Intro

Since I was young, I always enjoyed creating. My first inspiration was from properties like Pokémon and Mario; I’d draw my own Pokémon cards and create Bowser’s airship out of a box, using Mario themed bandages as decoration. Current day, these works are a window to my childhood creativity. While some pieces like Bowser’s airship did not survive, I was pleasantly surprised to recently find my custom-made Pokémon cards at the bottom of an old tin I have. Works like these are artifacts of the beginning of my creative journey and revisiting them has made me realize how important artistic expression has always been to me.

What is Creativity?

Creativity is viewed as the fuel for the vehicle of imagination; and when running out, it has to be “recharged” or topped back up through some life-changing experience, spiritual awakening, or simply a break. We have terms like writer’s block, artist’s block, or more generally creative block to refer to burnout in the arts. I have experienced art block more than once as a self-identified art kid during elementary school. However, through the process of creating, molded by my trials and failures, my understanding of it has slowly shifted with each mistake. Creativity is the pursuit of self. It is that burning desire to be true to who you are and embody that through any medium. This might sound contradictory for professions who are arguably creative —we’ll get to that.

Burning out does not mean you need to refueled through introspection and finding of self, but rather that you no longer care about the craft you are pursuing. It has evolved into something no longer for the self, but for the external world. This is why I find the current definition of creativity to be too broad, so much so that it loses its meaning. Often, ingenuity is interchangeable with creativity, but I think distinguishing these two is necessary. One can produce brilliant, ingenious, solutions without being true to themselves. Not every pursuit has to be for creative fulfillment but can still produce new or novel innovations. It is exactly this distinction that clarifies what a creative does; express the true self.

One does not need to be great at what they do to make creative works. Look at kids, their talents are often still developing but their lack of rigid constraints or expectations from themselves or others lends them so much creative freedom. When children create, they do not do so for the approval of others or under any set of expectations. It only matters what seems cool to them, whether they know it or not this is expression of self. Unfortunately, some children early on may adopt an anxiousness to creating, this is likely caused by their environment as expectations form from the world around. I would know because I am one of these children.

Devaluing Creativity

In my early life I wanted to be an animator, which naturally progressed to programmer… How did I get here?

In today’s culture, creative jobs are often devalued. I find that the measure of value of art is based on “I could do that” instead of “why couldn’t I think of that.” Hindsight bias is prevalent in our art, politics, and even personal lives. It’s often easier to see past events as being more predictable than they were, leading people to say “I could do that” when seeing cutting-edge works. Sure you could copy that, but could you produce the idea on your own? On the other side of the coin, there exists jobs that require a lot of preliminary knowledge that still engages creativity in their own right, but are bound by frameworks, theory, and academia. It is important to note going back to my previous point that creativity in this context is still different from ingenuity. Jobs not identified as traditionally artistic find themselves under less scrutiny due to the perceived barrier for entry. Ironically, art does have its own theory, frameworks, and academia but admittedly adheres less to this structure; artists are not afraid to bend the rules. To an outsider, this lack of coherence —or bending of the rules— may lend itself to seem like there is no theory to follow or concepts to understand. Giving an illusion that an artist may not give as much thought to their work as a scientist, programmer, or engineer. Anyone who has tried pick up art as a hobby will know how difficult it is to draw the human form, let alone combine this with colour, light, and perspective.

Ultimately, traditionally creative work is hard and just as there are bad programmers, there are bad artists. This, however, does not make the field easy because bad artists can still make a living. I belive it is important for people to engage in multiple disciplines as there is a surprising amount of transferrable skills. Creative work, being true to oneself, captures the emotions and state of mind of the creator whether they acknowledge it or not. The many systems we have are built on and driven by people who have emotions, thus influenced by the creative facets around them whether they inspire fear, joy, or something in between.

Revisiting

Keeping a healthy balance between interests of all types is crucial for personal development. This is why I launched this blog, to explore avenues I pushed aside for so long as I pursued more “valuable” things. My writing is not great, it’s been a while since I have tried to cohesively put my thoughts together for someone else to read. Regardless of if anyone reads this or not, it is important to put myself out there, to stop worrying about all the possibilities and all the outcomes. Rather, I want to create for the sake of creating.

Future plans

This blog was inspired by Amelia Wattenberger’s blog, Research and Development at GitHub Next. I love how each article is not only well thought out, but the visuals that accompany it are also great stand-alone works. Put together, a beautiful symphony of the written word and visual arts makes for impactful commentary which I find aspirational. I want my blog to be reminiscent of the old web, to be personal and not standardized to any one format of another platform which I think Amelia does really well. While I have a long way to go, this post marks the beginning, and I hope to continue down this path.