What is the Price of Creativity?

The world is a place where everything is bargained. You want to have a car? You must have the enough amount of money to buy it. You want to run a mile? You should have enough energy to do it. And that’s why I sometimes think, what is the price of creativity?

I’ve spent most of my adult life pondering about things and trying to look at them in different perspectives. When most people see a cat, I want that cat to be some sort of an inspirational gold mine. I want it to teach me something deep about life and the universe. I want to make a story out of it or, if it’s impossible to extract a story worth telling, maybe a poem or some artistic output right then and there.

This often leads me to becoming over-creative. Often I want to be clever and different. I want to break and challenge the status quo. And sometimes, this brings bad things to me.
For example, just a few months ago, I accepted a challenge to participate in a short story writing competition. I was confident because I had so much stories in my head and I wanted others to read them.

At first, I thought this is good. I have a lot of stories to tell. My creative mind is working perfectly as it  should be. 

So, I let a few weeks pass trying to make the story “ripe” enough to be written. And that takes me to today. It’s less than a week before the deadline, and I’m cramming into what could be a half-baked story.

I asked myself what happened in the past months? What was the problem?

And I got the answer that I never expected. Yes, I have a lot of stories in mind to tell. But the problem is, I have a lot of stories to tell.

I packed myself too much in thinking of notable stories to a point that I can no longer choose which story will I  write about. It’s like I was in a buffet where all of my favorite dishes were served. I wasted time trying to decide what I really wanted so I just took everything and got sated.

Maybe, that’s one of creativity’s prices. You are forever burdened with the responsibility to to come up with stories worth telling to a point where  your shoulders can no longer bear the brunt of pressure to tell every story.

Perhaps, it’s the pressure that people unknowingly put on you. It’s the constant gazes at you, expecting you to blurt out some inspirational phrase, or say something deep, emotional or life changing.

Ultimately, maybe it’s the pressure you tend to put on yourself. Maybe it’s the unceasing wanting to prove that you are creative and worthy of recognition. That you can, and will be, clever and different; or that you will be able to change the system.


However, as blunt as it may seems, the pressure you experience isn’t really worthy anything.
You are not tasked by the world to tell everything. Maybe it just asks you tell a single story. People don’t look at you  while waiting for something inspirational or life changing. In fact, most of them don’t care about you at all. And maybe you are not bound to eradicate or change the system. Maybe you need to create a system of your own.

If I had learned anything about my disappointing writer’s block, it is this: that you can’t always deep meaning in everything. Sometimes things happen because they just do. Not because they are pulled in a way that can change your life. Sometimes, the universe wants you to see the blue skies not to make you fell sad, or calm or anything, but because the sky is simply blue.

Just like when you buy a car, or run a mile, you don’t mope over the prices you paid. You don’t brood for the dollars you spent or the energy you exerted. What you do is use the car, or finish the run.
The same is true with creativity, you shouldn’t focus on the price you paid. You focus on the benefit you gained.