Creative 101: Joy of Missing Out
Perhaps the secret to happiness or even loving yourself is the joy of missing out, a.k.a. JOMO. The world has reached digital peak, even your nana has an iPhone and she spends hours sending you emoji texts. Would the great artists and creative minds of the bygone era have been as masterful at their craft if they lived now? Would there be a Sistene Chapel if Michelangelo cared too much about “likes”? Would Georgia O’Keeffe been too obsessed with taking selfies instead of memorizing the colors and shapes of flowers and skyscrapers?
Balance does exist in the digital life. You don’t have to choose one or the other. You can be online and offline as much as you want, but you do have to choose when. Knowing the benefits of missing out in the digital world is the first step to reclaiming and sparking creativity into your life and work.
FOCUS
The first thing you get back from staying offline is the fulfillment of being focused. It’s the one thing you cannot do if you’re online. Offline your brain is not on overdrive, so you can pin point a certain need, a touch, a smell, something visual then becomes a memory. That memory turns into inspiration.
I am now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.
—Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
ORIGINALITY
The thing about being online is that you’re grouped in with a million other people. If anything else, you become a statistic, your existence is data. You’re absent of original thought, and instead you’re taking in a million different thoughts from people you don’t even know . That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but at the end of the day, what was really yours?
MOOD ENHANCER
Try to stay off your phone, off the internet for a minimum of 8 hours and notice how you feel about your day, and about yourself. Chances are you might be in a fairly good mood, because you gave in to yourself. You weren’t bogged down by 50 images, videos or links. You may feel lightweight and be easier to get along with. Or for once you’re not sweating the small stuff, but finding a way to appreciate them.
“For now she need not think of anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of—to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others…and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures.”
—Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
PRODUCTIVITY
Hurrah, isn’t this always the goal? To be able to create something, come up with unique ideas, write something honest and fascinating, paint a masterpiece. That hunger to create doesn’t live online or in an app. That hunger lives inside your gut. It waits for you, time and time again, everyday, “pay attention to me!”. Being productive makes you happy. You know that.
fall
in love
with your solitude
—Rupi Kaur, Milk and Honey
FINDING YOURSELF
Being alone is in fact how you find yourself. Your real self that knows what needs to get done in order to finish a project or to have a new dream. If you can succeed in spending time alone with yourself, the world is your beautiful oyster. Because with that comes an inner strength, intuitiveness, emotional intelligence and confidence to handle anything that comes your way.
*ILLUSTRATION BY SARAH ALICE RABBIT, PURCHASE HER WORKS HERE
*Originally published May 2020, updated September 18, 2023
MARC JACOBS
