The Creative Race.

I awoke one morning recently, renewed. With a clear vision of where I wanted my latest creative endeavour to go. I imagined where I saw myself in a few years. The scene in my mind lit up like a runway. I had done this before with those same guiding lights, all I had to do now was focus on them. I could sense myself pulling in all the elements, aligning to the vision I had set. This was how the game was played. If you can see it, you can create it.

I was overflowing with creative zeal. But before I had even started it seemed that I was hit with a seemingly never ending stream of similar projects. As a rule I try not to look at accounts that could spill over creatively. When I was painting a lot I rarely went into a gallery. I always want to guard against too much inspiration from others. Alone, with no influence great things can come, no need to copy. I hadn't even been inspired by what I had seen, rather the lack of it. But suddenly, seemingly overnight, were all these other creatives doing such similar work that I immediately thought, what’s the point? Why should I even bother? I will just be adding to the noise, it’s yet another thing to watch or read or listen to. I’ll have to fight to be seen, hashtag my way out of oblivion. 

I was already exhausted and it was only my first day on the job. The coffee cup was still warm. It was not going well. I thought, perhaps I should just leave it to the ones who are already at the top. They’d already invested, stocks were only going to come down. Cut my losses, get out before I wasted any more of my time, or anyone else's for that matter. Who was I even writing for? What could I possibly have to say that someone else wasn’t already saying?

I sat at my desk heartbroken. I could feel the sadness and disappointment building. I had been so excited, so ready to make friends, with my new pencil case and white socks. Hair all brushed back ready for my first day. I wanted to cry. I almost gave up there and then. Instead, I did what I so often do when things are hard. I wrote. This is what I said to myself. Even as I hear that voice of self doubt, even as the idea of just pulling out of the race now, going home and saving myself all the exhaustion and embarrassment is what I want to do, I know that’s not what’s being asked of me. 

Do we enter 10k races to win them? Usually not, in fact I don’t know of anyone who has ever run a marathon and expected to win. So then why do we do it? I think most of us would say, because we want to prove something to ourselves, that it’s in the training that all the healing happens. Who knows, but unlike running a race, when it comes to a creative project I seem to have an in-built design flaw that says if it cant be exactly how I see the completed vision then I don't want to do it. Because that’s how I work creatively. I see the whole thing completed with every detail, like virtual reality.  I  hang the painting I haven't yet begun on the wall. I have it framed, watching imaginary sunlight pick out the texture of the paint. I can walk around a garden while it’s still a pile of clay and watch the plants grow up around me, hear the fountain yet to be bought spilling over the rocks. I walked around our event space for hours, hearing the laughter from the customers, their cars parked outside, long before we had begun to build. This technique means I set my standard maybe a little high. It’s always the rose tinted version. But it’s what excites me and allows me to then work backwards, before the dopamine fades.

I remember while we were creating our event space and saw other places opening up. I think I would have stopped if I could, but we were too far gone,  too much money invested and legally binding, I had to keep going. But I was terrified I’d lose momentum. Eventually, we opened, with the dopamine tank almost at empty, but we pulled it off. Then something odd happened. People would come in and say, “Oh this was my dream, I wanted to create a space exactly like this”. Guess what I genuinely wanted to say in response? “Oh I’m so sorry! I know how awful that feels, I’m sorry I got here first and stole the idea that you had in your head. I took your dream”. 

This reminds me of something I read in Big Magic once, which I can’t quite recall, but it’s something others have felt. I would cringe and enthusiastically say, “Well maybe there are other ways you can do this too and the way that you run your space will be totally different!” Except sometimes people did precisely that and tried to copy and paste. (That’s a conversation for another day). 

So after this recent roadblock I thought, instead of envisioning this new venture as already completed, what if I did something different? How about I just allowed it to go where it needed to.

My father has always said. “The world needs more than one piano player”. Imagine if there were only twenty nutritionists or authors? What if God (the universe, whatever you need to call it),  hands the responsibility out to a vast group of us so that we can all share the load? And that maybe by watching what others are doing it gives us permission to narrow down what it is that we do. Taking a slightly different angle that they’re not looking at. 

What if there was something even more exciting on the table here. What if we let go of the ‘perfect’ vision and allowed ourselves to be shaped by the river bank. To trust that all those small eddies and dips are leading us precisely where we need to go. Right towards our own, very particular mooring. That perhaps what is planned for us down stream is far greater than we can envision for ourselves. A few months after we opened our space I made a conscious choice to allow others to shape it. I allowed it to ebb and flow and was no longer in total creative control. I may have brought it into the world but now it was being moulded and shaped like clay and it grew into something far beyond what I could have ever imagined. I learnt a lesson. That my job had only been to bring it to life and then I was supposed to let it go so that others could be inspired and create within it.

I know that with all new projects I’ll be challenged, each obstacle asking something of me as well as leaving things behind. I believe that’s what true creativity does. It expands us in ways that we simply wouldn't accept unless the joy of doing the thing far outweighed the pain. While I use to see a project completed, maybe instead I need to imagine it’s potential, not limit it. Even if I throw it all away at the end of the year, like a painting over worked, I would have learnt something within that process. Even if I didn't make it to the end of the run, I would still have a year of training that had shaped me. 

So what did my last creative venture teach me? That I am able to create the vision I see in my mind, that it can reach a lot of people, that it can move in ways far greater than I imagined. But that I also need to let go of what the success of that looks like it. It releases it and allows it to grow and breathe, to be something greater. 

While I envisioned it lasting longer and being an even bigger success, it was also small enough that we could walk when we wanted to. If it had been the grand version of my imagination we would have be trapped there. 

So I trust that if an idea is in front of me it’s because I have the tools to carry it out. If others are answering the call then it maybe it just means there is worth there. Perhaps I am only supposed to run some of the way, achieve what I need to, then move on to something greater. Others may be required to complete a marathon.  

We think that a few hundred as an audience is so small, (but it’s the size of our ancestors villages). If we knew that as creatives we only had the responsibility of inspiring a hundred people or even fifty in our lives, then surely we wouldn’t need more validation or attention. We would simply know that we had won our race, not the race.