Why Create?

I’ve been lucky enough to be paid to make things for most of my career, and even then, I still want to write, photograph and make all sorts of things in my own time.

I don’t think I’m unique. I think everyone is born creative, I really do. Kids are naturally creative; they love to play, to draw, to write, to sing, to dance. Some people are lucky or determined, and they stick with creating as they grow older, even what they do to make is ‘just’ a hobby.

If you ‘grow up’ and push the creative urge down, it always — always — bubbles back up, sooner or later. Better to unbottle it early, than open up too late. Let yourself play, let yourself make.

I believe we all need to express ourselves, and that we each have something to say that only we can say. I believe there is value to making things, without needing to make the perfect thing. I believe we all long to connect our truths with others, which is why we create.

I also believe that there is an ‘anti-art’¹ in every one of us, a force that makes us doubt ourselves, makes us question if our lives lack value, and tells us we have nothing worthwhile to say.

Discovering wisdom, beauty and strength aren’t about theory. It’s about finding tactical ways to overcome this anti-art, which sabotages us from giving birth to our ideas.

To go from unmade to made, from fear to courage, from inaction to action, is hard. But to make, express, create, see, speak and be felt, is worth it.

This is why I create.

Why do you create?

1. What Steven Pressfield aptly named ‘The Resistance’ in his book, The War of Art.