Slowing down to explore deeper creativity

For the last couple months, I've taken a hiatus from this podcast for what I think is a pretty good reason. We moved our family from California to Croatia. So that's a move of over 6 ,000 miles and it's a huge change in our life. We went from a giant global city to living on a small village on an island. It's a completely different pace of life and frankly,

It's really reframed how I approach creativity and creating and overall productivity and things related to that and lifestyle in general. Everything is different and I'm still adjusting, but I've been here for about two months as I'm recording this and I've learned a lot. There's a lot that I've learned about creativity and the experience in general that I wanted to share with you on today's episode of the HyperMemoir podcast.

Once again, I'm Chris Waldheims and this is the HyperMemoir Podcast. I talk about creativity and how to develop creative voice and how to just become a better creator, a more open and authentic creative person. So that's what this podcast is about. And that's what I'm sharing through personal stories and just insights I've gained through my experience. And hopefully it's useful for some of you.

I also have a newsletter that I write that when I post an episode, I tend to send a newsletter that gives more context. The link is in the show notes. It's pretty good. If nothing else, it'll remind you of when the podcast comes out. So take a look at that. I'm also on Instagram as hyper memoir. So you can find me there. If anything that I'm talking about resonates with you or you want to share it with people or just support what I'm doing, follow me there, subscribe to the newsletter, do whatever you want, but I'd love to have you because I'm doing this.

largely for myself and to share what I've learned. But the more people who get involved, the more I can do. So let's just get into today's episode and talk about what I came to talk about, which is why we moved to Croatia. I mean, we moved from Los Angeles and there were a lot of reasons to do that. So we moved from Los Angeles, California, which is one of the biggest cities in the world, or maybe it is anyway, giant city, giant.

global metropolis, Los Angeles. Everybody knows that. And we moved to a tiny village. So it's a little village on an island in Croatia, which is a completely different thing. It's a completely different world, completely different worldview. And I think we needed that change as a family, but also me personally, we needed a change. There was a lot of reasons for that. For living in California, it just felt expensive. It felt like no matter what, we were always spending money. So

Southern California also felt different. grew up there since the eighties and the whole thing just kind of felt different. And I'd been doing the Southern California thing since I was about 11 years old and wanted to try something new. I'd lived there my whole adult life. and yeah, I think there's a lot of reasons to move, but those are the main ones. But personally for me, and I think most relevant to this episode and the kind of things that I'll talk about with you today is.

I needed a creative reboot. needed a shift in direction. I had been moving to a more creative direction as any of you have, who have listened to this podcast know this podcast is really a documentation of my creative journey and my, my desire to become more creative or learn to create better or just reawaken creativity that had somehow been lost or gone to sleep. And I hope that in sharing what I've learned, there's lessons for others. Who knows? You'll tell me, we'll find out together.

be creative and not have to be completely in pursuit of money, although that's a fair goal. But the idea was you could experiment, was space to create. And I just didn't feel like that was there anymore. It might be. And I think maybe other people can attest to that or speak on that more. But for me, as a creative person, it was an amazing place to grow up. I had a lot of different influences. I learned a lot. There's a lot of amazing people who I connected with and I'll stay connected with for my entire life, no matter where I live. But.

As I said, personally, I needed a shift. You might have a different take on all that. That's fine. I'd been doing the same thing in the same way for a long time. So no matter what I was doing, whether I was working as a lawyer or as a designer or any other job, it had all been kind of the same thing and kind of the same approach. It's been, it was a lot of hustle, a lot of competition. And that was fine. I grew up with that and I'm actually

pretty good at it. I don't mind that. But I felt like for whatever it is that I'm trying to create next, that wasn't going to be the way. And by the way, I'm not even sure what that is that I'm creating. I can give you a sense of what it is that I'm doing and why, but what I'm creating is still unfolding. And that's also part of why I'm moving, to give myself space to discover and explore. So I needed to change an environment because I wanted to get deeper. I wanted to get deeper with my creativity and my relationship with my...

I mean, that's just one of the reasons, but like I said, it's a reason that's relevant to this podcast. It's about creativity here. So I wanted to share about that. So I needed space to go deeper and I wanted to get to a deeper level of creation and the way to do that, that I've learned, you know, I'm 47 years old now. And one of the things I've learned is while speed is awesome, while moving quickly is awesome, while hustle is awesome, there's also a time to slow down and reevaluate and explore.

And you can get to a lot deeper creativity by doing that, by giving yourself space to say, okay, what is it that I'm trying to say? What is it that I'm trying to do? And not have the always on go, go, go mentality, which can lead to a lot of wasted energy, which can lead to a lot of frustration and a lot of confusion and doing a lot of things that actually don't have a lot of creative resonance for you. I had that experience. There's a lot of things that I've done.

and was doing that while they were productive, just didn't quite get to what I wanted to get to. So the next phase for me is to give myself space. So that's what I'm doing here. That's why I'm moving to a tiny island with a lot less distraction. It's a change in environment. It's a slower pace of life. So being in a city like Los Angeles, it's fast paced. Like I said, I grew up with that. I can do that. I could do that till the day I died. Honestly, no problem. I'm good at it.

