Almost Everything with Jeffery Saddoris

Back in the late 70s, there was a terrific documentary on the BBC called Connections. It was hosted by historian and author James Burke and now that I think about it, I don’t remember whether I watched it on PBS or I borrowed VHS copies of it from my freshman English teacher, Mrs. Copeland who also loaned out copies of Cosmos. And to be clear, I’m talking about the Carl Sagan version, not the Neil Degrasse Tyson version. Regardless, the show was all about tracing the connections between things that on the surface share nothing in common. I found it fascinating and I think it inspired me to start looking deeper at the world around me to try to see how things might be related.

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As we get into this Iteration, I’d like to take a minute to let you know about some changes that I’m working on that will be rolling out in the coming weeks and months. Iterations will still be weekly (mostly), but I’m going to mix up the types of posts I’ll be including and treat it more like an old-school blog. For example, you may have noticed that the Blips have been getting more substantial in terms of the research I do and the number of links I include. They started out as a just few links to things that I saw or found interesting during the previous week and have been evolving into something more comprehensive and hopefully more interesting and inspiring for you. Moving forward, they’ll still be part of their own section on Substack, but I’m going to lose the word “Blip” and the number in the naming convention of the titles to alleviate any potential confusion that comes with having Blip number 47 alongside Iteration number 124. I’m also going to be adding reviews into the mix—and that could mean books, movies, music, or the tools I use (like cameras or my favorite pencils)—so file numbering will be even more unnecessary. As you might expect, they’ll also typically include some sort of backstory and lots of links for you to explore. The more “existential” essays (like last week’s Learn to Love the Process) will continue, but won’t be quite as frequent.

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Music For Workplaces by Jeffery Saddoris

Over the past few days, the photography world has been buzzing about the “global shutter” on Sony’s new flagship A9 III. I’ve listened to various YouTubers andinfluencers talk about it as if it’s the second coming. They’re saying “it’s the most remarkable camera I’ve ever used” and calling it a “a game changer,” insisting that “it will change photography forever.” But here’s the thing: for 99% of photographers, it won’t change anything. If this is all Greek to you, let me back up a minute and briefly explain what a global shutter is—and I promise that this Iteration is not just about photography.

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Music For Workplaces by Jeffery Saddoris

They say that one of the best ways to solve a problem—at least a creative one—is actually not to think abut it. After all, how many times have you been doing something like taking a shower or going for a long walk and you find yourself having one of those eureka moments where suddenly the solution to a problem you’ve been wrestling with forever seems so clear? It happens to me a lot and it’s one of the reasons that taking walks in the forest behind our house has become a daily ritual. Trying to be present in something other than active problem solving allows our brains to continue working in the background without us trying to consciously force a solution. The act of stepping away from a problem is called the “incubation period” and it’s been studied for decades. In his book The Art of Thought, Graham Wallas proposed that the creative process is made up of four stages: Preparation (the acquisition of knowledge to some task), Incubation (the background process that occurs when conscious attention is diverted away from the task), Illumination (the moment the creative idea flashes into sight or being), and Verification (when the creative idea is subjected to evaluation)." While there have been dozens of studies documenting and validating the importance and effectiveness of the incubation period, last week I experienced another example of it firsthand.

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Music For Workplaces by Jeffery Saddoris

As I was working through the recent redesign of my website—which you can read about or listen to in the last Iteration—I started to look at some of the other software I was using to see whether what I was using still made sense for the projects I’ll be doing in the coming year. I think it’s sometimes easy to get into a routine of using tools that are “good enough” that we just don’t look for potentially better options. I know that’s been true for me.

About eight years ago, I ditched Photoshop completely and started using the Affinity suite of Photo, Designer, and Publisher, which by and large have been great. There are a few features I miss, but nothing that’s really kept me from doing the work that I needed to do.

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Last week I did a soft-launch of my newly redesigned website, which in an of itself isn’t all that unique since I’ve resigned my website dozens of times over the years. What is unique—or at least different—is the overall focus of the site and the process I went through putting it together this time around. I started by asking myself a relatively simple question: do I even need a website? The most common answer is “Yes, of course,” which is often followed by “especially because you’re an artist.” But I actually know quite a few “creatives” who don’t have their own websites. Some rely on a strong social media presence, some have gallery representation that drives sales of originals or prints, and others just have a storefront, so that a dedicated personal site isn’t really necessary.

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Twitter: @jefferysaddoris
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Music For Workplaces by Jeffery Saddoris

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about inertia and motion and how it applies to my creative practice. We know that Newton’s First Law of Motion says that an object in motion tends to stay in motion unless some sort of external force acts against it. Conversely, an object at rest will tend to stay at rest. But I would argue that the Fist Law also applies to intangibles like thoughts and ideas. For example, this week has flown by. Actually, the past couple of weeks have and I think it’s because I’ve been working through so many ideas and potential projects—and I’ve been working on them differently than I have in the past, which I think is what’s making all the difference. And to be clear, when I say “working,” sometimes that means just letting an idea go until it needs to be addressed. For some things that means now, but for others, that may mean next year.

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Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com
Twitter: @jefferysaddoris
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Next month is the tenth anniversary of my dad’s death, so naturally I’ve been thinking about him a lot. Last year, I completely forgot about it, which I tried to tell myself was actually healthy, but I just ended up feeling guilty about forgetting. If you’ve been following me for a while, or you’re an OTP listener, you know that my relationship with my dad was often difficult, to say the least. But as I’ve been thinking about him lately and how I’ve talked about our relationship in the past, I feel like maybe I’ve been a little incomplete in how I’ve portrayed him. I loved my dad, no matter how close or how far we were in the moment, and the truth is that he’s just as responsible for my creativity and to an extent my curiosity as my mom and my stepmother were.

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Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com
Twitter: @jefferysaddoris
Instagram: @jefferysaddoris

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Music For Workplaces by Jeffery Saddoris

Are you overwhelmed? Do you ever get overwhelmed? Man, I do. All the time. My brain is always on and processing—either trying to process existing ideas or trying to figure out where to put all of the new ones that I haven’t had time to really think about. And it doesn’t stop. It’s all day, every day. There’s always a bunch of potential somethings bouncing around my head. And let me be clear—I love it and I’m grateful for it, but it is overwhelming and exhausting trying to keep track of it all and figure out where to put all of those ideas.

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Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com
Twitter: @jefferysaddoris
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I’m still not quite 100% myself, but I wanted to share a quick update. Yesterday was day 12 since testing positive for COVID, and it was the first day that I finally tested negative. Both Adrianne and I had very mild cases, especially compared to some of our friends and family members who really had a it bad. I had a temperature of 100.8 for one day and, other than feeling fatigued and brain fogged for the past week or so, that was pretty much it. Adrianne had it a little worse than me, but not much. The most frustrating part was continuing to test positive for days after the symptoms had subsided. And according to the latest from the CDC, you can continue to test positive for 90 days.

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Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com
Twitter: @jefferysaddoris
Instagram: @jefferysaddoris

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Subscribe to Jeffery Saddoris: Almost Everything in your favorite podcast app to get more conversations like this. You can find the full written version of this Iteration on Substack.

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Music For Workplaces by Jeffery Saddoris