Finding creativity doesn’t require leaving Dayton
Whether you’re a writer, musician, filmmaker or poet; whether you’re a seasoned professional or just a hobbyist, everyone occasionally experiences that frustrating feeling of creative block. Fortunately, here’s a simple, four-step guide to picking up that pen, guitar or laptop and doing your best work ever!
Step 1: Take a walk. The mind and body are connected, and simply moving your legs can get those creative juices flowing again.
Step 2: Journal. Let your mind wander, and write down whatever comes into your head. It’s a great way of clearing your thoughts and starting fresh.
Step 3: Sell your apartment in the big city and move to Dayton. This is the piece of advice I wish someone had told me when I was a kid, but fortunately, it’s never too late to start.
I know what you’re saying: Don’t I have to leave Dayton to live my best creative life? Believe me, I was sold the same bill of goods right after college, and I fell for it. I headed east, where I spent way too many years of my life working in uncreative office jobs during the day so I could afford to collapse in my tiny Brooklyn apartment at night. I tried L.A. too, under the mistaken impression that writing screenplays in a Los Angeles Starbucks is magically more productive than writing them in a New York Starbucks.
In fact, the true secret to creativity is writing screenplays in a Dayton Starbucks*. Why? For one thing, because you’re not sitting next to 12 other people who are also desperately trying to write that career-launching screenplay, reading the same books about how to write a screenplay, and hoping to get the same 10 minutes with a studio executive to pitch that screenplay.
I had always assumed that being in a place where everyone else was trying to achieve the same goal was somehow helpful to me achieving mine. I imagined that ideas would spark and I’d absorb creativity through osmosis. Instead, I found all I was absorbing was a monolithic way of thinking about how creative goals could be achieved. And too much caffeine.
I did eventually stumble into what my high school self had thought was my dream job — writing monologue for the Tonight Show. But I soon realized that cranking out 100 jokes, five days a week, (75 of them about Donald Trump) was actually not as creatively fulfilling as I had imagined. Lesson learned!
No, to fulfill my creative goals, I had to take a bold step into the unknown. I had to listen to my wife and move back to Dayton. I got a job downtown that I enjoy, and that actually leaves me time to spend with my family, and a home I could actually afford. And when I decided to try being creative again, for the first time in a long time it wasn’t by pursuing the path everyone around me was following. I got to be playful about it, and the result was I’m now writing and producing a podcast, “The Novelizers with Andy Richter,” with contributions from some of the most creative people I’ve worked with, including some incredibly talented Daytonians. It’s my most creatively fulfilling project.
And all I had to do was move back to Dayton.
Step 4: Wear a funny hat. You’ll feel creative when you look creative!
*Actually, Ghostlight.