The Tipping Point (by Malcolm Gladwell)
Nope- this is not suddenly a book review website. But, I have read Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point” and quite enjoyed it. While it mostly covers other things, I feel its concepts also apply to this summer. Especially for my art.
The IWU art camp turned. me. around. And I believe in a better direction.
Shortly before the camp I stopped playing Minecraft. Now when I say “stopped” I mean suddenly I wasn’t averaging 6 hours a day of playtime. I was playing maybe an hour a week.
Now here’s an important note: Minecraft is hardly a mindless game. There is massive potential for incredible organization and true feelings of community and accomplishment. And I was part of a lucky group that has all that. My only issue was a decision I needed to make. I could either invest time and effort into the Minecraft universe… or I could invest time and effort into myself and those around me. Once I phrased it that way… the decision wasn’t hard at all.
People are very capable of doing both, of course. However, I am not one of those people. Those people carry one life: one in which they play Minecraft first, and do other things second. I was always leading two lives. One of art and one of Minecraft. I was never fully invested into either.
But now.
Instead of jumping into Minecraft, I can jump into art. Physical, tactile, messy, and plain fun art.
I was making things relatively often alongside Minecraft, but not nearly to the scale of this past month.
I’ve drawn more. I’ve sculpted more. I’ve painted more. I’ve even written more.
Gladwell’s book - if anything - clarifies that a tipping point is far from a single occurence, so I know the art camp wasn’t the only thing that turned me around. It’s a buildup that suddenly spills over. Picture this:
You’re filling a bucket with water. It doesn’t suddenly spill over once you turn on the faucet. It fills up slowly with low water pressure from a sink. It fills up quickly with high water pressure from a hose. Some buckets are larger and some buckets are smaller. But all of them have a tipping point if the water keeps coming.
I may never know what every droplet that contributed to my tipping point was. But the newly found time from dropping Minecraft, and the rejuvinated creativity and drive from the art camp surely helped create the excited, art-filled, new me.
