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Creation, as I have come to know it, never comes without a price. I suppose that’s why some people think that creative people also tend towards madness? There isn’t a lot of research to help bolster this sentiment, however. Well- as far as I know. I’m no academic. From the surface, it seems like we can gleam some sort of correlation of this idea, but no actual causation. While I might not have any of the answers myself, I want to talk about this phenomenon from my own personal experience. Maybe this might resonate with some of you all?
No, not exactly. Are creatives blessed? Heavy is the crown. It feels a lot like a curse, if I’ll be honest with you. Is your mind creative? If so, then you’ve been marked. You have this sigil now, on your spirit, which allows you to manifest fuzzy ideas from one sort of realm into another, that being the physical realm.
It’s more like possessing a proclivity for potential, and that comes at a cost, rather than it being like harnessing a magic that you can pull out from within, to serve you at your every whim. This life is a terrible and magnificent dance number with Occam’s razor. Nights are spent filled with religious flirtation with the Devil.
He’s meeting me at the crossroads. (What a gentlemen.) All he’s asking for is a just sample of my blood, one small dab at a time. Every exchange feels innocent and cheap enough. Reasonable. I just hand off a little bit of myself as I go. An hour of my time? Sure. Soon my ability to socialize comes last for me. Next, my ability to sleep is no longer a priority. I could do more, if I just skip eating this time! What is one less meal a day, anyway? I haven’t been outside in days.
What was that?! Out of the corner of my eye?
Life seems… so dull. People aren’t what I thought they were. My mood plummets. Depression festers, in my messy innovation, saggy body, as the paranoia settles in. How did this happen? The Devil required more sacrifice. By God, I’m making something glorious!
Whenever I begin writing for Proximital Brink, my head-space inevitably crawls incrementally towards this dark place. The writings themselves are pretty grim. It’s the nature of the beast; that’s what I get for wanting to write horror/psychological thriller themed media for the sake of cautionary storytelling.
If you’ve been on the grind for a while with your creative endeavors, remember to respect the craft for what it is – it’s a trade-off. Any time I have personally tried to ignore this truth, I am quickly humbled in the most painful ways. My body fails. My relationships are strained. I ignore other important tasks that I must attend to. Most of all… my mental state is what would change for me the most.
I couldn’t help but notice, over time, that every time I tried to re-approach working on Proximital Brink, especially, or even working on the HyperFae: Unauthorized Luzer comic, often I would become more depressed, quicker to agitation, and immensely more on-edge. I think a lot of that has to do with how engrossed in my projects I become. In order to bring these stories to life, I have to empathize with the characters, feel the themes, and bring my ideas straight into reality.
Additionally, this also happens to me regarding other domains of my work. I remember whenever I first began creating my merch store, FavIdeaCollection, the project took five days of work, twelve hours a day to set up the store, find a Print-On-Demand service for it, and recreate the designs to prepare them for the grand opening. Now that was exhausting. I did it, all by myself, and it took everything out of me to do so. I fell into a pretty low slump for a couple of weeks after that, but I was proud of myself for getting it accomplished all anyway.
Being creative is a lot like the law of equivalent exchange in alchemy: Something cannot come from nothing. In order to obtain something, something must be given or lost.
Even though earlier I did say that being creative is more of a curse, it really is a blessing, too. It can be if only you know how to channel it correctly. You see, I specifically don’t mean “bring it” correctly, because it’s not something that you can demand, command, or control.
This spirit of expression is not something you exactly choose. The spirit chooses you. Your creativity has a will of its own, you see. If you try to impose your own will on it (your own will, aka your ego), it will become a disservice not only to yourself, but also to others and the work that you do.
It can not be contained. The spirit of creating was never meant to be. You are meant to listen and sculpt the words, phrases, shapes, and colors in which you receive, like a true artist should. What you are not supposed to do is tell the message what it’s supposed to mean. The moment you start censoring the messages - cutting away at them - instead of building on top of them, and bringing them deliverance, is the exact moment in which you are stripped of your craftsmanship. You surrender your tools, and surrender these opportunities to another creative.
There it is: the light, the spark, tantalizing whispers in the dark. They’re quickly gnawing at my bones- the corroding thoughts of apprehension. Arriving to beseech me, spirits which feel far and unfair. Why do you linger here, unannounced in my company? What overwhelming essence is then forcibly pressed through my peace! Why are you here? A presence so foreign, yet somehow, also very familiar to me. Its themes are ethereal, and its tongues hissing unto me a language only spoken in schemes, telling me that I know better. Divesting me of my esteem, once again, during the witching hours of the night, eh? This is your choosing? These thoughts begin to feel less and less like desires of my own, and more like commandments from something much greater than I. You will suffer, unless you create.
A lot of other creatives describe this idea by saying, “Get out of your own way.” The ego inside of you may not speak exactly to your pride. Rather, your ego is an encrypted echo, loud and unclear, enough to cause a rippling effect all throughout your existence. Even up into your every day life. It happens to the best of us. Heck, it even happened to me.
My fear with my work was never looking foolish. I never feared becoming a failure as a reflection of my own value, reputation, or work, no. I feared more and more that the work I do would never lead to success because if I failed, my family would be failing because of something I said wrong, or did wrong, or produced inappropriately in the public eye. You can say it’s a fear of failure all about myself, I guess; you could argue that still. Ultimately, I just didn’t want to fail and make the ones I love suffer for it.
Over time, the more I worried that I wasn’t marketing myself correctly to lead up to any real success, or I could be saying an opinion that was too controversial in a YouTube video, for example, or the more I was worried that expressing my emotions online would make me look too weak, I starting locking up to a point where I couldn’t produce anything at all. The public’s opinion of me mattered so much for my family, in mind. As the months went by, I finally had to put my foot down against myself. I… couldn’t live this way. I still can’t. Now, I won’t. I’m refusing to go back to my old way of thinking. I simply can’t afford it. It doesn’t serve me well in my life. Thinking about all of these different things may be the right way to do things for someone else, not for me. The fear or letting others down caused me a stubborn paralysis, one that ended up causing me a disdain for anything I said or did. It’s funny to me how properly taking care of others means more of me thinking about myself, in my particular case.
I think learning to embrace who I am, no matter what I am doing or creating, may lead to less frustration whenever I exhaust myself with work in the future (e.g. less burnout). However, I still think that creativity will cause me to fizzle out temporarily from time to time. This experience in my time of being a professional artist in my career has made me grow more confident in what I can offer other people in this world by simply being myself. It’s also made it very apparent to me that good work requires proper rest, as straightforward as that. Before, I thought I could willpower myself through anything I wanted to achieve. This may not be the best way to do things.
It makes sense that being a creative is an exhausting way to live – truth of the matter is, it’s not a lifestyle, it is a way of being.
Life might get in the way of your creative process sometimes. The criticisms others put on you might discourage you, or perhaps you might be the one standing in your own way someday, if you haven’t already been once or twice before. It’s not a forever problem. As long as you carry on, so will that spirit of creativity that lives on inside of you. It will not abandon you. It will be there, waiting for you. That spirit is relentless, outlandish, ambitious, and impervious to the typical confines of reality.
It is you.
It may not always be easy, I know. I believe in my spirit, you should believe in yours, too!
Credits & Special Thanks
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