Something on the Side

The importance of having a creative outlet.

At this year’s writing summit, I decided to drop a bomb. On an early Wednesday morning I presented a powerpoint on the importance of branding. It was pointed and brutal. The whole point can be boiled down to one absolute idea; you must take a piece of your personality and commodify it. No room for nuance.

With the conclusion came a lot of hesitation. When you have so many interests and aesthetics, how can you ever be satisfied with a single repetitive image? Afterall, the best part of living life is justifying your contradictions in the name of being multifaceted. I stayed adamant about the rigid structure of your public facing brand. Repetition brings an audience comfort after all.

So as a solution, I instructed them to start utitlizing their personal journals more. Along with the daily journal questions, I encouraged they include a slapdash poem. A doodle in the margins. Anything really. Perhaps the new found possibilities would help cultivate what we call the secret world.

Everyone, not just creatives, possesses an inner world. A sacred place. A pool of mana. Everything Pocket Full of Sunshine covered and more. But the conditions to accessing this world is seclusion and exclusivity. Over the modern century many creatives have been revealed to have secret art and prose that differ greatly from their public facing projects (Yes you, Thomas Kinkade). These experiments, ripped from shadow and presented unabashedly, seem confusing at first. The symbols and imagery are so disconnected to what made them famous. So, why does it exist? The simplest answer is, because it needs to.

From personal experience, doing something repeatedly with no respite is a quick way to fuck yourself over. “Feeling that you are solely defined by your job – even if it is going well – can raise your chances of experiencing anxiety, depression and burnout, because you may not have a perception of yourself outside of work,” says Psychotherapist Michelle P. Maidenberg. The brain craves novelty. The body aches for a new way to move. By forcing creativity on a smaller, faultless scale there is room to build a new aspect of yourself. An outlet to develop or reinforce your identity.

I’m proud to say my personal branding is coming along great (let me toot my own horn here). I’m really narrowing down my vibe and audience. But some days I feel trapped in my image associations. So as a balm, I’ve been resketching OC’s I created back in high school. Cringe that will probably never be seen by the public. But even with just thirty minutes of mindless tracing, my hands have loosened up enough to finally write this piece you’re reading right now.

So while I still strongly advocate for artists to treat their art like you would a 9 to 5, I also implore each and every one of you to have something creative for yourself. A poem never shared, a sketch never shown, or a dance crafted in seclusion.***