DAY THIRTY ONE

Take it easy. Lighten up. But don't waste your time. 

I've been wondering about the 'right' level of seriousness one should show in relation to one's creative and making aspirations. I should say I don't take these things all that seriously as may be evident in the blog from time to time. Or maybe that should be, I don't take myself too seriously when it comes to anything creative or artistic. 

This has been highlighted recently by my engagement on a writer's forum where I suspect some people may have mistaken me for a troll, defined as someone who sets out to create controversy or conflict online. This is very far from my intention if that is what people are thinking. What I do is set out to amuse, to lighten the tone with a quip or a sardonic aside, as is my nature; it's my default position on most things, no matter what I might actually feel privately. 

The problem I've run up against is that people in this writer's forum seem to take themselves very seriously, which I would also describe as them having no distance, and hence no objectivity, between themselves and their aspirations to take writing seriously, or I fear, an unhealthy need to be taken seriously as writers. It's again that question of identification and investment of oneself in a work or activity which I've touched on before.

But then I might be the one with the unhelpful attitude. First, it does bother me when I think I might unwittingly be treading on someone else's feelings and aspirations, and second, perhaps my seeming flippancy masks a problem I have with committing myself to an image of myself as a creative person. Perhaps I should take myself a little more seriously in other words. As seriously as I take the work when I am engaged in it, and as seriously as I feel about creativity and making in general. (In the way that those writers find some of what I say flippant, other people have thought me a bit of a bore when I get on a hobby horse about the benefits of making things for oneself).

What is the right level of seriousness with which to approach oneself in relation to these things? I'll leave you to ponder that for yourself for now. I'm fairly certain I will be returning to this question in the future.
 
It strikes me that the opposite side of the coin is to ask yourself how frivolous you want  to be, or even how much joy are you looking for in your everyday creative activities?  

Are your creative activities a refuge from work, from parenting, from caring, from the whirlygig inside your head, for example. Or are they an essential part of your self-identity, or do you have high hopes for financial reward some day. Are you in effect apprenticising yourself to a future self-chosen career. Or are you desperate to communicate something which is important to you. Are you trying to get something 'out' that is currently weighing you down.

I have to say that for myself a great deal of the pleasure and relief that I get from an interest in creative activities would be killed stone dead if I had to take them as seriously as I would need to do were I to have any interest in selling the results.

And yet a third idea occurs to me: Perhaps it isn't about how seriously one takes oneself, but how seriously one hopes, or fears, others will take you and your work. This is not so much a concern about criticism, though that could be a factor, but more about a fear of the judgment of others, discovering, perhaps, that like my humour, one's self-estimation isn't matched by the estimation of the world at large or others who might matter to you.

Onwards...indeterminately.


 
Picture credit: 'In Deep Thought'. Peter Vanderheyden from Toronto, Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons






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