I’m a creative, and if you’ve found your way to this site, you probably are too. But what exactly does that mean, to be a creative? Does it apply specifically to people who practice some kind of art? Or is it more of an amorphous personality characteristic? The definition of “creativity” is even harder to pin down. I think, though, that there is one thing we can say for certain about creativity: it implies doing things in a way that is different from the norm, perhaps unexpected, and often anti-conventional.
A creative, then, is someone who pushes against the boundaries of society’s norms. To me, creativity isn’t something you make or do - it’s a way of living. Our society values productive activity that is results-oriented. Creativity is the opposite of this. It’s focused on the immersive experience of generative work, regardless of outcome. This kind of joyful, inspirational participation in daily life is something our modern world with its bullet journals and cult of busy doesn’t easily tolerate. Why? Because it’s not explicitly productive or money-generating. It’s about experiencing your life, rather than using your life for a specific ends.
Whole-life creativity is a state of being in the world. It’s a way of living for creatives that can help us survive and thrive in a world that does not have our best interests at heart. Creatives are often what I call gentle souls - intuitive, empathic, sensitive - who struggle to fit into the broader society. For those of us gentle souls who have tried to thrive within conventional institutions like school and workplaces, we often find ourselves traumatized after years and decades of the extreme effort it requires and our ultimate failure to find happiness that way.
By the time I reached my thirties, I knew I couldn’t keep up the effort any longer. Everything just hurt, including my body. I was exhausted and had no interest in any aspect of life. None of my efforts seemed to create any kind of positive result, and I often spent days in bed wracked with a paralyzing existential pain it’s difficult to describe. I was seriously burned out. We talk about burnout as something that happens on the job - but I think that’s wrong. Burnout is caused by the entire way we are living. By our lack of work-life balance, by prioritizing getting stuff done over how something makes us feel, and by not engaging in spirit-sustaining activities that suit who we are.
Whole-life creativity is an approach to living that I developed over years. It began in the darkness of a deep existential crisis. I’m grateful for that experience today - because it forced me to stop everything and take stock. As a therapy I began to try to walk every day, often failing, but this led to my first insight. Those daily walks weren’t just something I did as an “extra” after I got everything else done - those walks were my work, often the only thing I was able to do that day. Walking is not productive, it doesn’t make me any money - and yet it became the most valuable thing I did. My first lesson in whole-life creativity was this:
Stop being productive
Yes, you read that right. Stop focusing on activities that result in demonstrable, quantifiable outcomes. Do not write a to-do list. Do not force yourself to do something because you think you should. If you are often engaged in activities that feel forced and cause you anxiety, anxiety you feel in your body and soul, ask yourself why you are doing them. Those reasons you came up with? They’re excuses, every one. You can change your life, you have choices - even if you don’t currently feel you do (I’ve been there).
Creativity is our most basic need and our greatest skill. We are creative beings, and doing creative work is essential to our happiness. It doesn’t have to be art. Creativity is an approach that can be applied to any activity. The most important thing to understand is that creativity is not in and of itself productive. It may result in a product, but the act of being creative is all about the moment: it is experiential, based in the actual process of work rather than the outcome. Creativity is the opposite of doing things to get them done. As much as possible, do activities that are spirit-sustaining, not spirit-draining.
Once I embraced this approach to life, I had to accept an uncomfortable truth about money. Specifically, that I might never make much. I might struggle in ways that my peers, with steady conventional jobs, won’t. When you live in a world that equates money with personal value and success, this is a hard thing to come around to. But it led directly to my second lesson in whole-life creativity:
Making money cannot be the goal of your creative life
Nothing will kill your spirit faster than putting money ahead of spirit-sustaining activities. You probably know this already, right? I mean, it’s kind of obvious - money doesn’t buy happiness and all that. But money-worship is so insidious in our society, and we are so socialized to think it’s important, that people will rebel hard when you try to say otherwise.
Have you ever heard that you should just do what you love, and money will follow? Well, that’s bullshit. You should figure out how to do what you love - but money may or may not follow. Whether money comes or not should not factor into your decisions about how to pursue your creative work. We all have to make money somehow, clearly, and wanting to make money isn’t wrong or bad. Do some people make money from their creative work? Yes! And that’s great for them! But I can guarantee you that the most creative people would be doing their creative work even if they weren’t being paid for it.
What gives creativity its value is that it has nothing to do with money. It occupies an entirely different dimension, and the two are incommensurate. Money is a quantitative measurement of value based on a linear understanding of cause and effect: you do something productive, then get money for it. Creativity, as I discuss above, is not about product: it is experiential and immersive, and occurs outside of linear time because when you are in a creative state, time disappears.
Whole-life creativity isn’t a destination - I work on it every day. It’s not an easy path, because it requires a rejection of our society’s hegemonic value system that exerts its coercive pressures on us in often very subtle ways. But practicing whole-life creativity has been the antidote to my burnout. I’ve created this website as a resource for other creatives and gentle souls who are also looking for a better way to live.