3/ Goodbye Substack, hello…?

Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren and boring.
Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvellous and intoxicating.

— Simone Weil

When asked about the key to building trust with an audience by an aspiring startup founder earlier today, without hesitation I replied; “Consistency is the key”.

I then immediately followed up by saying “So please, do as I say, not as I do”, my usual disclaimer to deal with the inevitable imposter syndrome that comes along with doling out advice.

Yet here I am, writing up a third edition of something I had planned for years, yet never prioritised highly enough to produce.

Why?
What has changed?
And is it permanent enough for me to call myself ‘prolific’ yet?

Hell no. Nothing big has changed at all.

And I think that’s the point.

Below is a series of tweets I put out earlier this year about my time presenting at Southstart in South Australia. I still felt the same nerves, the same tension and the same sense of imposter syndrome after drafting every single tweet. But I kept going, until I had finished my train of thought.

As I prepare to board a flight home from @_southstart, here are some personal reflections from the paradigm shifting conversations and experiences we’ve had this week.May 7, 2021

2/ Firstly, an acknowledgment of how extraordinarily privileged we are to be here in the first place. In the wake of a global pandemic still ravaging many parts of the world, survivor guilt is something that weighs heavily on many Aussies and will likely persist for a long time.May 7, 2021

3/ With that said, taking one of the first opportunities to travel, hug and high five actual humans without a mask in sight is something every country and community will eventually enjoy again and hooley dooley, did we make the most of it.May 7, 2021

pic.twitter.com/NeIA5AekXrMay 7, 2021

If you’re interested, you can check out the rest here or you can view the slides from my Masterclass here

There’s no doubt I could have made it better and I’m certain lots of people disagreed with me. But as I outlined in my presentation, creativity is a practise.

Curiosity is important, but it’s only half the story.

Without constraints (ie time, budgets, deadlines, 140 character limits etc), we never give others the opportunity to engage with our ideas. Often, the tighter the constraints, the more innovative the outcomes.

But one thing I’ve been thinking a lot about this year is the tension between constraints and conduits… Specifically, whether factors like our environment or the tools we use make it easier or more difficult for us to create.

Every day, I help my kids get ready for school and wait (im)patiently for my wife to head out the door so that I can return to this little office and ‘begin creating’.

Sometimes I get a lot done, but often, I wander aimlessly between rooms or swipe between iPad games for the first hour or so, knowing full well that I’m wasting the most precious time of my day yet somehow unable to commit to the creative ‘practise’ I described earlier. Something I’ve taken deep pride in developing and honing over 15+ years seems to have completely disappeared.

Call it Covid, call it loneliness or a mid life crisis, I’m not sure, but it’s certainly not an enjoyable experience. I still have all the same ideas and high levels of curiosity that I always had, but no longer seem able to just make stuff the way I have for so often.

And yet, just when it seemed like nothing would help drag me forward, I discovered one line from a book by one of my favourite writers called Soundtracks. In the book, Jon Acuff describes his disdain for ideas like self-help, productivity and ‘positive thinking’, despite being considered by many as a self help writer. Yet while researching the problem of overthinking, Acuff discovered that even Seth Godin - someone he greatly admires and respects - spent years doing daily affirmations developed by Zig Ziglar, one of the forefathers of motivational speaking.

Inspired by this, Acuff wrote and refined a set of short sharp ‘soundtracks’ for himself, eventually sharing with his audience via this new book. Some are still a bit american cheesy for my taste, but the one I’m really enjoying right now is ‘Momentum is Messy’.

So with this in mind, I’m making some minor adjustments to this Museletter.

If you’re reading this after September 2021, you probably won’t notice any changes at all, but for context, I began writing this Museletter on a platform called Substack which is quite minimal (which I love) but which is super focused on the written word, which I really don’t consider my strong suit… I’m a visual thinker, so I want anything I put into the world to represent that.

Plus, some people might love the idea of monetising their audience (which Substack is 100% optimised for), however this doesn’t interest me in the least. Kinda defeats the point of creating for me, tbh.

So, after a month or two of research, I’m happy to say I’ve finally found a much more visual friendly platform and a new creative process I’m excited to try out, starting today. If you’d like to opt out, just reply to this or shoot me an email to museletter [at] murraygalbraith.com anytime. Otherwise, I’ll just migrate everything over to V2 and see you all again next week 😊

So yes, creativity is a practise.

But no, it doesn’t (always) have to be a painful one.

And never forget: Momentum is messy.