A Creativity of One's Own
Average Read Time: 3 minutes
Recently, I've been reconsidering my outlook toward creative projects.
I've experienced a number of difficulties and hangups in recent years in following through with my creativity, and I wanted to share some of those experiences here.
The Insurmountable Wall
“At the end of your life, when you look back, you could find yourself thinking: 'How much did I do, that I decided to do myself? How much of what I did was only because I was being rewarded for doing something that I didn’t truly enjoy?” ~ Nihongogamer
This above sentence was brought up in a recent YouTube video, from a man who discusses a variety of things while making fancy coffees: when it comes to ‘content creation’ or creative works, how much of what you produce is actually what you wanted to make? Or do you find yourself influenced to produce a certain type of content or art?
Not Everything Has to be Content [While I'm Making Coffee]
He was speaking about his own struggles with creating the things he wanted to see vs. what he thought he should be making – feeling the need to choose between himself, his audience, or the algorithm. Of how one’s own artistic character and personality, (which is normally expressed through a creative medium), can be greatly diminished if the artist is creating something for ‘external forces’. It spurred a few memories in my mind.
A number of years ago, I had a bustling little YouTube channel. It was centered around my favorite online video game at the time, and it held a sizable viewership. The main drives for creating this channel, was to make a new friend group that I could play with, and to make people laugh. It was a very casual start.
As time passed and viewers demanded more, I began to realize that my reasons for making these videos was beginning to shift. And the more time that went into the creative process, the more I felt I was making these videos strictly ‘for my audience’, rather than ‘for myself’.
Originally, this channel was a creative outlet. But as I developed a formula and personal style that I felt people would come to expect, I began to scrutinize my edits – fussing over self-enforced pain points that weren't present in my early creation process. I began scrutinizing my creations, and in general, became very anxious about releasing new videos. Where putting out a video had originally been a great burst of energy for me, simply putting together a video began to feel like an insurmountable wall.
Even so, somewhere in me, I felt that I needed to “keep the party going” for some of my viewers. I felt like, if I took a break, people would be upset and leave in a huff. A number of viewers had messaged me in private, telling me how much brighter I was making their day. I suppose I was concerned about taking that away from them.
Unsurprisingly, all of this was draining the fun out of the creative process and the joy of sharing it with others. I think what was happening, was that the channel had already served its purpose by this point. After a few months, I had a great little friend group for the first time in my life that was spawned out of my own passion. That meant a lot to me. And as we settled in, the drive to make videos in the same way was waning.
If you begin treating the performance of your creative outlets like some life or death scenario, fearful of your active audience telling you en-mass how disappointed they are in you that you haven’t released something new “on time”… its best to do some internal soul-searching before you really burn yourself.
Really ask yourself why you began doing this creative thing in the first place. If you want an audience, work on cultivating one that doesn’t see you as a dispensary for entertainment. Your passion is not a vending machine.
In wishing to please my audience, I missed out on this step. As a matter o’ fact, I fell further into it. I began to develop this mindset that, to keep the channel alive, each video needed to be at least as good as the last – yet, on top of that, each needed to have its own unique qualities too, so that it could be justified as a “new” video. This became an unsustainable climb.
With each video released, it became the graph curve equivalent of Icarus flying into the sun.
All the while, I’d forgotten how my channel had found success in the first place. By me being myself.
Ever since then, I've had this immense mental block in releasing creative works publicly. And I've come to realize that the content I appreciate most online, is from those who kick worries of quality and trends to the curb, and simply turn on a camera and express themselves. It's an inspiration to me – as someone still stuck in the mud between expression and presentability.
So, returning to the opening line:
“At the end of your life, when you look back, you could find yourself thinking: 'How much did I actually do, that I decided to do myself?”
In a world where we're tugged this way and that, trashing expectations can be a liberating thing from in a creative space. Not worrying about what you want to make; just turning on the camera, and having it left a bit rough around the edges – there will be an audience for that.
Remember to make what you want from time to time, lest you forget why you enjoy creativity in the first place.