1. I'm not talking about general creativity here. I'm talking about creativity when it's a defining part of who you are. It's compulsive. You can't switch it off.
2. Creativity is a liability because you have to come up with everything yourself. Where's the excitement in second hand ideas? What's the use of doing something that's been done before? It feels pointless and even wrong. Copying other people's ideas is like plagiarism.
3. Creativity is a liability because it means constantly reinventing your own stuff. Last year's lessons can't be reused this year because there's no energy in reusing stuff. The buzz has gone. There's no energy to be found there. So every year we reinvent the wheel.
4. Creativity is a liability because what energises the creative, exhausts everyone else. Ask anyone who has tried working with one. The creative is always pushing ahead to the next thing...
5. Creativity is a liability because uncreative, mundane tasks will be looked at with distaste or fear and most often won't get done.
Of course I'm not suggesting that we ban creativity - were such a thing possible! I just wanted to point out that it's not all pretty paintings. There's a flip side to it.
Thoughts?
I can see the problem. I've been glad more than once that I'm not #2 or #3. Reduce, reuse, recycle...
ReplyDeleteSorry if your creativity is causing you particular problems at the moment.
wonder how God feels, since he is the ultimate creator? Tash.
ReplyDeleteGod is God. He's infinite. Certainly an advantage!
DeleteTeam up with a do-er. I'm a do-er and at one stage I did team teaching with a creative visionary. It was great. She came up with all the cool ideas and then I put (most of) them into action. Although there was that famous moment, with barely any weeks left in the school year when I said, "No more. Stop thinking. Enough. We can't add anything else at this stage of the year..."
ReplyDeleteHmmmm. I see your point. There's something though.... I am not sure what because I'm too tired to think. I'll mull on it.
ReplyDeleteFor something to be a liability does it have to be a bigger problem than all the alternatives?
ReplyDeleteLiability might have been the wrong word. But I like how it rhymes.
DeleteYep. Sounds familiar. But such a joy too.
ReplyDeleteLaziness is my liability......
ReplyDeleteIn the Myers-Briggs universe, I think that you have just described yourself as a 'P'...and I share your experience!!
ReplyDeleteI scored zero on J...
DeleteI am so P I didn't get around to finishing the test...
ReplyDeleteHow about this way of seeing it? What if your points applied to unharnessed creativity? When our creativity lacks channels to flow in, it splashes out all over the place and makes a big mess, which it then leaves others to clean up. When it's channelled it can be used to power whole cities. Hence your 3 - if we were able to harness that creativity well the year one lesson would be built into the newer bigger brighter year 2 lesson which in year three would be being touted around other schools as the new curriculum. The problem is most of our institutions (schools, churches, government departments) don't know how to deal with creativity properly because they value conformity and order, so creative people get frustrated and act up.
ReplyDeleteI like this list, & identify, except for getting enthusiastic enough to actually achieve something. It reminded me of 30 Rock, when Tracy Jordan is complaining that he's creative so it isn't possible for him to repeat a performance - it cuts to three takes of him coming in the front door of a nice home:
ReplyDelete"Honey, I'm home!"
"Pac-man, I'm Jewish!"
"Jeffrey, we lost the tournament!"
Also, when on Peep Show Jez complains that a normal job to a creative person is just ... abuse.
Yeah and 3 can deprive people of what was good the first time round. "Could you make that chocolate slice again?" *thinks to self* "I actually can't. I need to make something I've never made before! I would die inside to repeat the same thing." And so the poor person never gets the chocolate slice they've been dreaming of. But they do get something else! Something exciting and new (and hopefully also delicious)!!
ReplyDelete