad, bored and happy to be creative

#74
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually I used to work as a rafting guide. Didn't earn a lot of money, but I had a lot of free time (in nature), and met a lot of people. I notice that I had way more ideas then than I do now that I have settled into a 9-6 lifestyle. Sometimes that creativity starts coming back when I am on holiday for a while. I think a "normal" office job / lifestyle is very stifling to creativity.

I counter your anecdotal with this anecdotal: Einstein and Bukowski were plenty creative while working in an office.

Maybe they got outside lots as well.

Re: So I need to be sad, bored and happy to be creative

#80

As a long time HN reader, this post sticks out to me as the first time that I've seen imgur reach the front page. I wonder whether we can get a "no images" rule to prevent this place devolving into reddit?

There is almost certainly a penalty applied to imgur links. Either it was lifted in this case due to relevance or it just got that much momentum from votes.
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