But we needed to try something different. We needed to be able to have more time for deep work, for doing things that are meaningful. And even the time zone difference, Croatia is nine hours ahead of California. Even the time zone difference means that I have hours of deep work available to me before other people start waking up and sending emails or making requests or anything else that's normal part of life, but can get in the way of real creativity.

Just even the time zone difference itself has helped, but also the slower pace of life here. It's really caused me to slow down and not feel like I need to have this always on mentality, which you kind of do in a city like Los Angeles. You can obviously slow down. There's a lot of ways you can do that in a city like LA, but the ambient mood is go, go, go. Again, not saying anything against it. Just, I did it for more than 30 years, so it's not like I'm knocking it. I tried it though.

I tried it a lot. And I think also there's here, there's also less ambient anxiety. So in America and United States, I feel like there's a certain level of ambient anxiety that just wasn't working for me. So again, moving to a different country is a way to reduce some of that so that I can spend less time locked into other people's energy and anxiety and more time locked into what it is that I'm trying to create. So my take, you take it as you want.

Who knows how things are going to go. I moved here, as I said, two months ago, I'm still adapting. I'm still learning. It could go any direction. It could be that after six months, I get tired of it and we move back. I mean, we've committed to at least a year, I believe, but who knows? I could completely have a different take in a few months. Maybe I'll do another follow -up episode to talk about that, but really it's been good. think it's been good to open space for creativity and

It's really been about spending more time, getting more done by doing less. So it's less about how much can we get done, but it's more a focus on doing the right things, doing the things that are meaningful to me, doing the things that give me creative energy back. That's something I've been really on lately. Whenever I'm doing something, there's certain things that I can do where if I do them because I have to,

I feel like it takes energy. feel like I have to spend a lot of energy and time to make those things happen. There are other things that when I do them, like recording this podcast or working on music or writing books or something like that, that I feel like give me creative energy back. And those are the things that I'm trying to focus on now, because then once you have that creative energy returning to you, it becomes a virtuous cycle. You can do more without it feeling like burnout, without it feeling like pressure, which in

You know, again, in a city like Los Angeles, there's a lot of outside pressures. There's a lot of distractions. Some of them are good. Some of them are bad. But I think by taking control of time, which is something I've talked about before, taking control of how we use time and energy to create, it really opens up a lot more possibility. And one of the things about a city like Los Angeles is the possibility. There's a lot of possibility and there's a lot that you can do. There's a lot to see and explore. And.

I enjoy that. That's one of the great things about Los Angeles. That really makes the city a treasure. However, for this phase in my creative life, it actually becomes a distraction. It's a lot easier to spend time doing things in the outside world, in the city. Again, these are all amazing things while losing sight of what you're actually trying to do. There's a lot of other people's energy moving around that can draw you off the path. So I just wanted to try something different. I wanted to...

move away from that a little bit. So that kind of details my desire to move to Croatia and the creative goals that I've set for this move. And who knows, maybe what I've said can kind of lead some of you to say, well, is there something I can change in my life? Is there something I can reevaluate that might give me a different perspective on creativity or how I approach creativity? I don't know. But yeah, that's what we're talking about. So.

This is kind of a slice of life. it's really cool living here. I live right by the sea. I go to the beach a lot. I'm outside a lot, I'm active outdoors. That's the kind of place that I really wanted to be. So that's where we're at now. It's also funny because, I'm in Croatia, so it's a different culture. So I'm still learning. I don't really know the language that well. I know some words. but it's, there's a learning curve and you know, it's not just like I just came here and fit in or even try to impose my expectations.

on anybody. job right now is really to experience being in a new place, which I think is also a source of creativity. And I'm writing a lot of it down and who knows, maybe one day I'll share a lot of the details if you're interested. But overall, think it's been an experience that's expanded my awareness of the world and my understanding of people and how people relate to one another. So that's what it is. I can talk about it more, but I really wanted to get this episode out.

quickly ish to all of you, just so I could get the podcast back on track. I really enjoy doing the podcast. So by doing this episode, I'm actually recommitting to it and recommitting to sharing a lot of this stuff about creativity, but then also personal stories in the time that I haven't done the podcast. I've actually been able to think a lot about what is it that I'm trying to say and what's the message here overall. And it's been a process of iteration. I've talked about the idea of creative iteration in past podcasts about how

Often the message that we're trying to convey to people through our art and creativity isn't always clear and it takes some iteration. takes some doing. And the more that we put stuff out, the more that we get feedback, the more that we look at what we're sharing and tweak it and modify it and iterate, the better we can do. The more clear our message becomes, it's a constant process of uncovering the message. So I'm going to stop there. This is Chris of all times. This is the HyperMemoir podcast. As I said at the beginning,

You can join the newsletter, which is linked from the show notes, or you can follow me on social media. I'll post clips from the podcast and other things that I think might be relevant. Trying to get back on the social media train. That's a whole other thing. So if anyone has advice on just how to make social media more of a consistent thing, I'd love it, but that's what I'll work on next. All right. Thanks for listening.