Creativity Scale

Are creativity and suffering inextricably tied together in such a way that dooms me to either the doldrums or despair? Am I ruined if I pursue creativity and doomed if I settle for a life without it?

To put this in perspective, I'll set it on a ruler from 1 to 10.

1. is absolute bland consistency, me as selling insurance from 8:30 to 5 in a conservative suit going to conferences in Omaha. Creativity is whether I drink the pain away or eat. I cannot ever fathom this.

2. is managing a kinko's, where my creativity is admiring the work I see with blank eyes, thinking about what magazine I'll read when I go to sleep to start another day.

3. is where I go to the gym, have a great job I have for the money. My creativity is how to indulge myself, with who, and where. Leading to a constancy more fearful than pure mindlessness of 1 or 2, 3 is conscious mindlessness.

4. is where I work hard at something I like, familiar and still challenging. My creativity is how to grow the business and what hobbies to spend my well earned money on. This is the level I could have achieved if I'd become a chiropractor.

But I am gay and that threw a wrench in my ability to think in marketable ways, or rather, to achieve a level of hypocrisy to only count money as happiness, and not authenticity or joy.

5. is the minimum I could sustain. It is an interesting company I can spin in a conversation. It is hating the structure of my position and feeling like I'm drowning. My creativity here is involvement and dreaming.

6. is entering a job with the hope of one day changing it. It is doing marketing work for a generic company that is lively, but without shared value. Creativity becomes the minimal design I buy my soul with.

7. is where I live, working on what I am passionate about and not knowing how to relax. Creativity is my compulsion to keep going, to not stop driving hard. I do not stay here, only visit for awhile. It is as close to 5 as I can get and be happy, but I do not have the nerve to call this frantic energy creative.

8. is the other happy medium where I relax my hold on "necessity" and trust and breath, but not too much yet. Creativity here is how interesting my calm face communicates the exponentially growing ideas inside of me.

9. is a dream, it is releasing reality because I can, to only pursue what strikes my fancy at the moment. It has no constraints or reality. It is living in Sweden with a credit card or reading Ann Rand constantly for 72 hours. My creativity is projected, gathering, necessary and with the worst mental hangover from non-application. In this my creativity is trying on another reality or 5 for awhile.

10. is balance, where creativity is always and forever. There is no artificial "compromise" that never works and only deadens the soul. It is the balance of internal and external, a job where I am creating and applying, theory and action. I am starting to see it, to experience the utter luxury of working at what I was born for. It sounds so decedent to be truly happy with creativity and work, such a thing is my beginning, my inner knowledge of a future state so clear that it brings me closer to it whenever I believe.

This was inspired on a TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert "A different way to think about creative genius".