Learning to Streamline

I have been, for as long as I can remember, the kind of person who learns by thinking out loud, asking questions and trying to discern people’s thoughts from their verbal and non-verbal reactions. I am very sensitive to changes in mood, and to glances that signify approval or disapproval. I have a lot of crazy schemes and I try ideas out on the people around me to see what they think, and I am willing to try almost anything once (often many thins at once) to see how it all plays out in practice. Largely I think this is a creative strength, but at times it can be a muscle I over-use, and when that happens I either end up over-extended with way too much on the go, or looking like a crazy dreamer with low follow-through. This is something Indyish has forced me to work on, and so I figured I’d share some thoughts on it.

I am trying these days to to be more judicious in how I use this dreamer, schemer muscle of mine. For example, by letting people know, really clearly and explicitly, when I am just running ideas past them. This seems obvious now, but I didn’t really used to think much about how it felt to be on the receiving end of one of my WHAT ABOUT THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS YEAH LET’S DO THAT modes. I am working on incorporating the words “I’m just making this up, but what do you think?” into heavier conversational rotation, and I think it’s helping my credibility.

Secondly, I am trying to be very deliberate about which ideas and gigs I actually take on. For example, Indyish very nearly brought the 48Hour Film Project to Montreal this year. This would have been very cool, and an honour, and a great way to drive traffic to our site. It was something pretty much everyone we spoke to was excited about….and yet and yet and yet.. We needed to look really hard at the plan and the contract, shake the stars from our eyes and realize that producing that event so closely on the heels of Fringe Fest might just be the straw that broke the tired-out camels back. And by camel I mean Elran, me and everyone on our just-starting-to-solidify volunteer team. Indyish.com had a bunch of new features to be released and we were facing identity questions like: are we really first and foremost an organization that helps produce other org’s events? Hmm. In the end, we decided to say no for now, and I know at least one back that’s pretty thankful for that, and I think our own show, the Mess has benefited as well and brought more, in an ongoing way, to us and our community.

Streamlining is an interesting thing, and I think it may even be something I’ve feared. It means letting go of the busy buzz of activity it’s possible to perpetually create, to see what is coming toward you of it’s own accord. I still am the type of person who learns by imagining things and trying things, and who is delighted by the endless varieties of things out there to imagine and try. I am just beginning to understand that by easing up on my own urge to generate those new things and allowing them to find me instead, I may just tap into possibilities that exist beyond the context of what I can imagine from were I’ve already been.

And that’s a stream I’d like to swim in.