Day 36: Ken Robert

November 5, 2009 at 12:01 am, Category: Featured, Inspiration

“But I think I’m just trying to be honest and let people see this guy kind of flip-flopping around, trying to find his way, and that’s how — by doing it out in the open — I think that allows people to say, “You know, I can do that too.  I can take chances, I can take risks, and I can screw up and pick myself up and start over again.”

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Toni Reece: Thank you so very much for agreeing to be part of this project, Ken, and before we begin with the questions, can you please introduce yourself?

Ken Robert: My name is Ken Robert, and I created a website called mildlycreative.com; and I write about my little creative journey on there.  The tagline is “leading the life of quiet inspiration,” and it’s just about how I have begun just to explore things I wanted to do and try things out and then see where it led, and that’s how the website came about.

Toni: I love that saying, “quiet inspiration.”  And saying that quiet inspiration and in what you do Ken, or even in your personal life, when you think about inspiration, who do you inspire and how do you do that?

Ken: Well, I think the people that I hope to inspire — I mean based on lettters I get and what I have in mind when I write posts for the blog — is I’m trying to inspire people who …  Imagine if someone is reading a novel or a poem or they’re listening to music and they think to themselves, “How do they do that?  I’d like to know how to do that.”  I want to inspire them to give it a try.  And the way that I do that is by giving them permission to be bad at it and to be a beginner and just start things and not finish them.  Because I think there’s a focus about having goals and a mission and a plan and getting things done, but we don’t spend much time encouraging people to explore things.  And so that’s what I try to do on the blog.

Toni: I see, so basically by writing, through your writing, you are trying to give other people the permission to start something, stop something, but to experiment along the way, to maybe not focusing on the end game so much?

Ken: Yeah, because one of the things …  How it all began for me was I knew I wanted to do something creative, but I would get kind of panicky because I have all these ideas and I didn’t know how to implement any of them, and I thought you had to have a plan.  And what I began to do was just kind of get quiet and ask myself, “You know, what am I interested in doing right now at this moment?”  And I would kind of sit and wait and listen for the answer, and it might be, you know, I wanted to try an electric keyboard.

And so I went and bought this Casio keyboard at a local store, and I sort of played with that.  I wasn’t going to become a piano player, but I think what I’m trying to say is like, for instance, when they talk about Itzhak Perlman, the great violinist, and how many hours he spent to become a great violinist, is like 10,000 hours that he figured out to play the level he does.  And I think people look at that and they say, well, I don’t have 10,000 hours to spend, so I’m never gonna pick up a violin.  And if they’re interested in the violin, they don’t have to become Itzhak Perlman, they just have to be whatever it is they’re going to be with it, something that entered into their lives.  You know, everything doesn’t have to have an end game.  It can be just something for enjoyment or can feed some other aspect of your life when you enrich yourself, so that’s the idea.

Toni: Building on that thought, do you think that that also helps people to explore their potential, if they’re given permission to be bad, if they’re encouraged to explore?  Does that also help them with possible potential?

Ken: One of the things I talk about is do something daily, and before I had mildlycreative, I had a blog called Ken On Paper — which is how mildlycreative came about — and I had it and I wrote a thing called “Why bother writing?”  And then I didn’t write anything for 8 months, and then one day I said, “Well, what would happen if I wrote at least a sentence and posted it every day?”  And I called it the 365-day Experiment and it didn’t go for 365 days, because about day 90, I had ideas of what I wanted to do and that’s when I started to create mildlycreative.com.  But I would not have known that if I hadn’t explored that “what if” question, and as a result of sitting down and just …

It wasn’t a whole plan, it was just “Let’s see what happens,” and by doing that I think my writing got better and then I got the blog, and I started to draw, and I started to write poetry, and I started to do all these different things that I would not have done if I hadn’t just simply allowed myself to follow my curiosity.  And so that’s what I try and get people to do is, instead of …

I think we look around and see what other people are doing and say “I need to do something like that,” or “I need to figure out exactly what I’m going to do and have a plan for it.”  I think by giving them permission to just explore and to do something daily, just some small thing and see where it leads, at some point you’ll find out what it is you really want to do and then you can start setting the goals.  I think that is where you find your potential is by following what it is you’re interested in and what’s grabbing your attention and then doing something with it.

Toni: And if we’re not allowed to take that time to find those things that we’re interested in, how are we ever going to understand where our potential is, or that could lead to another road of a talent we didn’t even know we had.

Ken: Right, or an interest we didn’t even know we had.

Toni: Right.

Ken: I didn’t expect to write …  I don’t want to give you the impression that I’m a great poet, but I had no intention of writing poetry when I started to write that blog.  As I started to explore things, it came up one day and then I picked up a book of poetry and I started writing on my journal in verse.  Everything I was writing was in verse, even if it wasn’t great verse, it was in that style, and I found a new thing that I enjoyed doing … and some people enjoy reading.  But without that exploration, I would never have discovered that.  If I had said, “This is who I am going to be, and this is who I am and this is what I’m going to do” and didn’t allow myself to do a little wool gathering, I wouldn’t have known that about myself.

