The Terrible-No-Good-Very-Bad Dark Side of Creativity

After another nightmare fueled night of little-to-no sleep, I get up and look at myself in the mirror. At 31, I see an extra bag under each eye. It’s as if my tired eyes need an additional carry-on on this journey to flinging ourselves slow motion into the sun.

Sometimes, living a creative life is heartbreaking. Not because of the lack of money (that, too), not because of the rejection (that, too), but because there is a perpetual compromise that is being made. Living creatively is like a tempermental lover. You don’t know what it wants, but you do know you have to do it. It feels feverish and uncontrolled, yet persistent and unforgiving.

What does it mean to “live creatively”? Sure, we do it for ourselves, but we also secretly-or-not-so-secretly do it to strike gold.

Gold looks like selling a painting at an art show. It looks like a standing ovation. It looks like trolls on the internet (you haven’t made it until you get a few trolls!). It looks like refreshing my Medium account for more claps and comments. It looks like winning an award in middle school for best poem about sunflowers on a cloudy day.

And when we fail magnificently, (painfully, confusingly, frustratingly and most of the time) what does that look like? It looks like formulaic rejection letters for jobs and…