The Curse of Creativity

“Life isn’t about avoiding suffering, but finding something worth suffering for.” That is very well put.

There’s nothing worse than being an artist but not being able to create due to mental illness like depression. I miss the days of sitting in art class, talking with friends and creating art. It made the creativity flow much better imo.

To be creative is to see the arbitrariness of perception for what it is. Not to run from chaos and relativity nor to wholly accept and embrace the safety of order, but to seek the places where they meet. The bleeding edge between the beautiful and the vile.

a message to all creatives - never stop creating

Your video made me think of something I told my (highly intelligent and creative) daughter a few weeks ago. "Being very smart and sensitive leads to a much richer life. But the downside is you will have a harder time finding people that can fully see you."

Art is probably the most direct route to self discovery. I have come to believe that the urge for creativity may be in fact a yearning for self understanding and self realization. If this is so, one could argue that the search for creativity may be actually a spiritual endeavor in the search of self. Medicine men of old, like ancient Shamans, were in fact highly artistic and creative. This is because they needed to be deeply connected to their own feelings, thoughts and dreams, so they could understand deep truths of life, humans and existence itself. We will probably soon realize that creative and artistic people, are in fact, very spiritual people in search for meaning and understanding by taking a courageous deep dive into the profoundness of their own self.

Sometimes creativity isn't about other people , seeing your work or hearing your music, it's more about bringing something that is inside you out and learning who you are.

Creativity for me is the power to find something beautiful that has not been discovered before.

I wish I could put into words how this made me feel. In therapy, I’ve finally touched on my fear or failure. I have always been a creative, but it did feel like a curse. Nothing I ever made felt good enough, and I began to grow scared of that feeling of inadequacy. So much so that I stopped creating for years and years. But the chaos in my heart and mind cannot be silenced. I am working on finding a balance between the chaos of creation and the structure and demands of daily life. What scares me the most is making nothing of note.

I think most creative people aren’t burdened with their “gift” as you say by exterior pressure. Rather I think it’s an internal pain to live up to your own standards. Or simply a desperate attempt to silence their own mind. I’m a designer and I have terrible anxiety and insomnia as a result of my creativity. When attempting to sleep I close my eyes and am immediately stuck with flashes images in front of my eyes like lightning. I feel a compulsion to document these visions late into the night as the stream endlessly pours. I also have ocd and obsessively dedicate every moment to observing and remembering data that will aid my vision of the world. I don’t care what the world thinks of my work. I don’t care why I’m doing it. It’s simply if I don’t do this I will die. My mind will eat itself if I don’t orient it towards a outcome. There’s a constant pressure to release the tension which is only possible through solving a problem. I think many creative people feel this way.

bro.... the "what I see nobody else sees and sometimes it frightens me" hit me rly hard. I feel like Ive thought that so many times.

I had a friend who was a gifted musician but quit to study computer science. I think the pressures of society made him give up on his dreams.

I very much fit the suffering artist stereotype, but I don't regret it. I would never trade in creativity for a "normal" life, it brings me fulfillment, it gave me community with people who think like me, it gives me purpose, it gives me agency. The canvas is the closest thing I've ever felt to true freedom

That “chaos” you describe is incredibly accurate. I have all these ideas and not being express them the way I want to express them drives me mad. All these ideas flood my mind sometimes in ways they really shouldn’t and I want to share them but I fear that no one would understand why I do this.

I believe creativity is the only thing keeping me alive. Its the only thing avoiding me from suiciding. It's a curse; a curse that has become the reason to live. I write for myself, not for others. I want to be loved; Creativity makes it hard, but it is the thing that helps me express my pain. I wished to be properly loved. I feel I would never get it: so I wish to be loved through my books

Going through this comment section is so therapeutic. It's like finally finding your tribe. People like you, people that resonates with you deeply. Creativity is truly a huge blessing ( cause ) with an equal and opposite reaction ( effect). And there's this constant worry I go through when I know that my higher self has this huge potential that would never be able to fit into this short life on Earth. It's like the more you create, the more you have to create. It is depressing. But then what can a mere mortal do?

The curse of creativity - Being surrounded by a materialistic world that believes copying and pasting from everything else is fine and more valuable than being original and innovative, because maximum profit, minimum effort. Most mainstream artists all do the same exact things, same exact looking work, following the same exact trends, all doing it for the wrong reasons. True creativity is only found through creating out of passion, not out of a need to be famous or make money.

"If you have access to chaos, chaos also has access to you." How did he just sum up my life in one sentence? Thank you for sharing your art with us.

Being an artist can be a terrible pain. I always drew, but I wanted to paint. I tried to do it because I couldn't stop, something always kept telling me to come back, but I swear I hated my art and cried and threw everything away. That was awful. People usually think that creating is a beautiful and easy way, because you have a gift, but most of the time it's just a lie.

“Art is to console those who are broken by life.”Hits hard