Plan to Be Helpful

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Someone close to me (and whom, without a doubt, cares deeply about my well-being) recently warned that I "help others too much."

It was heartfelt, and she meant it with every ounce of passion she could muster.

"Maybe she's right," I thought to myself. "After all, she's supposed to absolutely have my back, so perhaps I should at least hear her out."

So, I soaked up what she was saying, leaving room for any possibility that I, indeed, do too much to help others and am neglecting my own pursuits in the process. As she proceeded to defend her position and list the reasons behind her belief — SCOREcast, The Conversation, my new Creative Hangout project, the speaking engagements, my drumming gigs of late — I started thinking quietly to myself, "Wow… when you put it like that, yeah… maybe I am doing more to help other artists, composers, and Creatives than I am concentrating on my stuff. Damn! I need to really look at this!"

But then, just as quickly, a reality hit home: I'm leaving nothing undone. I have no "T's" that aren't crossed, no "I's" undotted. In fact, none of my creative pursuits are lacking my attention. My directors are happy, my producers thrilled. The SCOREcast team is hard at work on various projects, my creative staff is kicking ass. The Conversation community is growing daily, my scoring career is rocking and rolling like never before. In that voice I often speak to only myself in, "I am taking names and kicking asses on every level I can think of."

Even still, her words held me for a few days after. I dwelled on them a while. Was I missing something? Am I slipping? Not paying attention to something I should be paying attention to? This launched me into an afternoon last Tuesday of self-evaluation: Was I truly sticking to my CORE attentions that I've pledged this year to focus in on?

The answer? Yes, I am. Here is why I know that.

Knowledge Is a Gift for Giving

There are many things I utterly suck at. Creating in a vacuum is one of them. I can't do that and have never been good at trying to do it. I must have regularly stimulating experiences to fuel my ideas and keep my creative juices flowing. I can't stare at the same four walls of my creative environment for more than an hour at a time or I go stir crazy. I need to breathe sea-salty air. I need to smell Jacaranda trees. I need to feel a country road under my feet every few days or so. I need to hear Muslim magrib prayer bells at dusk. I need to taste great food on my tongue.

And, I need to give time to others. It's in my DNA to "aid". I need to know that I'm making a difference for someone beyond myself. I love my job, I love being successful, I love earning a paycheck, and I love spending my hard-earned dollars on things that me and my family enjoy and love. But I also need to know that something I'm doing benefits someone who is still finding their footing, as I am daily. I have no answers that will solve everything for someone, and I'm definitely light years from perfect. But the conversation that feeds me, I believe, also feeds many others, and it's worth having as often as possible with as many creative minds as I can find to have it with.

Knowledge is a gift. So is experience.

Both those things — knowledge and experience — are things that were given to you and I by others anyway, so why not pass the baton?

I can't afford NOT to help others, and I believe that as a Creative person, you can't afford not to either. The artistic community is not huge. It's tiny. Very tiny. You can't do something without the world knowing about it tomorrow. That includes being a douchebag by not offering to help when someone's in a jam, you know the answer that would help get them out of that jam, it will cost you nothing to provide that answer… yet, you do nothing to help them. I think that's a cowardly and bullshit way to behave. People's problems are usually only big to them. To you, it's possibly as easy as a two-minute conversation, which, in the grand scheme of your day would cost you very little, maybe even zero. It's two freakin' minutes — the time it takes you to get up and pour yourself a cup of coffee. That costs you nothing.

Plan to Be Helpful

"But I just don't have time to spend with others. I'm trying to get done what I've already been tasked with… and that's enough already!" Yeah, I know. I get that. We are all in that boat. You're not special in that regard. We all have full plates. But that's not getting you off the hook with me. You can plan to be helpful, plan to be benevolent. If you really want to be helpful, adding benevolence into your creative workflow really isn't that tough. I set aside two hours of my week to help others. One of those hours is spent chatting with nine people during my new project, the Creative Hangout. I do this every week. It feeds me as much, if not more, than it feeds the other nine random participants. (If you've never done one, leave a comment under this post with your Google+ name and I'll put you on the list for Monday's hangout.) Is it manufactured to be helpful? Is it a mechanism that benefits me? Sure it is. Everything I do benefits me. This is not a new concept in the way I do things — everything I do has to be beneficial to me one way or another, or I'm wasting my time. But the benefit product of the effort serves others as well. The Creative Hangout is a way for me to find answers for people. It's a way for me to introduce Creatives to other Creatives in a non-threatening, casual environment. That's it. It doesn't make me money. It doesn't give me notoriety. It doesn't provide me any more benefit than what I get out of simply chatting for an hour a week with nine people who see creativity from a perspective different from mine. Boom. That's it.

I have to have it on the books, or I'll never prioritize for it. A scheduled time to meet with these people is the easiest way for me to do that.

You can do something, too. You can Skype with another Creative once a week. You can write an e-book outlining a business practice that you have stumbled onto and send it out for free to everyone who finds it interesting. You could go speak to a group of art or music students at your local high school, and give them a bird's-eye view of what it takes to be a commercial artist in today's climate. There are so many things you could do, you just have to plan to devote some of your precious time, and go do it.

I challenge you to do something this year that supports your artistic community. Even if it's picking up the trash along the driveways of your nearby art gallery or answering phones during your state's PBS pledge drive, just get out there and do something to vocally and loudly support the community that silently and thanklessly supports you.

You'll feel better.

Me with nine other kick-ass Creatives at last week's "Creative Hangout" on Google+

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