The Create Channel

As you may know, I write a blog that boasts a readership of up to thirteen people and generates zero dollars in ad revenue; however, I wasn’t always the wildly successful author you see today. In fact, for a period of about ten years, I didn’t write anything.

I mean, I wrote lesson plans. I heard creativity calling often, but all I could muster the courage for was school-related stuff—making funny videos with my students, for instance, or perhaps writing a sketch for an assembly—and although I wasn’t exactly picking up the phone, occasional writing excursions would make me feel like creativity and I were at least texting. I took those small, zero-risk opportunities a couple of times a year and sent everything else straight to voicemail. 

There were a lot of reasons for this, but the shortest and truest summation of them is that I needed therapy. So I got some! Quite a lot, actually, and now I consider it a nonnegotiable part of my self-care system. And now look at me, with a poorly designed WordPress site and money raining from the sky!

Excuse me friend, but do you have a few minutes to talk about creativity?

I know that a lot of people stagger out of the public school system clutching signs that say, in 11 point center-aligned Arial, “I AM NOT CREATIVE.” I get that. The arts aren’t prioritized in standardized test culture, and for many years, creativity has been sucked from our curricula with giant vacuum cleaners labeled DO NOT WRITE ON THIS PAGE. Most teachers try to hold the torch as best they can, but I still know that for many kids, school is the place where imagination goes to die.

The thing is, though, that humans are inherently creative. Take heart. People may have failed to foster it in you, but no one can take it away from you. This—along with Earl Grey tea and our ability to improve upon the inventions of others—is what separates us from the rest of the creatures on the planet. It’s true that some people do have an easier time with creativity than others, due to environmental factors and a smattering of genetics, but all of us can hone our creativity just like any other skill.

Whether you currently consider yourself to be creative or not, I would like to propose that it is possible, perhaps, that you may feel up to 5% happier if you start creating things regularly. This has been true in my own experience (I might even bump it up in the 10-15% range), but I also brought some backup. Here are two quotes from my journeys through podcast land this week:

“The universe delights in creating, which means you also delight in creating.”  –Eckhart Tolle

“Unused creativity is not benign.” –Brené Brown

Some positivity from my dude Eckhart, some tough love from everyone’s girlfriend Brené (and if you’re not listening to her new podcast, by the way, get thee to a Stitcher, go!). You were made to create because that’s how things work in this plane of existence. It’s a connection to the divine, to make stuff. So then, if you choose to ignore that creative energy, a little rain cloud will hover over your head, likely making your heart sad and your hair uncooperative everywhere you go.

I can confirm this.

I also like what Sir Ken Robinson says about intelligence: “The question is not how intelligent are you, but how are you intelligent?” Disregard how creative you think you are. How are you creative? It doesn’t all have to be poems, symphonies, and oil paintings. Maybe you should doodle something this week. Or knit a scarf. Or invent a recipe, or create a hybrid frankenplant in your garden. Propose a new theory of time travel. Cross-stitch a portrait of Jeff Goldblum. Draw stick figures reclining on couches in the Pottery Barn catalog. Build a robot. Start a blog. Or send me what you wrote and I’ll publish it here—we’ll split the profits 70/30. 

A few months ago, as my therapist was trying to hype me up to start this thing again, I could not CONCEIVE of putting anything I’d written out for public consumption, especially not for people I knew. The thought of hitting that little post button made me more nauseated than a moderately bumpy car ride (…I get motion sickness very easily, you see). But I’ve found, of course, that courage comes not in the preparing for the thing, but in the doing of the thing. Exposure therapy at its finest.

So, if you’re hesitant to share stuff you’ve made, or if you can’t imagine a world in which you would make stuff at all, please know you’re in good company. Please also know that in spite of the agony, I highly recommend making and sharing stuff, not just for your own mental health, but also for the condition of the world. We spend a lot of time consuming content made by other people—more in the last few months, in fact, than at any point in human history. And we all know most of it is toxic, soul-crushing, bot-generated, or otherwise bad for humanity. You, my friend with impeccable taste in blogs, are the one who can put something out there that shines some light.