thepleiades

✨ ana in space ✨

@thepleiades

Professional ruminator, multi hobbyist

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thepleiades
@thepleiades

here's a little thing ppl never tell you, but is true. you can actually stop doing any creative process, cold turkey, for years at a time; pick it back up later on, and find that you have progressed in your skill level. seriously only because you have experienced. you have witnessed. you have observed. and, through all of that, you have aged. just by existing you have gained so much additional knowledge, skill, and information that you would not have thought possible.

sure, it may not be a massive jump in skill or quality, obviously parts of you will be "out of practice" if you aren't working the muscle memory. but it's these observations, hidden chunks of knowledge, and your life experiences that contribute to the greater act of creating over a longer period of time.

i know this because i am someone who serially picks up and puts down hobbies over a VERY long stretch of time (not just years! decades!), and someone who actively hates practicing, conditioning, drills or anything that requires me to do something for the rote "betterment" of the craft. without having done much of that at all, i still have noticed this every single time, in every single creative hobby i've picked back up. and sometimes it's not like, a directly transferable "Better" result, but it's using information i wasn't consciously thinking of before, or knowing some part of myself better.

i think this is probably my favorite antidote to the fear of aging i've come across yet. now that i've found this out i can't wait to see what i create with the rest of the years i have left. it's so exciting to think that maybe my best work is still ahead of me. and i don't care how long it takes.

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in reply to @thepleiades's post:

kylelabriola
@kylelabriola

I'd love to hear more about this!

This is definitely a fear I have for drawing and for animation. And sometimes after coming back to drawing after a long time, it comes out like shit (for muscle-memory related reasons, i'm sure.) But I definitely also feel that improvement in a mental and creative sense.

For the hobbies you returned to, was there any physical barrier where you had to get your body re-acclimated to the act?

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thepleiades
@thepleiades

yeah, i can definitely see this especially for drawing because that would be one hobby that is one of the more practice-intensive arts out there, and does require some physicality. i only draw about once or twice a year myself just naturally, and each time i find that there's one little piece of the puzzle that comes to me. one example that comes to mind is i know some section of anatomy better, because i went to physical therapy and learned how these certain muscles intersect, or through exercise was able to study them on my own physique.

another example is dancing--there's a TON of rust to shake off when it comes to that bc it's purely physical and legitimately requires stamina to accomplish!! and that shouldn't be discounted. but even there... your muscles never quite forget what you've done in the past, it's just building on a foundation you've already laid. i actually played DDR for the first time in like 10 years earlier this year and was able to pick back up some of it within a few rounds just because i'd played sooo much when i was a teen lmao, and that made me think of some balance issues i'd been working on with learning to shuffle... that kind of thing.

there's definitely no harm in acknowledging having to overcome that initial physical barrier i think. but i think the point there is that it all comes back wayyy faster than when you were just starting out.

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thepleiades
@thepleiades

for real!!! i mentioned this in another comment but muscle memory in that regard is so real even when it doesn't feel like it should be there at all anymore. you've already made physical neural pathways when you first started and now you're just re-igniting them, not creating them from scratch. it's always so much easier to come back to things and pick it up so much faster because of that imo.

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cuddlepuunk
@cuddlepuunk

seconding this

I've only just begun drifting back into designing small icons, after almost half a decade away; and even after only a few hours my sense of colour, personal style, and visual balance are leagues ahead where of I last left off

even when I'm merely biding time, it feels like I'm still quietly growing

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quewon
@quewon

this actually used to bother me a lot as a kid, knowing that there were some aspects i couldn't completely understand, some wisdoms i couldn't have only because i lack experience. but i got over it by realizing that art has merit in every age. it's cool to see that somebody had the opposite concern

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