Creative Trouble
Think that being creative is fun? It is, often. Occasionally, not so much. There are some times when creativity sucker-punches you.
1. Really creative people are frequently lonely. In the 7th-grade, “You don’t X? Then you can’t be in the group,” way. Creative people’s ideas aren’t mainstream, and that can be scary for other people. The more out of the mainstream, the fewer friends you have. People can’t keep up with the idea stream, and the normal reaction is to step away from you. Second favorite is to step so far away from you, they don’t see you anymore.
2. The people who hang around you don’t like your ideas. Creative ideas can sound odd or weird to people who have trimmed their lives to fit in. That means they want to trim your ideas to acceptable, mainstream ideas–preferably something that exists already and is fairly popular. Which means it is not creative or new.
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. Creative people change. They may not love change, but they understand how important it is. Their friends do not. They don’t want you to move away, get a better job, do something, or grow away from them. That means creative people will have to leave friends behind sometimes.
4. Your ideas are not marketable. In a consumer society, that can be very discouraging. Your idea may be way ahead of its time, it may be too hard to fit into the mainstream, and forgetting about it seems easier than working on it. It is always your decision to pursue either the pure creativity of the idea–to test the theoretical limits, or to re-shape your idea into something marketable. Both of them have advantages, but no matter which one you choose, you’ll spend 30% of your time wondering if you did the right thing.
5. You can’t stop. Being creative needs practice. That brings with it the constant need to startle your family and friend with your ideas. Sometimes it gets tempting to do something very ordinary. That’s a good idea. But falling in love with very ordinary can mean trading in your idea-toys for very ordinary. One way to stay creative is to keep the day job. It keeps the pressure off your creativity and lets you surround yourself with normal people.
–Quinn McDonald is a certified creativity coach. In the last day job she had, her boss called her in and started her performance review with, “You are different and seem to enjoy it.” She was, and she did and she got fired. Again. She now owns her own business doing things both startling and ordinary.
Visit her website.
