The myth of the perfect, clean workspace

Identity is contextual and, if we are to live, breathe, and grow, it has to remain contextual. The Internet of the “authentic self” — a loathsome, aberrant idea if there ever was one — is an exercise in slowly getting strangled by your past selves.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

―

Kurt Vonnegut,

Mother Night

Maybe one of the biggest problems with the internet is we post what we think we see and then cite ourselves as the evidence that that thing is reality.

It's a false binary to say “artists are messy” or to assume that those with well-organized and cleaned studios somehow aren’t doing creative work. We all come to our creative practice in our own way. A societally-induced value judgement on “clean” vs. “messy” has however lodged itself deep within us.