Toni: When you are in that spirit of exploring for yourself, what do you need to be inspired?  What do you find yourself reaching for or doing when you search for inspiration?

Ken: I talked about like curiosity, but I think of three things; one is that right there.  I’ve tried to be …  I went through a long time not feeling very motivated, and I think I was trying to be motivated by things that people were telling me I was supposed to be motivated by, because they were motivated by them.

For example, I applied for a position once, and I took this test and the recruiter said – these were his words – but he said, “Man, you couldn’t have scored higher on this test.  It shows you being visionary”; you’re this, you’re that.  He said “There’s only one problem.”  And I said what was that?  And he goes “You’re not very externally motivated.”  And I said “What does that mean?”  And he goes, “Well, basically it means you’re not motivated by money.”  I almost thought that was a weakness, but it’s just the way I am.  So to be inspired, I just follow that curiosity.  When I latched on to that, I realized that was my motivator.  That was my motivating factor.  That, and I have to connect to other people somehow.  I couldn’t be by myself all the time.

The blog is a great way for me to connect with people.  People leave comments.  I use Twitter.  Getting that little feedback and support, that keeps me going.  And then when you explore things like …  I draw, and a lot of my drawings are really horrible, but every now and then when I draw something I go “That looks pretty cool, that turned out really good”, or I write a poem and I end up reading it myself 10 times and I really like this.  That little buzz you get from when you either accidentally or purposely create something that you’re really pleased with, that’s another inspiring thing.

Toni: It’s interesting because what I’m hearing is the recognition.  You know, you spoke about giving permission earlier and that’s what you believing that you’re doing with your writing and your blog and the mildlycreative.  However, you also give yourself permission to look at something that you’ve created and go “You know what, that was pretty good!”

Ken: Yeah.  And I told some people yesterday, the difference between me today and 2 years ago — before I started doing things like this — is that being bad no longer bothers me because I built enough trust and confidence in myself that I can say I know I can get better.  I’ve gotten better at half a dozen things, so if there’s something that grabs my interest, I know I can get better at it because I’ve already had that experience.

Toni: So you’ve created that baseline.

Ken: Right.

Toni: When you’re doing this type of work and the curiosity and the connecting with others and so forth, what do you do to continuously explore your own potential?  The curiosity definitely would play a role in that.  Are there tools or techniques that you go reach for that help you to explore that potential in other areas, or maybe in the area that you’re already in?

Ken: I kind of alluded to this when I said that by having gotten better at some things, I just realized that I could get better.  And I think that what that does for you is you might …  I think in the beginning you might try out things that you’re interested in, but they’re not your biggest interest, they’re not the big desire.  But that big desire is still too scary, so you’re trying the things that are kind of like almost there.

I don’t know if that makes sense or not.  And at some point, when you’ve had enough success with those things, you say “Okay, I think I’m going to tackle this big idea.”  And so your potential develops by being able, or working up the courage to tackle things that are really scary to you.

You know, there are things that you’re really afraid to fail at because you want them so bad, and for me, you know, I just recently have been really getting interested in fiction because that’s what I always wanted to do since I was a kid.  And now it’s like “Okay, I think I’m going to tackle that.  I think I’m going to try and solve that mystery and work my way into writing fiction as well.”  But I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t had some even small success at the other things I tried.

Toni: So it’s really taking those baby steps that are building that courage in order to move out of that comfort zone.

Ken: Right.

Toni: Right, wow … so do you think that by you doing that and taking those baby steps, connecting with others, having that courage to try and maybe not do as well as you thought but create that baseline for yourself, is that then transferred or rather translated into your blog that you post as far as how you might believe you’re inspiring others, by your own journey?

Ken: Yeah, that’s what I share in the blog is what I’m going through, what my thoughts are, and you know, I don’t ever say that I’ve got all the answers.  I say maybe it’s the same for you.  Maybe you’ve been through this.  I try this, and this works.  You know, sometimes I say “Here’s what I’m trying to do” and then a week later say, “Well, that didn’t work for me; it might work for you.”

But I think I’m just trying to be honest and let people see this guy kind of flip-flopping around, trying to find his way, and that’s how — by doing it out in the open — I think that allows people to say, “You know, I can do that too.  I can take chances, I can take risks, and I can screw up and pick myself up and start over again.  This guy’s doing it on a stage, on his blog in front of everybody.”  So that’s the idea.

Toni: Well, Ken, I can tell you that the words that I said I love early on in this interview “quiet inspiration”, it’s a very gentle way that you have of the exploration process that you spoke about all through this interview, which is exploring and experimenting and working towards your own potential and hoping by either making it or failing at it or having the courage to go through it and taking those baby steps, what a message that you are giving to others.  And I can only imagine how inspired people must be by your writing and by watching your journey and how honest you are.  And just this snapshot of time that you’ve given us in these 15 minutes has been an inspiration to me, and I know others are going to benefit by this interview and learn from it as well.  So for that, I truly thank you.

Ken: Thanks, Toni.

Toni: Thank you very much for your time today, and good luck to you, and I hope we speak again soon.

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For more information about Ken Robert:  www.mildlycreative.com

Home page thumbnail image from original art by Ken Robert.

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