A Day in the Life of My Creative Process
A Little Bit of Chaos and Magic
Good morning, everyone!
It’s a bright, sunny Memorial Day (as I’m writing this), and I’m embracing the day with a bit of an impromptu post. It won’t be the most organized or structured because, let’s be honest, I don’t have the luxury of uninterrupted time today. But that’s okay—sometimes the messiness of life is exactly where creativity thrives.
Today, I wanted to invite you deeper into my creative process—not just how I find inspiration, but how I capture and organize it. For me, it’s all about breaking down ideas into smaller, manageable chunks and then reshaping them into systems that feel natural and repeatable. This approach allows me to express my thoughts with fluidity, authenticity, and intention.
Now, a quick note about this [Monday] morning:
I accidentally sent out an unfinished email (which I’ve since unpublished), but it’s probably still in your inbox. My apologies for the confusion! This brings me to something I’ve wanted to clarify about The Year I Became.
This project isn’t just a newsletter—it’s a multi-faceted, evolving ecosystem. It’s both retrospective and forward-looking.
I’m revisiting past stories and inspirations, sharing what I’m working on now (like my journey into film analysis), and building frameworks for future projects, including Pen, Paper, and Heart: Legacy (which isn’t getting as much love these days, but it’s a 20 year project… we’ve got time).
What might seem inconsistent—sporadic posts, unfinished drafts—is actually the process in real time. Yes, I have goals:
this year, I’m focused on deepening my understanding of film through my custom-built FILMS Framework, breaking down each movie into its foundational elements (genre, plot), imagery, layered storytelling, motion, and subtext.
But watching films isn’t just about analysis.
I needed a way to decide what to watch and how to watch it. That’s where my entire film library comes into play—cataloged, exported, and used alongside ChatGPT to curate themed three-film programs that create a personal, ongoing curriculum. Each of these programs serves as my “homework”: watching, analyzing, writing, and transforming insights into essays, podcasts, and creative reflections.
This evolving process is chronicled in my Cinematic Explorer’s Logbook (aka FILMS for Your Consideration), inspired by director’s journals like Coppola’s The Godfather notebook. It’s a space for me to record thoughts, feelings, and ideas, capturing my journey toward a more profound cinematic education.
And yes, my physical film archive is expanding—nearly 2,000 movies and TV shows collected since last summer. Each film is a preserved story, a slice of cultural and personal history. Whether it’s Fiddler on the Roof, October Sky, or The Fox and the Hound, these stories remind me of why I started this journey: to ensure these narratives aren’t lost to time or digital decay.
Part of that also means finding a way to organize and sift through my entire collection with as much ease, and as little friction, as possible. So I’m, yet again, working on a new organizational system and strategy that I believe will also benefit other physical media collectors (especially movie collectors though I’m sure the system could be adapted). All while working 65+ hours for the next 5 weeks.
Thank you for being part of this adventure, for following along as I refine my creative systems, and for sharing in the process of becoming. This is how I work: messy, iterative, and endlessly curious. Expect more updates on my progress, more reflections on the films I love, and more windows into The Year I Became—because this journey has only just begun.
Stay poetic, stay bold,
- E. A. Bland
P.S. I’ll resend Monday’s real program tomorrow morning. Apologies again. I scheduled the post to give myself a deadline, but life, creativity, and productivity don’t always sync up as easily as we’d like. 👍🏼 I also started this writing the email on Monday and only now had the time and mental bandwidth to finish it. 😂