Creativity is what you do for other people
When a creative pursuit is formalized with a paycheck, the natural next step is to stop being creative.
When I started a blog in 2018, I wrote everyday because I loved to write.
Despite no formal training, that earned me a job at a small newspaper. Soon after, I found myself at Business Insider.
I learned how to do the news. I pitched and published thousands of stories.
But somewhere along the way I realized that when a creative pursuit is affirmed with a paycheck, the natural next step is to stop being creative.
When it’s your job to generate ideas, innovation actually becomes more rare.
Formalizing anything creative tends to sterilize it. Over time, it’s easier to check boxes than invent. The risks you take to get into an industry aren’t the same ones you need to keep a job.
The genius of a painter diminishes once a client puts them on a retainer.
The indie filmmaker conforms once they’re accepted in Hollywood.
For journalists, the willingness to test out new writing styles or platforms is what gets your foot in the door. Yet once you’re in, it’s hard to convince a legacy newsroom that experimenting is in their best interest.
And why should they? Media — like Hollywood or corporate America — is indeed an “industry,” after all. Shareholders hesitate to support ideas that could fail.
Still, my sense is there’s a better way to think about all this.
While I believe in art for art’s sake, creativity goes beyond that. It might start with a muse, but the way to sustain creativity seems to be building a practice around solving problems.
My own creative outlet started as a passion and turned into a career and business with Opening Bell Daily. I plan to stay as creative as possible not by thinking of writing as a job, but as a vehicle to make the world a little brighter.
It's a tad idealistic, but to me, that’s as good an incentive as any.
Maybe, creativity is just a commitment to other people.
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