Yvonne Feresu

Tag: winterABC

  • Why the creative personality must create or die

    Why the creative personality must create or die

    I came across a nugget of information on a very dark day that changed everything. To be honest this information should have been very obvious to me considering my own experiences and my background in Psychology. Suffice to say part of me did know but I thought they were just flights of fancy on my end. So what the hell was this information?

    People with highly creative personalities have no choice but to create. – Dr Jordan Peterson

    To not create is to die a slow spiritual death. It takes a massive toll on your being as a creative individual to not practice your art or your craft. But often a lot of us who are not earning directly from our craft sometimes sideline it to the detriment of our well-being.

    You will note that I used the word ‘personality’ earlier on, and that’s because creativity is as much a result of personality as it is the environment. In other words, it’s encoded in your DNA because personality is widely believed to have a biological basis.

    (PS: I will be leaving links to detailed, but easy to understand articles on this topic for you to sink your teeth into. Psychology is very broad and sometimes complex or confusing therefore I will point you in the right direction.)

    What is personality?

    A simple, easy to understand definition is: Personality refers to individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving (apa.org). Personality encompasses all the traits, characteristics, and behaviours that set you apart from everyone else.

    This is of course the simple definition. Once you dive into the world of research psychology it becomes much more complex. For today that explanation will suffice. Creative individuals usually share a particular core personality trait that makes them who they are. That trait is openness, one of the Big Five.

    The five-factor personality theory

    The five-factor personality theory, also commonly known as the Big Five theory is a widely accepted framework used to describe and test the human personality. There are many theories on personality, but the Big Five is the most widely agreed upon in the field of Psychology.

    It breaks personality into 5 core traits that are universal, namely; openness, conscientiousness, extraversion (also spelt extroversion), agreeableness and neuroticism. For the sake of this discussion, we’ll only touch on openness. You can read this article on the subject for more information on the other traits. It’s easy to understand and well laid out.

    Image credit: verywellmind.com

    It’s necessary to point out that these traits happen on a spectrum between two extremes. Imagine a line graph from one to 100 as the spectrum, and people will fall anywhere between those values. So basically everyone has these traits but within a range from high to low. Creative personalities are often high in openness.

    Openness and the creative personality

    So, what is openness?

    In short – the tendency to be intellectually curious and use imagination.

    People high in this tend to be creative, adventurous, have many interests, love learning and new experiences. They often think outside the box, crave novelty, enjoy the arts and engage in creative careers or hobbies. Now, do you see why most creative people share this same personality trait?

    Despite having studied Psychology, I never applied this knowledge to myself. This was unusual for me because I’m very self-aware and do a lot of introspection. I partly blame the lack of insight on my former dislike for the subject, the module on Personality was one of my least favourites. I digress. My point is when you are high in openness as a creative person, not engaging in your art means going against your biology. It will leave you miserable. I learnt this the hard way when I gave up creative writing for financial freedom.

    So why do we stop creating?

    There are many reasons creative people ignore that aspect of their personality once they become adults. One of the most common though is money. Following a creative endeavour simply doesn’t pay the bills for a lot of people. Monetizing that passion is extremely difficult and the market for your endeavours might not be lucrative. There is a myriad of other, often traditional careers that will almost guarantee you a steady income and more often than not, a creative career isn’t one of them.

    For those of us that do have successful creative careers, it’s a long and slow process and we shouldn’t expect overnight success. Most of us will give up on these in favour of more stable jobs, but that’s still okay. What matters is you create regardless of whether that earns you an income or not.

    So what happens when you don’t create?

    Misery, sadness, a feeling of incompleteness. I can only speak from my own experience here and tell you how that was like for me. I felt as if I was suffocating slowly, with this widening emptiness I couldn’t fill. Whenever I create I experience this buzz of energy, I feel alive. When I live through long spans of time without creating anything, I feel this bone-deep sadness that I cannot shake. I ask myself what the point of life is, I start to have mental breakdowns. This is not melodrama, when I said I made my discovery during a dark time, I wasn’t exaggerating.

    So how can we always ensure that we create? How do we keep that creative personality from withering inside?

    How to have your cake and eat it

    Well there are many routes, but these three are the most obvious:

    • Attempt to establish a creative career that fully supports you financially. I’ll admit, this is pretty difficult for most people but if you have very few financial responsibilities and the time, give it a shot.
    • Get a creative job for your 9-5. The creative industry is booming with the need for copywriters, designers (web, graphic, UX etc), illustrators and so many more. The list is very long. This might work for you, satisfying the need to create, but often you might not control the artistic vision or direction which might drive you crazy. Your own little hobby will still be necessary.
    • Getting a relatively undemanding 9-5 and becoming a serious hobbyist for your craft. This I would say is the best alternative. By undemanding job, I mean the kind of job that doesn’t require you to work crazy hours or leaves you feeling mentally and emotionally drained. That leaves you time and energy to invest quite seriously in your hobby. Purchase the tools you need, dedicate time for it, create and share your work. Do this to feed your spirit, keep it alive and help it thrive.

    So there you have it – why not creating leaves you feeling miserable and what to do about it. As for myself, I’m still trying to find my way but I have learnt my lesson, never stop creating. This post is part of my participation in the Afrobloggers #WinterABC blogging challenge.

