What’s Your Blue Square?

What’s that thing that you do, that only you do? Is it something seemingly mundane, like the peculiar way that you load the dishwasher? What about how you wash your clothes? What about things you avoid because of them containing what you insist is “bad energy?”

Those left turns, those decisions that mean you don’t quite fit with everyone else, tend to more obviously show up in your everyday behaviour when compared with your work. In your work, you are possibly, probably, judged for what you do and make. And so when it comes to work, you’ll sanitise yourself of all left turns, and make sure everything is right.

Maybe your work deserves some of those left turns. That signature which is yours. And maybe it’s not only enough that you created it. Maybe what your work needs is something more from you.

Zima Blue

(Spoilers for Zima Blue from Love Death & Robots below)

In the sci-fi anthology series Love Death & Robots, there is an episode called Zima Blue. In the story, the main character, Zima, is one of the world’s most popular artists whose career begins painting portraits, but then moves on to vast murals. One day, he puts a small blue square in the middle of one of them. It draws gasps and confusion. How can you ruin something so beautiful with this odd blue square? That ‘mistake’ is taken to an extreme when it starts appearing on all his paintings, getting bigger until eventually the blue square becomes the entire canvas.

It’s eventually revealed at a grand launch event that Zima wasn’t actually human. He began life as a simple swimming pool cleaner robot. He slowly became more sophisticated as time went on, modified and upgraded by different owners. The blue he uses in his canvases is the same colour as the original pool he used to clean - it was called Zima Blue.

The blue square was such a departure for Zima to the outside world and it causes immense distress for everyone else. Everyone except Zima, who returns back to being a swimming pool robot at the end. His expression of self achieved.

So what about those choices?

Certain crockery only being washed on the lower part of a dishwasher?
The longer route home because you prefer one particular street?
Or, in my case, using an iPhone that has a smashed screen and no battery?

Our daily lives are full of our own blue squares. We make choices all the time, sometimes very consciously, that state our preferences. But it’s more than preferences; it’s a deliberate choice. Not even sometimes rooted in liking it. That iPhone I had was on literal life support for 6 months, smashed screen and dodgy battery, but it created friction for me to use my phone less. I wanted it, just like that. Even if it occasionally cut my finger or died during a work call.

And yet we hide blue squares from our work. Why?

The self consciousness of blue squaring

Your work is where there is an implicit invitation to criticism and a chance to be judged. So we shy away from bringing a peculiar left turn to our work for fear of it not being the correct thing to do. And as a result our work becomes less like us.

Everyone wants their work to be noticed. And we can’t help on our way to mastery, in imitating those who came before us until we find our own signature. That is a good place to visit, but a bad place to book a room.

And in that journey of creating your voice, what if creating it meant looking outside of your work? What if you observed all the things you choose to do in the everyday that are different, odd, even frowned upon?

You might already have a signature. You’re just more comfortable expressing it in your life than in your work.

Those left turns are your blue squares. And when it comes to your work, there is no better practice than allowing that same part of yourself to permeate what you create.

A blue square isn’t just “a thing I like.” It’s a decision that makes sense according to your own internal logic, even when it looks odd from outside. In fact I’d argue in order for it to be a blue square it must only adhere to your own logic. That isn’t to say this is for contrarian’s sake. It’s precisely because you are listening to where your own logic is leading you that from the outside, it looks like a left turn. But really you are on a path of independence.

Paint the blue square. Take the left turn. Maybe you’re remembered for it. Maybe everyone hates it. Maybe nobody even notices it. What matters is you do it, because it’s yours.

Thank you for reading Operating Self.

I release articles once a day at the moment as I am doing the 100 articles in 100 days challenge.

My other current goal is to get one stranger from the internet (that is someone who does not know me IRL) to buy me a coffee. If you want that to be you (and you’d kind of be the first paying subscriber in a way, which is pretty cool) you can buy me a coffee here. More coffee means more caffeine means more ideas means more articles.

Thank you and I hope this piece, and what’s on this site, helps/inspires/creates something for you.