Creative expression has claimed a significant chunk of the strange and ever-shifting mosaic that is my life and my identity. I spend so much of my time immersed in producing artistic products that I don’t have any idea what I’d do without that portion of my being. Sort of how I feel about pizza, art is like endless pizza for the brain — it nourishes and satiates me in myriad ways, some of which I probably can’t articulate. And luckily, I can articulate some of them, so I made this nice list of reasons why I love making things and why, perhaps, you could also.

1. So Humane.
   We are human (still believe) and we differ from all other species in many ways. But perhaps the ultimate one is our ability to imagine things that do not exist and create them in this world. The artistic expression is a thread of continuity between all human cultures across oceans of time. Imagination is such a fundamental part of who we are that we automatically create fantasy worlds and stories while we’re asleep.
2. Fly like a Dragon as free you are
   Okay, well, you can’t fly or breathe fire, except in your head. But really, the only boundaries in art are formed by three things:
   a) physics
   b) your equipment/materials
   c) your imagination.
   For some people, the word “art” connotes a world where people use lofty, highfalutin language to talk for 30 minutes about a picture of some trees. Or of impoverished dudes with dusty hats and furrowed brows who lock themselves in cramped, shadowy studios to slave over their masterpiece.
3. The Communication
   To create something is to express yourself in a way that you would otherwise not be able to — to connect with others on a different and perhaps much deeper level than is allowed by normal interaction. Even something like a gorgeous, handmade piece of pottery reveals a person’s diligence, attention to detail, patience, vision, and commitment to perfecting a craft. Mediums like film or fiction-writing or music can communicate a whole lot more than that — they can contain personalities and worldviews and hope and despair and lust and madness, the entire gamut of human experience.
4. Original than Original Sin
   There’s really no better way to be indisputably and exclusively yourself than to create something that only you can dream up and make. Art is a means of defining and affirming your individuality, of distinguishing what is yours and yours alone. Of course, as anyone who creates things realizes, it turns out to be insanely difficult to do something truly new or wildly different than what others have done. That’s okay. We try anyway, and we’re still unique, just like everyone else.
5. Lose yourself like Eminem did.
   “In the music, the moment. / You own it. You better never let it go.” This universally-known quote from a song that we've all heard a few (hundred) too many times is somehow appropriate. Art allows you to enter a place where you forget yourself, a place where you’re simply flowing with what you’re doing, entirely focused on the thing you’re imagining, and everything else melts away. This is a wonderful space to discover, a sort of Never Never Land (that’s two Peter Pan references in one article, for those counting) that is always available.
6. The Immortality
   Pretty serious bummer, I know, but someday you and I and everyone we know will be nothing more than dirt and bone dust. Our human selves have expiration dates (unless immortality via technology happens anytime soon; not so sure I’d sign up), but art doesn't really have to.
   Or, at the very least, it can last a hell of a lot longer than us. I mean, we still appreciate Bison that were painted on cave walls 40,000 years ago. Our early painter-ancestors are long gone, but they left us a time capsule that connects us to the past and tells us something valuable about who we are and where we come from. Think of all of the other artists — Homer, Chaucer, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Beethoven, et al. — Who have long since met their maker yet still affect us with what they made.
   Such legacies are… incredibly cool. And while I’m not saying that you or I are going to create something that humanity will treasure in 40 millennia (though, who knows), I do think we can make things that, at the very least, our descendants might one day appreciate. “Hey kids, let’s read this bizarre story that your great-great-grandpa Kamal wrote when he was 23 years old.”

Confession: I “swear” regularly in my ongoing effort to make my writing and this pen reflect more honestly who I am and how I live, I decided to make this article more… colorful than usual. If I've offended you and yours,
I’m… not going to apologize.