Have you ever broken a piece of glass accidentally (or intentionally if that’s what floats your boat) and remember that sound as it crashes to the floor? It’s just a brief moment, but it stops time itself—the loud crash sustains a note in your headspace. Still, for just a brief moment, everything is interrupted, including any conversations nearby and your stream of consciousness itself.

It’s almost as if God wanted you to pay attention to something at that moment, something besides what’s in your mind. It’s a nice moment of reprieve, followed by a meticulous cleaning session to avoid stepping on the remaining shards later. Creatives like myself also know, those little moments of serendipity don’t have to manifest accidentally. You can be intentional in breaking the sameness of life. Inspired by Matthias Ott’s post from yesterday, he opened my mind to a new German term—tapetenwechsel:

What can also help is a change of the environment, or, how we call it in German, a “Tapetenwechsel” (= a “change of the wallpaper”), to inspire a fresh perspective.

For me, it’s the weekly coffee shop jaunt or a remote working session with friends that helps me break away from the monotony of creative habit. In fact, James Clear identifies this as a challenge with enabling good habits, it’s hard to break through plateaus of sameness. Also, have you heard about rage rooms? Maybe another place to get a little creative outlet going, hah!