After strolling for various minutes through the school supply isle at the local Walgreens, my friend had finally decided on what notebook he wanted to buy. “I want this one. It says ‘Big Ideas’ on it.” he said, while holding the blue thick notebook to my face. I asked him why he needed a new notebook, didn’t he have enough notebooks already? He tells me “It’s not the same, with a new notebook this will, hopefully, inspire me to take more notes.”
Later that day I arrived home, thinking about what my friend had said about inspiration. Walking across the living room, I find a bag of Adidas shoes, “I bought those for myself, maybe it’ll inspire me to work out and lose some extra pounds.” my mom had exclaimed from the kitchen as she fried some chicken wings and french fries for dinner.
There’s that damn word again, “Inspiration”. Is this a trend I’m late on? When did we start determining our source of inspiration from objects? Shoes = losing weight, notebooks = writing more?
Still bewildered by this new philosophy, I entered my room and my eyes fell on an old saxophone sitting in the furthest corner, a gift for 13 year old me. I can count with my fingers the times I’ve used it. I remember leaving frustrated every time for not getting the notes to “Let’s Get It On” by Marvin Gaye right. I also noticed two notebooks I had bought when I was going through my edgy teen years in highschool. One of them was full of poems and short stories, while the most recent only had one page full of ideas, the rest were covered in dust. After scanning my room I had noticed I had access to an infinite source of materials to create amazing content. I had a notebook to write, I had a camera to take pictures, I had watercolor and stencils to paint and I had a saxophone to wow men. Realization came bursting through the door, I’ve also been victim to this great philosophy. The momentary high we find with accessing insignificant objects whose sole intent is to make my work easier, not better.
Envision this; we are endlessly pulling out tools from a toolbox. We rummage for whatever object that suits our needs, and we know that once we find it, we will achieve great things. We find dead ends, we find first shi*** drafts, writer’s block, bad ideas, and even worse ideas. We feel lied to, so we close that toolbox feeling helplessly deceived and uninspired. This is called the Toolbox Fallacy.
Toolbox Fallacy, an endless greedy cycle of obtaining certain objects in hopes of grabbing that inspiration to finish a creative work, it’s the writers block to writers, procrastination for the students and the laziness for rest of the population. Like my friend, my mother and I, we’ve found ourselves saying “I need x object to inspire me to finish x activity.” Does inspiration come with a price tag? No, but, in some cases it’s true. A photographer needs a camera, a driver needs a car, a writer needs a pen and paper. It is easy to fall into this fallacy because there are moments where the situation becomes valid. My friend needs a notebook to take notes, my mother needs shoes to run and I need a saxophone to play music; when can we spot this fallacy and avoid it?
The answer is hidden in plain sight, to become what we preach we don’t need to possess the tools, we need to learn how to use them. A photographer uses a camera, a driver drives their car, a writer writes with pen and paper. With this simple change of vocabulary, the scenario changes. Thus, our mentality changes too. To restate, these objects only make our work easier, we as creators make them better.
It may come off as a bold statement when I say: “We make our own excuses.” Take time off your busy schedule and think about that notebook you bought months ago. It’s probably not nearly half written and is currently accumulating dust; those running shoes have curled and stained and that saxophone’s reed is well but a health hazard. We can look around our own room and notice materials we haven’t touched in a long time, pushing them away with a very valid excuse; “I need to study” becomes “I’d rather do my homework than spend 10 mins playing piano.”, “I don’t have time” becomes “I didn’t make the time and I’m not bothered to do so”. Just like Pandora’s box, we should let all of these bad issues loose: first “shi***” drafts, our dead ends, our lack of motivation and our empty inspiration. Just as how the story goes, we should let these issues loose, and we will find at the bottom of that toolbox, the inspiration we are looking for.
To further prove my point, I took the decision to write this article’s first shi*** draft in the notebook that has accumulated dust. Two pages down, an infinite more to cover.