To Create

I was watching my son doodle on my tablet the other day. He recently learned how to draw a closed shape, and he was so proud of it. Drawing one blob after another, he excitedly proclaimed each blob as a pumpkin, a monster, a car, and on and on.

As I watched, I remembered how much my younger self also loved to create. To write. To code. Looking back now as an adult, the result was honestly pretty embarrassing.

But there's something magical about the act of creating something. There's that special kind of joy, that almost sublime sense of fulfillment when you bring something new into being. In the words of Genesis — to see “every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” To quote Carleton Noyes in The Gates of Appreciation:

In the exercise of brain or hand, to feel the work take form, develop, and become something, — that is happiness. And the joy is in the creating rather than in the thing created; the completed work is behind us, and we move forward to new creation. A painter's best picture is the blank canvas before him; an author's greatest book is the one he is just setting himself to write. […] The impulse to expression is cosmic and eternal.

And that impulse pushed me to learn and grow. No matter how clumsy and derivative the product, the skills and passions I picked up along the way led me to computer science and a career in software engineering.

But over the past several years, I’ve noticed that it’s become harder and harder to stay creative in my personal life. I feel lucky that my professional career so far has provided me a lot of space for creativity. Outside of work, however, my drive to do anything creative has slowly atrophied.

Why? Time and energy are obviously major reasons. Adulting is hard!

But actually, I think the biggest reason is toxic perfectionism. As I’ve gotten older and “wiser”, it’s gotten increasingly hard for me to be impressed by something I’m capable of creating myself. For example, if an essay won’t approach the level of insight of the blogs I follow, why bother writing it at all? Several times over the past few years, I'd get the urge to pick up the metaphorical pen and sketch out a post, only to then re-read it later and find it just not interesting enough, or polished enough, or otherwise worthy enough to publish.

As Picasso famously said, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”

So the key realization: I need to block out my inner critic. Enjoy the journey, rather than agonizing over the destination. Find motivation in my own growth and fulfillment, rather than external validation and material outcomes. I’ll need to better tune in to my inner child, just like my son as he was doodling that day: he could not care less how his doodles will be compared or judged, or whether he’ll be able to sell them for profit. I need to do the same.

Written by a human.