I decided to start this blog today, or rather yesterday when I registered, mostly because of my roommate. Another cranky old man, in some ways like me, in others I hope I'll never become, he's been pushing me to try and become a paid author and writer. He seems to think I have some creative talent. Now that claim, I think is stretching it. I like to write. I like to do things I'm told are creative. I like to draw, I like to write stories, I like my role playing games, I like to create new games entirely. But to say I'm creative is something else.
Creative.
That word has such a strange feeling for me. "Creative". It's nearly as holy a word to me as "Angelic" might have been to church faithful of years gone by. Think of the sheer numbers. There are what, nearly 7 billion people on this planet. If you think of everyone who ever existed since the written word, or any sort of lasting record came to be, the number jumps astronomically. I couldn't even hazard a guess.
Creative. And out of this astronomical number... how many creative souls were there? How many times have you read a book, watched a play, seen a movie, and thought to yourself, "This is really creative, it's just brilliant!"?
I can't say for myself. If I was to hazard a guess, out of all the movies I've seen, all the plays I've watched, all the books I've read, and all the games I've played, those upon the creative staffs would probably number less than 1,000. Oh, I'm sure it'd be more if you counted something like every gopher, grip, and stagehand involved. But if you just kept it to the ones we think of as the Creators. Writers, directors, producers, even actors and designers. I think 1,000 is a ballpark figure, about as close as I could possibly figure without taking out days and days to do an exhaustive inventory.
So, creative. In the whole of human history, of what works of art I've had the pleasure and ability to examine, I found perhaps 1,000 Creative Souls. Granted, it's not as though I've had the chance to paw through everything ever created. But just think of how many books, how many stories, how many poems, TV shows, movies, comics, games, clothing, architecture, and other possible fields of "Creativity" there are and how much you see in your life.
Suffice to say, I don't think I would ever be worthy of such a lofty few.
So why do I do this? Why does my roommate keep bothering me about it? Well, I'm a bum. I'm poor, penniless, and mostly a drain on society between my few and too far between odd jobs. My roommate works, at a very comfy job where he mostly plinks around and collects a paycheck. Still, he blew his money on obvious scams. Ones I warned him were obvious scams at that. He has nothing and continues to live at the standard he wants, rather than that of his means.
Thus the push for me to "Be creative" and get paid doing these things. It, irritates me. It really does, as irrational as the reasons may be. It always seems that he discusses the topic in such as way as if to say:
"Hey, go and strike it rich. Hell, if Stephen King can, so can you. Make millions and bail me out of the hole I dug myself into."
That gets irritating. Maybe you might not think so. I understand if you strike it rich, most people will try to mooch off you. It just seems annoying that I got moochers before I even have my first dollar. Much less that he could care about the struggle and processes behind it, as much as "Do it now and become rich tomorrow".
He has more faith in me than I do. Blind faith at that, as I know he knows nothing about the market. He just seems to think that there are people out there waiting to fork over cash for no reason.
The second reason it irritates me? That's more complex. And maybe I'll cover it tomorrow as I see this one is starting to get a bit long.
Til next time,
Grind Away
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