Starting with Why

December 22, 2021

I am generally very good at finishing things that I’ve started. But not always. And I never tried to work out what the reasons were for why I seemed to be simultaneously relentless, obsessive and constantly motivated and also quick to let things slip from between my fingers.

I just thought, “well, what’s meant to be will be, if I was meant to finish it I would have”.

And then I read “Start with Why” by Simon Sinek and “The War of Art” by Simon Pressfield and I was introduced to the concept of Resistance, with a capital R, and the importance of asking WHY before you ask anything else. And suddenly a lot of things made a lot more sense.

SOMETHING I STARTED AND DIDN’T FINISH BECAUSE I DIDN’T ASK WHY

I started a podcast earlier in the year. It has a grand total of 2 episodes. I hoped there would be at least 12. But here we are. It was/is called ‘Objectified’ and I know why it didn’t work. Because my flatmate and I didn’t believe in it enough, and it had no magic. If the idea was a little slice of creative magic it would not have started like this:

‘I want to start a podcast’

‘Me too!’

‘Let’s do one together and we can interview loads of different people’

‘Perfect! What would the theme be? 

We started with WHAT and HOW. We never considered WHY. Why did it matter? Why did we actually want to start a podcast? Why would we ask people about important objects? 

I wanted to start a podcast because I LOVE people and their stories, I love listening and discussing and learning more about the world. But I didn’t really want the podcast. Because if that was what I loved, then I didn’t need a podcast to do those things, I just needed to meet up with people.  

All of this is a roundabout way of getting to the point of this musing: 

WHY AM I WRITING A BLOG? 

I’m really just trying to clear out my head, and learn a bit more, and understand a bit more about what it means to create art and sell art, and why does art matter in this world? And could it save the world? And how does it all tie in with my feelings about injustice and inequality? Just small questions really…

I want to do January thinking all the time. 

I want to be accountable for creating and thinking and questioning.

I want to research and pull together existing viewpoints on the things that I’m thinking about and I need somewhere to store it all. Partly because I love research and essays, and partly because it will motivate me to get my head around things that I really should understand but don’t, like NFT’s. 

I have an interesting job and it makes me ask a lot of questions and I’d like to not just ask the questions but actually pursue answers.

Anyway, if you made it this far give yourself a treat. Now I’m going to learn about NFT’s and write myself a guidebook, I’ll post it here when I’m done.