DAY NINETEEN

How do creative people and makers respond to other people's work? 
 
I don't know that one could or should generalise. I haven't read anything or discussed the matter at any length with others; I suspect it's something of a 'family secret' - we don't talk about it. 
 
There are people of course who seem able to be unreservedly warm and generous about the work of others, but I suspect that even with the most open-hearted there is an urge to compare themself against the other, and if the other's work is good, a pang of threat or competition in their heart somewhere. 
 
I don't think it's cyncial to say that we all find it easier to be generous about work we don't rate as good as our own. The real skill is in not giving in to the urge to compare in the first place. 

The question is on my mind because I've recently dived back into social media after a long break and been exposed to a lot of other people's creative work. It's left me feeling a bit low, chagrined, and maybe even a bit of a fraud, to the extent that when I thought about writing a post today, it felt impertinent of me to even think of saying anything about creativity, hence the accompanying picture. 
 
Fact is there are some awfully talented, and I think this is the key to how I'm feeling, unpretentious makers and craftspeople out there.
 
As I've alluded to in past posts, part of the purpose of this blog is to encourage me to make things, ideally on a daily basis. Or rather to do something creative each day and report back on it, both the work itself and the process of making it. This hasn't been the way it's gone so far, (still another 346 days in which to improve). Instead I've taken what is for me the easier path of rambling on in words while I build myself up to committing to the idea of making something everyday. As far as the social media goes, I've shared some of my photography and been pleased with the responses, but there is a nagging doubt that a photograph, however well thought through and executed does not somehow match the product of one's own hands.
 
Seeing other people's work, albeit filtered and curated through the lens of social media, seems to have driven a wedge between my self-perception as someone who is creative in an everyday sense and the reality of the fact that I actually don't make very much. I think, read, talk, surmise, speculate, appreciate, enjoy, notice, encourage, take photos and write about creativity and making, but the end result remains as words, thoughts, ideas. I almost used the word 'mere' after 'remains as' in that sentence.

So. 
 
To answer the question posed at the top here, at least for myself, the answer is that it's made me realise I am engaged in something far weightier than at first supposed. I approached the idea of this blog - to do something creative everyday, specifically to engage in making something everyday - as a bit of a lark, something to amuse myself  and possibly some random reader with. Now I think I'm facing a question that many creative minded people must face sooner or later - am I going to get serious about this or keep tinkering around with it for fun?

Onwards...trepidatiously.


Picture credit: Ken Hawkins from SC, USA, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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