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November 28, 2025 - Productivity stifles creativity
My relationship with productivity is sick and twisted. As a creative person, I inherently have this need to make things on my own. I never understood people who exist just to exist and consume. Of course, I love taking in various brilliant media. With the vast amount of respectable games, YouTube videos, and art pieces, it's hard NOT to get inspired. As a kid, I tended to go off and doodle small things on my own, usually imaginary city maps with intricate streets that would be a headache to navigate in real life.
When I got my hands on The Sims 3 as a preteen, I was all over the official "Create a World" tool that let anyone create their own custom worlds. I spent a good few few weeks messing around, attempting and failing to create my perfect bustling Sims 3 world. Even though I never finished it, that adrenaline of creative freedom was so tantalizing. So fast forward to now, where I arguably have more agency to create whatever art I want, yet always struggle to bring myself to do so...I never thought being creative would feel like such a burden.
But I think I know why the dynamic flipped; it's because I've tied my creativity with productivity. Unfortunately, when you grow up with more responsibilities, that includes finding a career and making money so you don't die. I've always admired artists who built up their own careers, not because they profited off of their work, but because they made others respect their work enough to support them.
Money has never been a motivator to live my life, I'd take the bare minimum salary just to get by. But my creative ego would never let me succumb to the meaningless corporate life. I know that's probably just black-or-white thinking getting in the way, but I truly wish to lead my life based on my creative endeavors. That doesn't mean I have to move to a foreign country and build my own art studio to feel the vibes. Instead, I want my own creations to shine as a reflection of myself, and hopefully others will eventually respect that too.
I'm very grateful to have friends that always support the videos I make and the drawings I create, but not everyone will understand that. I've met people who struggle to see the point of art when it doesn't immediately make money, which frustrates me to my core. However, in some ways, I've internalized that belief because whenever I sit down and try to work on all my creative projects, I'm immediately overwhelmed. I'm thinking about how much I should be doing, how far I'm behind on things, and even questioning the point of making it.
I'd love to be this ultra-free self-employed artist with all the creative freedom in the world. But I know that it's gonna take a LOT of sacrifice, luck, and willpower to make that happen. It's just a fantasy to avoid the real issue of taking the fun out of creating. Every art I make has to be good; it has to mean something or else it's a waste of time. How sick is that line of thinking? I miss when I just made things to fun. I miss when incomplete art didn't feel like disappointment. Even writing this very blog feels a little obligatory.
But at the end of the day. I can never kill all of my creativity. I just have to know when to separate "work" from "play". Any step I take to make my art feel fun and fresh will always feel better than forcing output to meet an arbitrary standard. All of my inspirations always gave off a sense of heart and fun, so why not focus on that? It's my own journey after all.