I just watched a Vimeo video today (link). It is a three part series that talks about some creatives and famous individuals, who at even 30 years of age haven’t achieved the things that we know them for. At this point in their lives, it took some of them another 10 or more years before they got to where history knows them for. The story that resonated the most with me was Vincent van Gogh. When he started out at the tender age of 27 with painting, he was not very good. It was through consistent hard work that he got better and better at the craft. He painted for the sake of painting. It even took him many more years before he “discovered” colour and his paintings started to flourish more because of that. And it took him nearly 10 years after he started painting before he sold his first and only piece of work. 10 years! Nowadays, people get stressed if they don’t get likes on Facebook within minutes of their post. Of course he lived a very tortured life being checked into an asylum and eventually dying of a self inflicted gunshot wound 29 hours after the initial shot. Very unfortunate for such a talented individual to have died at only 37 years of age.
Since we live in an age of instant gratification, we want to see others instantly influenced by our creations. We want to create viral content and become millionaires overnight. I know I am very guilty of checking my view counts on this site or like counts on Facebook. But why does it matter? For the ego it matters greatly, but for the soul it does not.
Creation for the sake of creation
It is so easy to fall into the trap of creating for other people’s approval, validation, and Instagram likes. It is easy to want to give up when nobody even bothers to look. It is so hard to ignore how other people view our art. After posting something on Facebook, I will religiously check how many likes and comments I get. I’ve also been checking how many visitors this site gets every day (actually it is 0 most days, so you reading this, you are one of the lucky few). But what for? Aside from satisfying my ego, there is not much else I get from that. It is hard, but we must try to enjoy the journey for the sake of the journey and not the destination. We will reap the rewards of the destination, if there are any, but if we don’t enjoy the journey, we will never get our destination. We won’t be motivated enough to keep going because it’s a long ass road. When everybody is busy with their own shit, we should be busy with ours.
And that is what I got out of this video series. At the end of the day, we must be creating for the sake of creating. That is where the fulling part comes in. I need to continue to create my photographs for the sake of creating them. Yes I should share them, but no, I need to not be so caught up on what anybody else thinks (unless I’m doing it for a client, but that is a different story, and even then I still need to stick to my artistic guns). And even if no one is watching, I need to keep creating. Plus somehow it does make me feel better that even the greats didn’t experience instant success. It helps me to keep going.
So even if you haven’t achieved as much as you would’ve hoped at this point in your life, it is okay. Just keep going. Even if you have just hit some major set backs it is okay. Just keep going.
Just keep creating. Please keep creating.