Play More With Your Networks

This is starting to emerge as my 2025 mission statement:

Play more with your networks—of ideas, of people, and how they combine.

The name Cultish Creative breaks down into 2 bits.

“Cultish” describes my fascination for the people and ideas that gather a crowd around them. I’m interested in the magical magnetism and what binds these groups together. I’m especially interested when they avoid becoming formally rigid religions or scaled-up business schemes.

Cult-ish because I like small, special, and an open invitation to explore without having to sell off your life belongings and drink any special Kool-Aid.

“Creative” describes my obsession (aka uncontrollable ADHD-addled tendencies) to find common traits, characteristics, and connections between all sorts of cultish things.

Plus, when you accept collages (and remixes, and mixtapes, etc.) as “original” creations, creativity has no limitations. If it involves at least one of your human senses and another person besides you can reflect on it… it’s art.

After 7 years of logging these notes on a daily basis, and about a year of experimenting with new formats to discuss them, here’s what I know:

These notes represent my Personal Archive.

It’s “personal” because it’s not yours (although, I am happy to share it all with you, here in public, for free), but they represent my personal reflections on 7 years of exploring life. And, I’ve come to regard this archive as my most valuable possession.

At one point I thought I may enjoy teaching others how to build their own Personal Archives, but then I realized… no. You can figure it out. At least you can, if you want to.

Otherwise, I make it easy enough to watch what I’m doing and get in touch with me to ask, as many of you have, if there are technical obstacles you’re fumbling with.

I don’t want to teach you how to build a Personal Archive.

I do want to teach you what to do with it.

I want you to see how playing more with your networks of ideas, people, and however they may combine in public can lead to all sorts of positively unpredictable benefits.

I already do this in my professional work.

I’m the guy who knows a guy (or gal) or who to ask. I’m the person who wants to present everything in terms the person across the table (or phone, or video call) from me can understand.

I take great pride in being a reducer. I love to to reduce the complex into digestible bits, and I love to reduce the distance between people and the tasks they want done. It doesn’t hurt that people pay me good money for it.

What work has tried to squash out of me though, or at least what corporate America (and whatever the hell I was doing trying to fit in there), is the magic that happens when I know I’m playing.

I need to improvise. I need to let my ADHD run (a little) wild. I need to make jokes and laugh out loud (so people don’t think I’m crazy for smiling so much).

The only way I can show you how that works is why I have my own YouTube channel.

The only way I can attempt to prove why you, and your life, and your career will want to do this too, is to keep making shows like Just Press Record.

If I’m going to insist you play more with your networks, I need to lead by example and show how I’m playing more with mine.

What I didn’t expect to happen this year was to watch this YouTube overlay on my Personal Archive start to resonate with more and more people.

My wife says I shouldn’t be surprised, but I still am.

“I’m not working. I’m just playing. This is what I’m doing anyway, I’m just recording it now.”

Which takes me back to playing music. When I learned about the magic that happens when you get on stage, or press record, or share that song you wrote with your bandmates. Lots of people play guitar, very few get up and share it outside of their bedroom.

More playing.

More sharing.

More demonstrating how to stitch all your weird thoughts and friends into a communal quilt a small corner of the world can celebrate.

In 2025 I’ll be expanding the show. I’ll do more reviews too. And if you have any ideas (for how you can do this, for how you can support this, or for people I should know), you already know where to find me.

Let’s see just how fast this creator flywheel can really spin…

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