On shame and creativity

Hello, I haven’t written in about a year. My name is Tom, and I used to call myself a creative or a writer. Excuse after excuse, ranging from my mental health issues, to lack of subject or inspiration, pen would never reach paper. So bear with me, I’m going to just try to jump right back in and see how far that gets me. Here goes the next thirty days.

I don’t just want to be a writer, I want to write.

My mental health has been a rollercoaster for the longest time. All of my therapists from over the years will have the same anecdote written down in their notes:

I was around 13 years old, I remember being old enough and on holiday with my family that for the first time, my mum didn’t force me to go on a family walk. She let me stay home. I felt myself sink down into a deep depression. I sobbed for hours. That was the first time.

Heavy stuff, I know, and that is a story for another post. It is however a large part of me, much like my desire to label myself as a creative person but without much in the way of creation to show it. So what is it that makes me want to be creative? Aspiration? Jealousy or envy?

As I sat in that room, and stayed behind whilst my family went noisily out the cottage door, I turned to my old Dell Studio laptop. A great hulking beast of a machine, which I’d had customised with a lime green lid that had this tacky finish that attracted all manner of dirt, scratches and markings. I was 13, it was all the rage.

I had stayed behind because I wanted to go on Tumblr. At the time, it was an online safe-haven for kids that wanted to explore their passions and talk with others about obscure things that were too uncool for the playground, or write about the things that they loved. I wanted to design my own website, a large part of Tumblr’s appeal was the ability to write your own HTML code and design your own theme for your blog page.

That day, I barely even opened Tumblr before feeling incapable, unable, and telling myself it wasn’t going to happen. I gave up. A familiar feeling to people who like to push things out into the world, only to have their brain thwart them before even beginning.

So why do I like to label myself as someone who is creative? Even then on my tumblr page I would re-post photography, art, short stories and video. I would tell people in high school I wanted to be in a creative industry, that I had no affinity with the traditional, non-art subjects.

I have only ever really written in dribs and drabs, never had much of anything published and have a tendency to dream wildly but never start a project. You could argue this sounds like a symptom of the depression that in hindsight was so clearly a part of my life then.

I find it fascinating that somehow, I am wired the way of wanting to make something for others to consume and enjoy, whilst never actually putting pen to paper. Why do I not want to be a mathematician? Why not a scientist or lawyer?

I don’t have a definitive answer to that, but I do know that part of what prevents me from creating is a shame and guilt cycle. I examine too closely the work I want to make, before I even make it. I shame myself before allowing others to shame me. The base level of this is anxiety. Anxiety of failure, shame of not amounting to anything. Anxiety can be generalised or it can be acute, and most people will experience it. But shame is the most universal feeling of all.

I write, but nobody sees it. Or,

I write, and nobody likes it. Or, most infamously,

I write, and somebody thinks of me as untalented.

So talent is my shame. I am ashamed of a lack of talent, before I have even attempted to prove to anybody that I am, in fact, talented. By whose measure of talented? My own judgement is far, far too high off the charts, and other potential critics? Impossible to withstand. Therefor, do not create.

For the first time, I understand why writers who write, just say write.

The only way to be creative and to let go of shame, is to actually write and subject yourself to critique. Not critique of self, because that voice is too familiar, but critique from others. It might seem obvious, but I’ve never even begun many of the projects I’ve dreamt up, because I’ve shamed myself out of them.

So, to shame, and her sister courage. Without either of whom, I wouldn’t have written this post, for the first time, again.