Where's the Creativity?

I used to leave a lot of space in my life for creating. But I guess in the last 5 years everything has felt too heavy…or too noisy? But also, I think I stopped creating because the world around me no longer supports creativity.

Every once in a while someone mentions my book. I’m still glad I wrote it, but it was also a project that paradoxically slammed the creativity door for me. I toiled, and yes toil is a really good word, for over 5 years on that book, and then it ended up actually costing me money in the end…for a lot of reasons I don’t have the (legal) liberty to share.

I suppose I still feel disappointed and disillusioned from that experience. I’d hoped that if publishing a book didn’t change my life and career path, it would at least pay for some part of my existence. But it didn’t even pay for a single grocery bill, so when I’d tried to write another book after that, I’d sputtered along for a few months and then finally put it away. That was almost 4 years ago and I’ve never revisited it. Not even once.

I don’t think most of us who create do it for the money, but we do at least hope to make enough to cover our basic needs. And the problem is that the culture around us doesn’t pay for it even though it says it still wants it (in the form of movies and music and tv and so on). So creativity starts to die out simply because those creative humans must then shift their energy into finding ways to survive.

The result? A lexicon of mass-produced junk powered by greedy executives that is meant to generate as much money as possible, while numbing us out to the greater depths of the world around us.

I still write for a living, which is honestly a great stroke of luck, but I don’t get to write about the important or impactful things. I write instructions for businesses whose sole goal (for the most part) is to make money. And I don’t inherently dislike it, because in my heart I’m not only a writer but also a teacher. However I don’t get to be all that creative every day.

That means I don’t get to bring light into the world, or explore what it means to be human or to be alive on this planet. I don’t get to do anything that really matters to me because my entire energy field is focused on day-to-day survival, which honestly has been a preoccupation for most of my adult life, but at this point wages have stagnated so far that it’s now literally almost my entire focus.

I know there are lots of creatives out there like me who no longer expend the energy to create, because I’m looking around in 2025 at what feels like a dystopian war scene and I’m wondering…where is all the creativity? When I revisit the literature and even TV shows from just a few decades in the past, and compare it to what we have available to us now, it seems like most mainstream creativity has evaporated. Or, probably more accurately, has been snuffed out by human greed.

Have you taken the time to notice?

I decided to sit down this morning and write something after 6 days (and counting) of being sick. Those 6 days made it hard for me to work, to breathe, to eat, to sleep. I couldn’t do much of anything except get lost in bygone forms of creativity (old tv shows, music) or lay there and think about the dumpster fire around me. And I do wonder…is creating part of my reason for being? Is creativity part of all of us? Which leads me to also wonder if I’m somehow on the wrong path again, or focusing my energy on the wrong things. Do I need to make a larger change?

I don’t have the answer for myself yet, but I do think it’s time for humanity to undergo a reset. I think we’ve become so lost as a species that it’s going to take massive amounts of suffering (and the accompanying realization of our errors) in order to right the ship – hopefully before we destroy the planet and ourselves. This includes our creative selves.

So that brings me to the question…what can each of us do to right the ship? Is creativity a part of that healing process? Maybe we’ve stopped using all of the gifts available to us, and are succumbing to inertia and a lack of inspiration, because we’re in the midst of what feels like an utterly uninspiring time to be alive. And also because so many of us can’t even afford our basic survival needs.

But maybe what humanity must invest in, instead of AI data centers that literally require copious amounts of planet-killing resources, is more art, more music, more dancing, more books. More things that remind us of what being alive is really about.

Are you ready to do your part? I think I am. What are your talents, and what do you love to do? Can you find ways to do more of it even when you’re unmotivated or beaten down? The world needs more humanity. The world needs more reminders of who we are and where we come from. The world needs more of you.