What Happens When You Don't Create?

in #creativity6 years ago

It’s a little difficult for me to answer this question because I’ve been creating every day since Christmas 2011. And played organ long before that too. At first, I wrote blog posts, then created videos, then courses for my subscribers. Later I started to compose, improvise and draw. I also started creating podcasts. Well, maybe not every day.

Sometimes Ausra and I produce a few of the posts and podcast episodes back to back and schedule them to be published in advance. Our subscribers receive them every day but we don’t have to actually record them every day.

On the days I don’t record anything, I try to at least create Pinky and Spiky comic strip and write a blog post, and of course play the organ.

My recent memory of not creating almost anything perhaps was in London when Ausra and I played organ duet recital at St Paul’s Cathedral. I didn’t take my laptop with me to that trip, prepared a few blog posts in advance for our subscribers and had only my pocket notebook and a black pen. I didn’t want to miss creating during this trip so I at least drew a comic strip once a day.

To find a day of not creating, I actually should dig deeper into my memory. Maybe on the days when I was sick, maybe when I had a lot of errands to run. I don’t remember exactly when such rare occasions happened but I do remember the feeling from these days.

I would be grumpy, even angry with family members and I definitely felt that something important was missing in my day.

Even now I don’t necessarily compose music every day. This bothers me. I don’t have any excuses for this, of course. Like many people, I still hesitate. And when I don’t compose, I don’t feel whole. I feel like I’m not living up to my potential.

I feel like the days go by too easily. I should be more tired before going to bed. Like an empty cup, to be refilled during the night.

Do you have this feeling when you don’t create?

Sure, physically and emotionally your day might be exhausting, you might get a lot of things done and be spent like a sponge at the end of the day, but if you don’t have anything to show for yourself and others what you have created, how does it make you feel?

I’m pretty sure not everybody feels this emptiness. People who have silenced this childish voice of curiosity long time ago and buried it underneath all the mundane worries and fears might not even remember how it sounds. They might look at the sunset or sunrise and don’t feel the awe at the beauty of nature.

So naturally they don’t feel any urge to create and express this beauty which is all around them and actually inside them. To them the world is not a happy place, a place for sorrows, worries and fears. They don’t have anything to hope for.

But even for them the miracle can happen. I believe everyone is capable of seeing the beauty of the world and expressing it in art. Sometimes all it takes is one life-changing moment or event and the world will never be the same for them.

But if you are a creator, if you feel that deep down you have something to say and offer to the world and you’re not doing it, how does it make you feel? Or if you are doing the bare minimum and you know you could create more, do you feel like cheating?

Because I do. And I hate this feeling.

That’s what helped me to pick up that pocket notebook and a pen and create a comic strip about Pinky, Spiky and the dancing shoes yesterday.

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I guess everyone feels differently if they don't create. I know someone who has an opposing point of view to you. He even calls flowers 'ornamental plants'!

Thanks for sharing this!

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