Creativity is a burden and that’s why I’m here to motivate and inspire you on that special creative thing that makes you unique and stand you out from your peers. Well, everybody has what distinguishes them from the crowd and that one thing that keeps them busy. It works hand in hand if your course of study is also part of the big family tree of your creative mind. It will drag a lot especially if you belong to this part of the world where personal initiative is not wholly recognized, where professional course will be forced on you, where creativity will be seen as the avenue to call you a lazy ass.
However, most of the talented folks out there are perceived as men with little or no problems whatsoever. And this pushes them to the extreme end of bottling up some of the painful phase of their life since nobody is willing to ask them questions based on the interpretation of their thoughts. Most writers and painters fall into this category. I have engaged some of my closest friends that opened up to tell me something’s relating to their post and the originality of its content. But they get taken aback when people drop comments without been sensitive to their plight.
A friend said “My poem about rape is actually true; I was raped during the holiday”. She continued “I cried when I read people’s comment on that poem; some people in their usual self wrote the following comment.
“Hey! This is beautiful! Keep it up!”
“Wow! What more can I say?”
“Speechless is written all over me!”
Awwn!
And all manner of comments, the latter committed a creativity suicide and that was the end of the blooming writing career that won her over A thousand followers on Instagram. Yes! It’s true that she did that to save herself. Now to the main reason why I am putting pen to paper. Before you contemplate on that creativity suicide, talk to people, read about your current predicament, engage people to a healthy conversation and I can bet my whole life that you will get better. Though it might be like the Israelite walk to the promise land, but it will be worth everything you put into it.
I find myself stuck in a very dicey situation and I was already seeing the end of my over a decade writing career that has won me four Major awards and recognition in the last 365days. I was already packing up something’s and biding a goodbye to the creative world. People around me don’t even seem to notice anything odd about me. Neither do they care if I am emotionally stable to handle creative work. Good news! They don’t care about how you are faring; they only want to see result! I wrote different work for people, edited and appraise some work, did book review, music review, CV and résumé review and content review for people. And they all said something nice to the fading career. Fading? Hell no! A career that is about to taste death is more appropriate!
But will I now disappoint the thousands of followers and congregation of audience I have been able to gather through hard work and consistency over that long period of time? I have them scattered all around the globe, what will they think about me? So I devise a new way to help myself and save myself from committing a creative suicide. I started reading books and searching for relevant materials online. Sometimes I will get more than what I actually needed and wonder how people are coping. I will read stories of renowned author and how they successfully managed their career. I engaged people and ask for their opinion, I looked at the numbers of those who look up to me and those who got well through my work and I am sure I won’t only kill my career. I will make people believe that all I have written, done and achieved in the past was just a fluke.
Same goes to you too, there are times when things won’t go well as you’ve envisaged, but it is not worth you giving up. Talk to people, some are ever ready to listen to you; some are waiting for you to open up to them. The internet is there for you, Google everything and familiarize yourself with the little things about life. Get a new chore outside what you love doing and you can be sure of something beautiful. Giving up should not be part of the option, it might be part of the opinion, but it shouldn’t take center stage of your life. You should know that you are bigger than that situation.
If there is something I have learnt in life, that will be the submission I came up with about things you bottled up and things you open up. Those things you don’t say will dominate you and that moment they found you in because you’ve given them the power to do so. And those things you say and get accurate solution to will be under you because you’ve subjected them to be irrelevant to that present moment yet they are still important. Be futuristic and try as much as possible to get behind the woes of yesterday and play the advocate of today’s fantasy. You only own today because no one knows tomorrow. I know it won’t come easy, but don’t think it will come cheap if you devise an alternative to run away from your troubles.
Learn how to use the little time you have to proffer that lasting solution to your problems and make sure you carry people along. By so doing, you are not only making them work, you will be improving on your own credibility as the first respondent. Read books and do more research on that particular thing, embrace your weakness and see that pain as a turning point to move into the next phase of your life. You have more than what it takes to get over everything that kills you inside. Even if you won’t do it for yourself, make sure you do it for creativity sake.
Written by Oyawale Olabode
olatomibhone@gmail.com