I used to be creative

8 Oct 2024

I read The collapse of self-worth in the digital age days ago, and it's been sitting in the back of my mind, poking me:

When I was twelve, I used to roller-skate in circles for hours. I was at another new school, the odd man out, bullied by my desk mate. My problems were too complex and modern to explain. So I skated across parking lots, breezeways, and sidewalks, I listened to the vibration of my wheels on brick, I learned the names of flowers, I put deserted paths to use. I decided for myself each curve I took, and by the time I rolled home, I felt lighter. One Saturday, a friend invited me to roller-skate in the park. I can still picture her in green protective knee pads, flying past. I couldn’t catch up, I had no technique. There existed another scale to evaluate roller skating, beyond joy, and as Rollerbladers and cyclists overtook me, it eclipsed my own. Soon after, I stopped skating.

I used to be creative.

I drew. I painted. I learned how to play songs I liked on the piano. I created magazines about things I liked, including one featuring the artwork and poetry of all my friends. I designed and developed so, so many websites. I made digital art and animations. I illustrated postcards. I screen-printed t-shirts. I bookbinded. I created posters that said "Sleep is for the weak" spelled out with coffee mug stains.

And then I stopped.

It was around the time when social media became ubiquitous. And when my hobby became my job.

I knew what I lost, but I did not know why I lost it. I did not think too much about it.¹

I'm marinating in this thought:

Find the best route home—not the one that optimizes cost per minute but the one that offers time enough to hear an album from start to finish. Plant a window garden, and if the plants are half dead, try again. My brother-in-law found a toy loom in his neighbour’s garbage, and nightly he weaves tiny technicolour rugs. We do these activities for the sake of doing them, and their value can’t be arrived at through an outside, top-down measure. It would be nonsensical to treat them as comparable and rank them from one to five. We can assess them only by privately and carefully attending to what they contain and, on our own, concluding their merit.

Part of why I created this Bearblog is because I wanted to create something for myself again, something to enjoy and do for the sake of doing it.

This story reminds me to be intentional, to be mindful of another scale of evaluation eclipsing my own scale of joy.