Curiosity Killed the Creative

Out of curiosity sparked by a conversation I had with my partner, I dove deeply into the ins and outs of journalism. I read Reddit threads, watched some YouTube videos and TED Talks, and even read an article written by a well-known journalist about pursuing a career in the field. Nothing I found was promising, encouraging, or uplifting. A common theme that ran through everything I read or listened to was that journalism, as a career, is overall disheartening. It has to be your passion. You have to find joy not only in the job’s uncertainty but also in the tenacity and borderline obsession with the “rush” of it to keep you going. 

The negativity was abundant, but so was the deeply rooted passion. Journalism, I now realize, is not for the faint of heart. It’s for those who truly want to write and tell stories—about their truth, about their side of things. It’s far from being about financial gain. People kept reiterating that it isn’t the journalists’ fault that the industry is dying; it’s the big corporations that eat up the revenue journalists generate. It’s the same old story: employees pour their blood, sweat, and tears into producing the latest and greatest, while employers relax, kick their feet up, and take credit for it all. Employees are dollar signs and zeros to corporate employers—nothing they promise is ever fulfilled, and they don’t value your time or skills unless it’s lining their pockets. No wonder everyone and their mother is seeking to start their own business and be their own boss nowadays.

I can write anything. Words are my playground. I can finish a ten-page essay in a couple of hours—child’s play. I can build you a labyrinth of words, gluing your eyes to the page while feeding your brain vivid imagery and tugging at your heartstrings all at once. Being a writer is a gift, and I was most definitely given it. But the problem with my passion is that it is either super lucrative or it’s not. No in-between. That’s the grandest issue all artists dread when they realize they’re artists with no room for anything else in their minds. They’re good at one thing and one thing only: creating. Artists have traditionally been ostracized, underpaid, overly glorified, and ridiculed since the beginning of time. Look at Van Gogh, Edgar Allan Poe, etc. Each became famous after their death and spent their life on earth in agony and madness, driven to insanity by a lack of acknowledgment. Artists of all kinds MUST be acknowledged. They thrive on it. WE thrive on it. 

Because of the constant extremes the creative world throws our way, artists are often steered toward the category of hobbyists. We can’t seem to make any financial breakthrough using our “God-given gifts,” so we end up doing jobs we absolutely hate. Then we half-heartedly pursue our real passions in our free time—which we never have enough of—or we lose interest in those passions, slowly abandoning them along with our souls due to the lack of energy to pursue them. It’s an ugly road, being a creative. I say, don’t ever envy the mind of an artist, because while on the outside we can do wondrous things, on the inside we’re going insane. 

The personality type of a creative is very specific and often deemed a bit crazed… for lack of a better word. We’re very sporadic, often extremists as well. We don’t fit into most traditional jobs or settings and are typically fascinated with very little outside of our gifts. We have many more emotional breakdowns than the average person and handle stress about as well as a cat in water. We are judged, misunderstood, and often go insane because of it—literally and metaphorically. Emotions are what make it possible to create, but those artistic, expressive emotions often run the show, even when we don’t want them to. Why do you think almost every artist you know or hear of has a drug problem? Why they don’t live long? Why they get deemed “crazy” or “burnouts”? It’s because we were given a blessing and a curse named creativity.