A New Thing Every Day

So it turns out that getting fired and returning to freelancing leaves a person with more time on their hands than sense in his head.

Last night, in the absence of anything watchable on TV, I watched Julie & Julia. The movie and my newfound freedom(?) gave me an idea that would—I hope—keep my creative juices a-flowin’. Inspired by Merlin Mann, Adam Lisagor and Jesse Thorn, I have a new project.

The idea, which probably isn’t original, is A New Thing Every Day.

I keep a running text file of ideas for things to make and possibly sell—t-shirts, coffee mugs, bumper stickers, maybe even something worthy of a Kickstarter project—but the grind of a 9-to-5 job left me without the time or energy to make it happen. I was fortunate enough to pick up a couple of short-term freelance gigs immediately after getting canned (two hours after, in one case).

So here’s how it works: I’m going to devote the hour in the morning during which I would normally drink coffee and read RSS feeds to making a new thing and putting it up for sale somewhere—MySoti, Spreadshirt, CafePress, whatever. it could be a type treatment, a doodle on the iPad, whatever. No restrictions on the medium or the content. Just one new thing every day. It’s mostly a way to exercise the creativity muscle without committing to a huge project, an hour at a time, every day. Whatever’s done at the end of an hour gets posted. Even if I don’t sell one piece, I’ll have 365 new pieces to choose from for my portfolio.

Starts tomorrow. If I waited, I’d never get done.

P.S. If it gets to be too much, let me know, and I’ll move the sale posts to a different Tumblr site.

5 Notes/ Hide

  1. snickr said: What a lovely idea! Look forward to seeing what you come up with, and hopefully you’ll let us know how it’s going (in terms of keeping you creative & productive).
  2. jasonbaldwin posted this