    For further readings on personality and the Big Five, PositivePsychology.com has the perfect article for you, follow that link to read it. It will give you more background on personality, a brief history and interesting cases that happened in the field. It’s detailed but easy to follow and won’t drown you in too much information.

  • The Creative Career: Why do we want overnight success?

    The Creative Career: Why do we want overnight success?

    Dear creatives, when did we become enamoured by the idea of quick, overnight successful creative career? We want it all, and we want it fast. We compare ourselves to the girl who went viral on Tiktok or the guy who built a multi-million dollar app in two years or the other girl who built an empire using Instagram. It boggles our minds why that person couldn’t be us. Why despite uploading video after video of what we deem comedic excellence we never took off yet Elsa Majimbo caught fire and was now on the cover of Forbes?

    We see other young people taking seemingly lavish vacations (mostly before the pandemic) and we want it all so badly, and we want it soon. We want to take a fully funded retreat to just create in luxury! Those of us living in failed states, and struggling economies envy the “ease” at which our peers in developed countries seem to acquire what they want. Their creative industries are better and bigger. We see our peers in magazines, winning awards…or just frankly winning.

    We want to be the next John Boyega or Tomi Adeyemi or the next whoever seems to have made it in life. There are a plethora of young, rich celebs (or richer than us at least) both local and international. They made it, we haven’t. We want to be exceptional too.

    But here’s the thing…it doesn’t happen like that for most of us. It didn’t even happen like that for the multitudes of people with successful careers both in developed countries and here (the other half of the world). Creative industries everywhere are brutal, and following a creative career is often a high-risk endeavour.

    Career success is often a slow and steady climb. It’s ordinary yet magnificent. It’s boring and sometimes seemingly mundane, but in most cases, it’s slow steady growth. Obviously, for some, it’s faster and almost none existent for the unfortunate ones, but it’s definitely not as sexy as the magazine headline stories. And yet, that’s okay.

    We should take a moment and look around us. If we ask the people with successful creative careers we know in our lives to tell us their journeys we might be surprised at how “unsensational” it was. We want to be inspired by the exceptions to the rule, forgetting that often we ARE the rule. It’s an uncomfortable pill to swallow, but a liberating one nonetheless. Slow and steady can still cross the finish line.

    When we accept that perhaps we are the rule, that perhaps our growth is going to be slow and steady, it frees us from the grinding pressure to achieve, to “arrive”. It removes our creativity from underneath the york we would have placed it. Nothing can kill creativity faster than overwhelming pressure, we have to be kinder to ourselves.

    When we do that, we know that it’s a journey and we can focus on enjoying the ride. We know that eventually, we’ll reach the milestones we’re driving towards and all that comes with that. We resist putting ourselves under continuous pressure to shine and seemingly excel all the time. It’s exhausting and unfair on our souls.

    We are confident that we know where we are going and eventually we will get there. Life is long (except for those who have theirs cut brutally short) and maybe we should desist from wasting our youth feeling inadequate and strained by the need to achieve everything fast and now. Slow and steady progress is still progress and your creative career will still flourish.

    PS: This post is part of my #WinterABC blogging channel and falls under Day 2. If you missed Day 1, you can read it here. It’s a little soliloqy on why I’m participating in this challenge, a gift I’m giving to myself.

  • A present to my creative self – the WinterABC

    A present to my creative self – the WinterABC

    I almost never take part in blogging challenges, except in 2020 when I attempted the winter challenge but never finished it. I am determined, this time around. The challenge is flexible with themed weeks instead of daily topics, and the community is even bigger and better. On this day I dedicate my first post for the challenge to Yvonne the creative personality (i.e me) who has been side-lined and neglected for the past year. This is for the piece of me that has been dying a slow death and taking me with it because I would not let it flourish.

    And this my dear readers is the said challenge

     I chose to fully pursue my financial independence and freedom with a 9-5 job. I paid a price for it. Go ahead and read: What I learnt sacrificing creative writing for financial security, and you’ll see precisely what I mean. It has taken me a few years of job-hopping to realize that I don’t have a choice but to create. I don’t have the luxury to ignore and not nurture that aspect of my personality, as dominant as it is. No highly creative person can do that without damaging themselves, ask Dr Jordan Peterson. This challenge is my way of finding that path again. It’s an apology to my ravaged soul, a boon to my bored mind and a tendril of hope to my creative spirit.

    I dedicate this challenge to my neglected blog. I treated you badly, and I’m sorry; with all that you’ve done for me you deserved better. My blog and I – we wanted to conquer the world. We set out to make our mark in the blogging world (and secure paid work for me), but I betrayed her. I turned away and thought she wasn’t important anymore, caught up in the new career path I was pursuing. Most importantly though I lost my ‘why‘, I forgot why I created her and started blogging in the first place. But I am home now.

    I’m excited about this new chapter, this journey and what it means for us. By us, I mean the broken, creative soul inside of me, my blog and myself. We all deserve the love, excitement and fulfilment that comes from creating. I’m eager to read what others bloggers will serve us. Above all, I hope that someone finds answers and inspiration in the stories I’ll share. Of course, winning the prize money wouldn’t hurt either.